TomKat
Member
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2009
- Messages
- 401
I have been a member for a while but I am still new to the forums, so please forgive me if I am not doing things correctly.
I found out about aquaponics earlier this year and like most who find out about it, I was totally hooked. I built my own system the next day and had plants planted the day after. I started with a fishless cycle but I was way too eager to get started and added fish the next week (incorrectly). I started with a small fish tank and only one growing bed that I filled with pea gravel and started growing strawberries and lettuce and suplimented with Azomite rock dust.
After the system cycled, the growth went nuts! I had the best lettuce I have ever tasted and the juciest strawberries that I have ever had. I was so impressed that I built another bed for the garden and was contimplating on what else to grow.
When my mom showed up with most of a "flat" of Omish raised jalapenos, I knew what I wanted to do! I took 11 jalapenos and planted them all within an 18" x 18" x 1' area to test out how good the system can be. I heard that you can grow very close to other plants because with aquaponics the plants do not have to fight with their roots to obtain nutrients and I wanted to see just how close you can grow. I knew peppers in square foot gardening needed 1 square foot to grow in so this sounded like a good test for the system. In the new bed I finally planted some tomatoes that I grew from seed as well as some peppers I grew. The cantaloupe and watermelon seemed like a perfect fit for the system, so I just moved some pea gravel and put some seeds directly into the system.
Since then, things have going nuts! The jalapenos were growing a lot of fruit, the strawberries had runners going everywhere, the tomatoes started growing like mad, and the cantaloupe and watermelon have started to take off, but my other peppers in the new bed stayed small. I had a few bouts of iron depletion, so I had to suppliment with cheleated iron. I have made a few update videos to show the progress.
And thats where the fish started dying off. It started with one showing up dead, then four, then five. Every day started by scooping the dead fish out. I went from 32 to about eleven in just over one week. I am still working on this problem and I suspect the heat combined with the small fish tank are the biggest problems and I am getting ready to make a hot tub the new fish tank for the garden to help stabilize the ph better as well as help with the evaporation that has been a problem. I made an update yesterday of the progress in the garden so far. Hopefully the next update will have the new fish tank in it.
If anyone has any answers or theories as to why the fish have been dying off, I would love to hear them! I have checked out ich, ph, and nitrogen burn of which all could be the reason but the ich arguement may be the weakest. I have had the fish since early March and I would suspect that ich would have killed more by now and not just in the last few weeks. But at the same time, this is the first time I have had fish since high school.
I found out about aquaponics earlier this year and like most who find out about it, I was totally hooked. I built my own system the next day and had plants planted the day after. I started with a fishless cycle but I was way too eager to get started and added fish the next week (incorrectly). I started with a small fish tank and only one growing bed that I filled with pea gravel and started growing strawberries and lettuce and suplimented with Azomite rock dust.
After the system cycled, the growth went nuts! I had the best lettuce I have ever tasted and the juciest strawberries that I have ever had. I was so impressed that I built another bed for the garden and was contimplating on what else to grow.
When my mom showed up with most of a "flat" of Omish raised jalapenos, I knew what I wanted to do! I took 11 jalapenos and planted them all within an 18" x 18" x 1' area to test out how good the system can be. I heard that you can grow very close to other plants because with aquaponics the plants do not have to fight with their roots to obtain nutrients and I wanted to see just how close you can grow. I knew peppers in square foot gardening needed 1 square foot to grow in so this sounded like a good test for the system. In the new bed I finally planted some tomatoes that I grew from seed as well as some peppers I grew. The cantaloupe and watermelon seemed like a perfect fit for the system, so I just moved some pea gravel and put some seeds directly into the system.
Since then, things have going nuts! The jalapenos were growing a lot of fruit, the strawberries had runners going everywhere, the tomatoes started growing like mad, and the cantaloupe and watermelon have started to take off, but my other peppers in the new bed stayed small. I had a few bouts of iron depletion, so I had to suppliment with cheleated iron. I have made a few update videos to show the progress.
And thats where the fish started dying off. It started with one showing up dead, then four, then five. Every day started by scooping the dead fish out. I went from 32 to about eleven in just over one week. I am still working on this problem and I suspect the heat combined with the small fish tank are the biggest problems and I am getting ready to make a hot tub the new fish tank for the garden to help stabilize the ph better as well as help with the evaporation that has been a problem. I made an update yesterday of the progress in the garden so far. Hopefully the next update will have the new fish tank in it.
If anyone has any answers or theories as to why the fish have been dying off, I would love to hear them! I have checked out ich, ph, and nitrogen burn of which all could be the reason but the ich arguement may be the weakest. I have had the fish since early March and I would suspect that ich would have killed more by now and not just in the last few weeks. But at the same time, this is the first time I have had fish since high school.
