Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all and thank you for the lovely welcome to your forum!

First I'll have to explain that I am one of the lucky few whose state and local governments believe in a patient's right to produce their own quality medicine. I have a herniated disk in my back, and medical cannabis is the only thing that keeps me from experiencing severe pain on a daily basis. I have joined your beautiful forum in order to (hopefully) incorporate AP into my system, thereby increasing the efficiency of my production method by reducing water waste.

Washington State's RCW 69.51a allows patients to legally produce up to 15 cannabis plants. I average a modest 4 flowering plants under 2 1000w air-cooled bulbs. I also keep a small veg tent, with my two mother plants and rooted clones. Just enough to keep my flower room stocked. You can see from the pictures that my reservoir is a 50 gallon rain barrel ($80 on amazon prime). I simply fill the reservoir with water, add my nutrient solution, fill buckets, swap out the old buckets, dump and clean the old buckets, and that's it for feeding and watering. I use only one nutrient mixture throughout all growth phases, which eliminates all water testing, while producing an average of 8oz per plant.

So, I figure that if I can get great results from one mixture of inorganic nutrients, shouldn't I be able to stock a similar reservoir in such a way that I can achieve the same constant level of nutrition? Every time I dump a bucket of used reservoir water down the drain I think to myself that it is purified water that I'm dumping. What a shame.

My initial idea is to build another reservoir, and use an air lift CHOP 2 to deliver water from the reservoir/FT to a small grow bed that would act as a settling tank as well as possibly a vermiculture bed. I thought of this because it seems that most people who run AP DWC use a medium filled GB between their FT and DWC in order to filter out solids. Also, vermiculture may help in the breakdown of solids so that the nutrients they hold become available to my plants.

Here are the things I need to know:

My buckets hold 3.5 gallons of water. That's 14 gallons of water in my buckets on average at any time. Obviously the 1:1 ratio between FT and GB won't work here, since it's not a recirculating system. My plants also need much more nutrition than a 14 gallon fish tank could possibly produce in a 24 hour period. Is there any way of determining how large the reservoir should be for this type of system?

What fish species would you recommend for such a system? I'm starting to think that goldfish are my best bet, but I would like to be able to take advantage of the aquaculture side of AP if at all possible as well. Goldfish don't fetch much at market...

... and a million other questions too. I'll stop here so I don't get too far ahead of myself. What do you guys think? Is this something worth trying out, or am I asking too much from AP?

Thanks for reading!

Last post I had read on another forum growing with AP setup was that it was not successful for cannabis. Most of the posts here are growing food items and theories to grow them better. You might be able to find some useful information but I haven't seen any posts here to grow smokes.

Thanks for the reply CLM!

Actually, I've heard that cannabis will thrive under the same conditions as tomato plants. I don't see any huge obstacles other than the pH, which I adjust to 5.8 when I use my inorganic nutrients, whereas AP seems to do best around 6.5 from what I'm reading. The next challenge would be to find the right stocking/feeding combination to give me the proper nitrate ppm to nourish my plants. Once those factors were dialed in, I think it would grow just like any other plant.

there was a member from michigan that was doing a small flood and drain medical system...

_________________
my basement system;
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8354

i've no idea why pot wouldnt thrive. whether you'll get the same ridiculous flowering potential you get from carefully controlling the nutrients and lighting in an indoor hydro system, I doubt it.

_________________
My system in Brisbane viewtopic.php?f=18&t=7129