Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey everyone,

I set up a small aquaponics system in my kitchen about a month /month and a half ago. Oh have a fish tank gravel filled grow bed right above a twenty gallon tank.

I have five seemingly happy minnows in there. I'm using goldfish flakes as my fish food.

I have planted green peppers, dill, basil , a single Italian parsley plant, a chive plant, and a bunch of buttercrunch lettuce. Everything is doing fine except the chives plant and the lettuce. In fact the dill and basil are doing awesome!!

I don't really care about the chives as I have some planted in a pot that are doing well. I would like to save the lettuce if I could. The leaves start to Wilt from the top back to the stem. The Wilt spreads slowly so I have a few pictures with leaves that are half fine and half wilted. I also have a lettuce plant that has these silvery white spots on it. Pictures linked as well.

Thanks

http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... gn6d93.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... qf4xzh.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... t9wchw.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... upjtoo.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... aqwlju.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... gc7sbc.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... gjpayc.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... ofhkly.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... instdh.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... vswno6.jpg
http://i1320.photobucket.com/albums/u52 ... ajimop.jpg

Welcome to the forum

On the lettuce, I'm not sure but I think you may have a potassium deficiency since this seems to be along the edges of the lower leaves. The basil looks OK

Thanks!!

I just happened to come into some MaxSea all purpose plant food. It has a ton of micronutrients for plants including 16% phosphate. Do you know if this is safe to add? Or would this particular supplement be bad for the fish?

Any idea how much I would add if it is okay?

Oh yeah my chemistry is as such:

Nitrates 40 ppm
Nitrites 10 ppm
Water hardness is listed as "Hard" 150ppm
no chlorine
Alkalinity between 0-40 (KH) PPM (this number has fallen a ton since cyled)
My ph is between 7.2 and 7.8

Also this supplement is derived from Seaweed.

From the water chemistry it doesn't look like you are cycled yet. The nitrites at that level could be fatal to the minnows. To give them some protection, add 1ppt of un-iodized salt without any anti-caking agents (1 ppt = 1g/L). This won't cause any problems for your plants unless you have strawberries in the system.

Once these drop then I'd consider the fertilizer.

From what I can see about MaxSea it would not be a good choice. Looks like it could cause an ammonia or nitrite spike and some of the metals look to high for use in a recirculating system. Maxicrop plus Iron and Seasol are the two that get used around here the most although the maxicrop plus iron now has a warning label that isn't well explained and is due to a government lawsuit against them. They have very low fertilizer value but contain growth promoters and potassium.

Here's what I looked at for the MaxSea (particularly the second link)

http://media.hydroponics.net/item-documents/maxsea/140039/722250.pdf

http://agr.wa.gov/pestfert/fertilizers/FertDB/prodinfo.aspx?pname=4272

So around 75 grams of non-iodized salt then? What will that do? Not skeptical but curious about the science.

Basically the chloride ion in the salt competes with the nitrite ion for uptake by the gills. The 1 ppt works for most cases but you can actually calculate out the amount needed if you want. Here's some reading for you that explains it and goes through some calculations -

http://www2.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/NitritePonds.pdf

Both nitrite and chloride are negatively charged ions.

Thanks!! I'm super excited to read it.