Update photos

Tomato Flowers Starting!

Edamame looking good

Have 6x gold fish in the tank now. tested the water and found zero Nitrites (no fish waste) interesting - before I had dangerous levels of nitrites. This means the beneficial bacteria have been established and are now converting the fishwaste into awesome plant food! yay! system shot - on the left 3 grape tomato plants and 3 edamame plants - on the right 3 lettuce plants and one "big" tomato plant with the 2 Thai Basil plants on the most right side.


Check out the Edamame

The "big" tomato plant - with my bbq chicken tray seedling starter in the background.

Grow Tent

I made a rectangle out of 1/2 inch pvc pipe and taped 3 reflective space blankets to make a homemade grow tent. Should help bounce more light all over. In the blue circle you can see tomato flower about to bloom. I made some more holes too. Now I have 3 bean plants, 4 tomato plants, 2 Thai Basil, 2 butter head lettuce and I have some more seedings going with bell peppers, cucumbers, and some sweet basil. I cut back the tomato plants too.

Mistakes and Lessons Learned!

I got some really bad advice from a garden shop guy to put some hydrated lime in my system so the plants would get some much needed nutrients. It instantly killed the 4 gold fish I had. I'm also thinking it killed my beneficial bacteria so I could be waiting for the nitrogen cycle to get established again (3-4 weeks).

*Edit* I later found out that Hydrated lime is actually excellent for raising PH. Its strong stuff so be careful and I would just use a teaspoon if you have under 20 gal system like me and then test the PH.

Ironite - I would not recommend using ironite in aquaponics - it turned my pristine white roots into a brown grey mess. At least it didn't kill the fish. If your gonna add anything use Maxicrop Seaweed extract.

I flushed the whole system with clean water and then added hydroponics liquid nutirents (many Aquaponics pros say you don't actually need to add anything once the system is over 6 months old.) Which is what I probably should have done in the first place but I really wanted to see if I could grow stuff with just fish water.

quick light

Quick lowes/home depot light - "Bright Effects" 100w replacement/26w actual 6500K

BBQ Tray! Seed Germination

Woot!

DIY CFL Light system

This is my DIY Growlight! Its about 2 feet long. I got most of this stuff at Home Depot except the lights (105 watt Eiko CFL 6900 lumens at 5000Kelvin - $20 each online) and the Porcelain Medium Base Twin Socket ($5 online). The reflector is just a dryer vent pipe which I didn't even have to cut, it came open from home depot and I just had to pull it further open. Works well.

Adding some Iron

*Edit* this was a mistake. Don't use ironite for this application.

I put about a cup of ironite in a bucket with 6-8 cups of fish water - It was super murky so I just scooped out about 2-3 cups of that fishwater/ironite mix and added that to my fish tank which is about ~15 gallons. Hope my goldfish live...you can still see some orange blurs (goldfish) in the murky water. I put some of the murky water in a clear cup to see just how bad it was - you can still read the writting on the pvc pipe in back of the cup.

Second week in the system

Plants are growing fast except the tomato plant's leaves are getting yellow and don't look too happy. It seems a lot of new aquaponics systems have this problem and many recommend adding chelated iron. Found a big bag of Ironite at home depot ($10) with iron and other some other minerals plants need. Hope I didn't put too much in and kill the fish! Its looking murky in the fish tank now.

Big Picture & Video

New aquaponics prototype