Dmc's Aquaponic Grow Journal

Hi everyone.

I'm registered with HC under Canada's ACMPR to grow for my medical use. I use an aquaponics system my dad built with a few additions I made myself, such as an ERV, light movers, dual root zones, etc. Right now we have Pineapple Express, Cheese and Romberry (Romulan x blueberry) in the dual root zones that are in the beds, along with a Colombian Black (100% landrace) on top of the beds with a few Jack herer. We have a mother room with a few different strains and we're working on establishing more mother plants asap.

We also put red wrigglers in the beds to eat up any dead roots or leafs that fall into the media. Our dual root zones are made so that the plant always has access to the high nutrient water produced by the fish, and then the top zone is for our supersoil mix which consists of many organic ingredients (I can list them if anyone is curious, it's Subcool's supersoil mix recipe).

For anyone that doesn't know what aquaponics is, it's basically combining hydroponics with aquaculture, and uses 80-90% less water than any other growing method (hydro, soil, etc).

Looking forward to updating this on a regular basis =). This current crop is our third harvest out of the system.

 

Thanks everyone! It took about a year to get things to way they should be going, a lot of trial and error, a lot of sickly looking plants, but we finally have a system in place that seems to be working quite well.

We use a dual root zone with an organic mix of supersoil so the plants don't have any deficiencies. . . We are working on strains that will be able to be planted directly in the bed (we've tested it already last year, and the plants do bud without the dual root zone, they just don't get as heavy =P). Other than that, the only other thing I have to add to the system water direclty is Chelated Iron, the fish supply plenty of nutrients and the supersoil bulks the plants up even more. Some more info here: Dual Root Zone - Dude Grows

This is what my dual root zones look like before the soil goes in. The burlap is on top of the expanded clay, and the dual root zone buckets are put in the system just far enough so the bottom of the buckets have water for the roots to reach down into. When the plants are ready for harvest, we simply lift it out using the overlapped burlap then we replace the burlap and plant a new clone/plant.

Our supersoil mix that we use for the dual root zone top consists of the following ingredients:
Organic soil
Worm Castings
Bone Meal
Dolomite Lime (removing next round, tends to raise pH of aquaponics system)
Azomite
Blood Meal
Bat guano
Epsom Salt
25% Perlite for extra drainage

Here's a photo of a Purple Hindu Kush in flower in the dual root zone:

- The very top cola of this plant was 49g wet, dry it worked out to about 11g.

Here's a photo of Golden Gauge (70/30 sativa)


Cropped both out a few weeks ago, and I dry for 3-5 days then cure for a minimum of 30 days... Results in ultrasmooth smoke and flavour that can't be matched by traditional growing methods =)

 

Yep! Either pH 6.0 kangen water or ph 7 rain water, sometimes I put a little bit of water soluable seaweed extract in the water too, the plants love it. Our mix usually has kelp meal in it but we couldn't source it locally so we left it out of this mix, haven't had any issues yet! We will be recycling the soil quite a few times, it's a very nutrient rich mix and we should be able to get a few crops with it =). We just added a bunch of worm castings and some soil to "water" it down a bit before it's put back into the DRZ. =P

I'm no soil expert myself, but I think if you added some bat guano to that mix you'd be good to go! Also, if possible, we always add some local soil to our mix to introduce local pathogens, etc to our strains.

The pH of the system is quite high right now, sitting at around 7.2 but that will slowly go down overtime especially once we start to add more plants. Also, the removal of the dolomite lime should help with that!

I've been sick the past week so not many garden updates, but I've started some Cambodian land race, Super lemon haze, Golden Gauge and Sunshine. Will update that with photos soon! For a veg mix we use approx 1/3rd organic soil, 1/3rd worm castings, 1/3rd perlite. I added some soil fungus gnat predators to the veg and bloom mixes too. . .Also introduced Rove beetles to the main garden.

 

Here's a photo of one of the bigger nugs off the Purple Hindu Kush after a quick trim. It's been curing for about 2 weeks now =)

 

I forget how long the PKH was in veg for, but it wasn't long. Maybe a few weeks. They only got between 1-2 feet tall.

 

I've been slacking a bit!

The Pineapple Express has been cut down and is in it's second week of curing, I'll try and take photos of it this week sometime.

Cheese, Columbian Black & I think Barbara Bud or Haoma are in flower still.

pH is still stable at 7.3, for an aquaponics system the goal is to eventually get to 6.8-7 range. I think adding more plants to the system will help lower the pH. I'll be posting some new photos once there's a little more excitement going on =)

 

"While the plants generally prefer a slightly acidic pH (in the low sixes to upper fives), the fish and bacteria prefer a slightly alkaline pH (in the high sevens to low eights). Therefore, pH management in aquaponics is an exercise in compromise between the two ranges. The ideal target is a pH of 6.8 to 7."

 

I think the fish I have could tolerate lower, how did you get down to 6.4? Did you just let the system naturally lower itself? I know how to raise pH in an aquaponics system, but in terms of lowering pH, everything I've read said it's mostly just a waiting game. Could you confirm? Thanks!

 

Thanks for the tips! I'm using rainwater for topping up. I'm going to add more plants and let the system nitrification process slowly lower the pH. I figure it's the best way to do it as I don't want to shock my fish and I've had decent yields even with the pH sitting around 7-7.3