Basic Aquaponics – Night Vision

Here’s a view of the aqP system as of this evening.  Quite a bit of re-arranging has taken place.  Lots of lost seeds and fish lost (waste! blah).  hoping to finally be able let it ride a while…

Basic Aquaponics – Changes for the better

Using plastic containers for aquaponics in the way I used them did not work out well so far.  It’s been about a month?… and two containers have already popped little leaky cracks.  It’s good to know that evaporation isn’t the culprit to the water loss I’d been having but I do need another solution now.  More growbeds!  hee hee

My 50 gal fish container was among the cracked bins and I was left with only 1 goldfish.  Little bugger is a true survivor.  I let him go into the pond and hope the water isn’t too dirty still for him to live a bit longer.  I then attached all the growbeds to the pond so now everything is running from 550 gal instead of 50.  I added seaweed fertilizer and wala… two days later my water stick test looks like this (left, after – right, before):

I’m going to go ahead and call this RAD.  No more pink on the square #2 from the top.  I also found some long n skinny, tiny red worms in the growbeds.  They look super gross IMHO and i have no desire to touch them ever but apparently they are just blood worms, a lucky-loo juicy treat for my [fish] and a sign of a healthy, clean system.

Progress Check – The system expanded

The crystal stack has received a new sibling and the system can now hold over 400 plants so long as they are in 2″ pots.  The deep bed on the upper right caved in and squashed everything underneath it and the whole system has pretty much been reset.  Most of the plants were lost except a handful that you can see on the top of the new growbed shelf.  Sigh.  Most of the fish are dead.  I am down to two and they will probably die soon because i had to replace water in the tank after evaporation or leak or i don’t even know yet.  I’m going to figure out the water loss problem, let the water recover and plop some more fish in the tank.  i’m really hoping i can figure out how to balance the system because at this point it is more maintenance than the nicely populating soil circle.  On a brighter note, the hakkaido black watermelon seeds are growing really really well in the top left bunk of the crystal stack.  the carnival carrots are also sprouting and some lettuce mixes of some sort too.   the italian large leaf basil is going nuts in the soil circle and i think in just a few short weeks i will have MA PESTO.

Progress check – 5 days after sowing in the aquaponic crystal stack

Here’s a progress update video of the crystal stack.  It’s taken just after I pulled the funKay green beans out (see previous post).  The black tomato seeds are starting to come in now- finally!  I’ve probably been most impatient about those because I’m most excited to see them grow.

 

Bean euthanasia or manslaughter?

These beans have been doing amazing, growth-wise.  Just look at the root systems they developed in only 5 days… what a feat.  Unfortunately, something has started eating away at their lovely green foliage and I had to pluck them from the system to make sure they don’t infect any other plants.  The carrots to the left of the beans don’t seem bothered at all so it must be something bean specific.  I haven’t seen any slugs or bugs in the bins and the system looks very healthy otherwise.

Sprouting seeds in mason jars – Large Leaf Basil

I started these seeds several days ago in some mason jars.  Can’t wait to see all those little sproutlings in the new aquaponic grow beds.  I started the seeds this way because I wanted to test the effects and growing differences between starting them directly in the system or getting them sprouted first.

 

 

 

Amazing— 3 days after sowing in the Aquaponics Crystal Stack

Crazy new pop-ups in the bins this morning!  Just three days in and I’m already having to prep to transplant them soon…