Ok hopefully every one understands the principles behind aquaponics. Fish poop then life happens. Most pepole know AP. as peagravle beds with plants planted directly in the gravel or floating raft desings with the plants on the rafts. Although these desings are good for some plants ie. lettuce they seem to fall short for heavy feeders like cannabis. In part due to the lack of phospurus produced by the fish. So long story short I have spent the last year fine tuning a AP. method that overcomes the few pit falls to cultivating heavy feeders in AP. I will start with what sets my method apart from all others I have seen: I use plastic pots with pure coco (NO FERTILIZER) in the bottoms of the pots then add a rich organic only mix to top off the pots. Chems will kill the fish. EvEn to much water solubale organic fertalizer will kill them ie. blood meal. The coco at the bottom keeps ferts from leaching out too bad and it wicks water up the pot. I also highly recommend more coco and perlite or whatever your preferance is to add more drainage and air pockets you dont want them to drowned. Basically I use soil as my primary source of food for the plants. The fish just add that little extra in a water soluable form plus they keep the water alive and healthy. Its like having a auto water system feed by a healthy pond wich is hard to do if you live in a condo.
Ok so now the tray. I fill the bottom groves of the 2x4 hydro tray with a mixture or gravel and mineralized top soil (planted aquarium trick) this adds a drainable bed bottom with trace minerals. Do not go to thick with the mineralized top soil or it will go anarobic! One should probably pass on it all together unless your willing to do a little research on the subject.
Good to see you again Air O Look forward to seeing more of your aquacannaponics. I like your approach to the heavy feeding plants. How old is your system? I hear that plants don't do particularly well until about the 1 year mark in a 300gal system. I've been adding things like worm castings to my system, plus kelp extract. speaking of soluble nutrients, I put quite a bit of steamed bone meal in my AP system to help my tomatoes produce more, fish are still happy, and very hungry, and the plants are doing a lot better. I also didn't know blood meal was bad for fish, that wouldn't have been good if I had got that instead. Do you ever use worms or worm castings in your system? Also, what is your filtration method?
Then for root protection and the main biofilter I add about 4 inches of gravel to the tray. Currently I am playing with adding coco to the gravel to clone in but would not recommend on first attempt. I need more gravel for my bed but you get the idea. Work the pots into the gravel so the anchor or water roots can work there way out of the pot into the gravel bed (which is the real bio filter for the fish a must have). The roots that escape will feed and flourish in the gravel and the root ball will stay in the pot. Well if it likes your soil it will P.S. please excuse the lack luster look of the plants I just had a epic battle with rice root aphids. At least I won.
I let the water run continuos only stoping and draining for 30 min every 4 hours. Keep the water level low in the tray only a inch or two. My pumps are the cheap 400 gal hr hydro pumps.
I will post my bloom room tomorrow and answer questions and critiques of my system. Sorry I am a slow typer.
Do you think it might be possible to put some sort of tubes in the grooves to force air into the medium? That would help with the anarobic bacteria and would boost what I assume are good bacteria of the aerobic variety. The idea of live microorganisms in your gravel bed is quite exciting. So I'm just barely aware of what aquaponics is, but have no working knowledge of actual systems. I'm assuming your holding tank is where your fish are? And that the continuos water flow is coming from the fish then back to the fish? how do you maintain your desired water level in your gravel tray? Thanks for sharing!
In my personal experience, as long as the filter medium doesn't have any sort of dry spots or anaerobic holes, similar to soil, then it should be fine. I have quite a few air pumps in my aquaponics system, and my timer accidentally got knocked around so that my ebb and flow just stayed on constantly stayed on 24/7. I use hydroton in a 12" deep grow bed as a medium, which never has any dry spots and has plenty of air. I didn't even realize the timer wasn't set properly until 2 days later because the plants were just getting their oxygen from the water, and were perfectly fine. it was like a DWC/ebb and flow. weird. Some people also have siphon filters, which filter out the water quickly enough to allow fresh air into the grow bed from the surface.
Very cool!! I am a freshwater planted aquarium hobbyist, I have been pondering using my 65g display tank as a water source. Not quite aquaponics, but wanted some opinions on possible problems from doing so.
Look into bog filltration then sell your fillters and get creative! In my humble opinion there is no better way to defeat algae than to out compeat it! Bog filltration is a natural planted aquariest dream. Its also kinda the birth child of my curent method. Sorry guys I have been slacking but I will shoot a vid tonight in hopes to explain things better and answer some questions.
Ok sorry guys here are two videos to start with. I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism or advice relating to the vidoes. I will soon post more videos including my bloom room and a pros and con version and basically anymore in depth stuff you guys would like to know about. Thanks for participating in my grow journal- sorry I'm a slacker but I'm just a busy guy. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvVixemuqWA]aquaponics intro 004.MOV - YouTube[/ame] [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbxpvmdvCAU&feature=channel]aquaponics part 2 003 - YouTube[/ame]
[quote name='"Air O"']Ok sorry guys here are two videos to start with. I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism or advice relating to the vidoes. I will soon post more videos including my bloom room and a pros and con version and basically anymore in depth stuff you guys would like to know about. Thanks for participating in my grow journal- sorry I'm a slacker but I'm just a busy guy. Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvVixemuqWA Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbxpvmdvCAU&feature=channel[/quote] Nice setup up AirO. What is your water source? Tap? RO? A few thing that I did in my old system to help with the pH. I used to RO my water and then add back. I kept a stocking of montmorillonite hanging in my sump a long with some crushed coral. The theory being that I was adding acidic nutes that slammed my pH. The alkaline sources buffered as long as I was adding a small enough amount of nutes to make a slight change in pH. I used GH hydro 3 part at 1/8th strength. The GH also added to the buffering. It became a balance of what fish provide and what the plants want. I never had the sack to mix the soil in the pots it always seemed like I'd be fighting myself. What are u doing with the mulm? I also sought out fish that liked cooler water (74) and a pH range of 6-7.
[quote name='"Air O"']Sorry I also need to figure out how to work this reply to thread thing! LOL[/quote] No worries. Mulm = fish shit.
Oh lol ok that's one reason i use a substrate and try to plant as many plants as I can in my tank. Also things like ghost shrimp and certain types of fish will help clean up what doesn't work it's way into the substrate and wind up as nutrients for aquatic plants. I've had my system running for over a year and I just vaccuumed the gravel for the first time about a week ago- not because of fish poop, but because there was quite a bit of coco which had worked it's way into the reservoir and the fish or myself would cloud up the water fairly easily with that much coco laying on top of the gravel. P.S. I remember somebody mentioning geneticengineer- here is one of his videos I just found on youtube. It's quite a few years old but still has plenty of good info on aquaponics in general. [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3gQ_OXREo8]Aquaponic Cannabis - YouTube[/ame]
CO2 is the way to go. We used to KO the abalone with CO2 before harvest. Relaxed their muscles. They just slide off the substrate. I never liked aquatic plants in the res. I always looked at them as competition for my real crop.