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Dirtbags Do-over... 🤪 Back to Organic!

Aquaponics only for veg right? I read it doesnt flower well. Or do you know something?....??? It is so low on nutrient concentrations that it can be too little in flower. In the interview with Breeder Steve he said for flowering he would fill a sock with...
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Dirtbags Do-over... 🤪 Back to Organic!

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Discussion below · 1,738 replies
Page 8 of 87 · Replies 141–160 of 1,739
#141
MIMedGrower said:
Aquaponics only for veg right? I read it doesnt flower well. Or do you know something?....???
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It is so low on nutrient concentrations that it can be too little in flower. In the interview with Breeder Steve he said for flowering he would fill a sock with organic dry bloom nutrients and suspend it in the aquarium for several weeks. The sock would immediately have fish feeding from it, digesting the nutrients for the plants use.
 
#142
Tilapia is one of the suitable fish used in aquaponics. This is because of thier tolerance to higher nitrogen levels than most. I can state how important PH is in this equation as the higher the ph the more nitrogen in the form of free ammonia which is very toxic to fish. Below 6 moat is in the form of ammonium and less toxic. Nitrite even less so and nitrate is the most tolerant. This is where the denitrifying bacteria come in. From ammonia to nitrate its around 3.75 to 1 when converting ammonia to nitrate. 1ppm of ammonia will create roughly 3.75ppm of nitrate. Fish eat food and then poop. This poop is basically organic nutrients and the nitrogen in it like worm casting is extremely high in ammonia which is why PH drops with an increase. Then the denitrifying bacteria break it down into nitrates. @Dirtbag Remeber how i said you can make your own source of these bacteria without fish?

What kinda get confusing is you don't need the fish in a sense of large scale production. The bacteria that live in an aquariums or aquaponics will do extremely well and populate based on food source if.... you have adequate PH, salinity (more complex than you think), temps, oxygen and surface area. This could easily be done without fish and maintained (can get into that if you like). With anything that is an inoculant theybare really fooling you into believing you need to add it all the time. But thats simply a lie. I have kept aquariums, bred fish and aquatic plants for a lot of my life and sold to pet stores until a few yrs ago. You can absolutely do this setup fishless with an inoculant such as fish shit and keep it going for years.

Imo trying to run 120ppm of nitrate is still far to high to keep fish of any kind humanely. Cannabis is not well suited to aquaponics but you don't need fish to do it
 
#144
Aqua Man said:
Tilapia is one of the suitable fish used in aquaponics. This is because of thier tolerance to higher nitrogen levels than most. I can state how important PH is in this equation as the higher the ph the more nitrogen in the form of free ammonia which is very toxic to fish. Below 6 moat is in the form of ammonium and less toxic. Nitrite even less so and nitrate is the most tolerant. This is where the denitrifying bacteria come in. From ammonia to nitrate its around 3.75 to 1 when converting ammonia to nitrate. 1ppm of ammonia will create roughly 3.75ppm of nitrate. Fish eat food and then poop. This poop is basically organic nutrients and the nitrogen in it like worm casting is extremely high in ammonia which is why PH drops with an increase. Then the denitrifying bacteria break it down into nitrates. @Dirtbag Remeber how i said you can make your own source of these bacteria without fish?

What kinda get confusing is you don't need the fish in a sense of large scale production. The bacteria that live in an aquariums or aquaponics will do extremely well and populate based on food source if.... you have adequate PH, salinity (more complex than you think), temps, oxygen and surface area. This could easily be done without fish and maintained (can get into that if you like). With anything that is an inoculant theybare really fooling you into believing you need to add it all the time. But thats simply a lie. I have kept aquariums, bred fish and aquatic plants for a lot of my life and sold to pet stores until a few yrs ago. You can absolutely do this setup fishless with an inoculant such as fish shit and keep it going for years.

Imo trying to run 120ppm of nitrate is still far to high to keep fish of any kind humanely. Cannabis is not well suited to aquaponics but you don't need fish to do it
Click to expand...

Good stuff there man. Yeah I'll see how this one goes, I don't have any real plans to go aquaponic but the science behind the bacteria and nutrient cycling fascinates me. I'm trying to incorporate as much of the logic as I can reasonably fit into this grow
 
#145
Dirtbag said:
Good stuff there man. Yeah I'll see how this one goes, I don't have any real plans to go aquaponic but the science behind the bacteria and nutrient cycling fascinates me. I'm trying to incorporate as much of the logic as I can reasonably fit into this grow
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You can use all the same amendments as you are this grow. Make a blend of EW castings, shells for calcium etc all of that put then in shelves of a trickle filter and biomedia... you can do pure organic hydro grows even when doing this. It's the balances that are quite a bit tougher in hydro compared to soil.
 
#152
Grownsince95 said:
So all compost teas in the rez or dry amended coco with plain water? Or none of the above? lol
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Both teas done in 5 gal with airstone fed once a week and kept going. The tea kept like that will add bacteria weekly and the broken down nutrients they provide. Like I say not necessary but its a good way to provide bioavailable nutrients and a bacteria boost each week. Small amount of dry amendments keeps things going. Its a balancing act that you kinda need to figure as you go.

I used to keep a 5 gal full of sponge filters and add ammonia daily. Then whenever I needed to start a new tank or had a customer doing so I would sell them one so the tank would take like a week to become established instead of 5-6weeks
 
#154
tomatoesarecooltoo said:
what will be in the teas?
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Haha well thats all new to me so I need to research that but the most important to me would be the denitrifying bacteria so maybe some EW castings, kelp etc. They sell tea mixes and I would prob start there since my experience is with keep ammonia low. Denitrifying bacteria also aid in preventing pythium by competing for food source.
 
#155
It sounds harder to take care of the microbes than the plants...? I bet the payoff is great though 👍
 
#156
Grownsince95 said:
It sounds harder to take care of the microbes than the plants...? I bet the payoff is great though 👍
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Not hard. Just need to be conscious of them. For teas you need aeration and food or they die and smell. Also could develop unfavorable bacteria. To keep them healthy oxygenated and feed daily. You will only need to inoculate once this way. If you let em go days without new food your gonna have issues. So temps lower as metabolism speeds with temps increase
 
#157
Lol @Dirtbag ill make you a deal. You go organic next and figure it out after then I can copy you.

Next grow for me is redemption. The one after that I will do an organic coco in 3 gal pots.
 
#158
Aqua Man said:
Not hard. Just need to be conscious of them. For teas you need aeration and food or they die and smell. Also could develop unfavorable bacteria. To keep them healthy oxygenated and feed daily. You will only need to inoculate once this way. If you let em go days without new food your gonna have issues. So temps lower as metabolism speeds with temps increase
Click to expand...

You can get away with a little EW casting tea with out the air if you make it overnight and feed in the morning. It works great but I’m looking into adding a bubbler after my next trip to the supply store.
 
#159
When I did bioponics or hydroorganics or whatever they call it, my plan was to do aquaponics and I just never got the fish.

There were two 55 gallon drums, one was the main res and one was the sump tank, water was pumped from the sump into a 3 x 3 tray of lettuce in hydroton which would drain into tha main res, which would overlow back into the sump tank. It would circulate the water in this fashion for 15 minutes every hour. For biologic innoculant I used fresh river water and some microbe life product.

The recirculating was the only aeration in that system and I was using fish ferts so it did have some smell, but much less than I expected, smelled more like the ocean rather than the gnarly smell of the fish ferts.

This was lettuce outdoors in a coastal climate so not the same thing at all, just wanted to share for context. I tried throwing some other crops in that system, but the lettuce is what really took off.
 
#160
tomatoesarecooltoo said:
When I did bioponics or hydroorganics or whatever they call it, my plan was to do aquaponics and I just never got the fish.

There were two 55 gallon drums, one was the main res and one was the sump tank, water was pumped from the sump into a 3 x 3 tray of lettuce in hydroton which would drain into tha main res, which would overlow back into the sump tank. It would circulate the water in this fashion for 15 minutes every hour. For biologic innoculant I used fresh river water and some microbe life product.

The recirculating was the only aeration in that system and I was using fish ferts so it did have some smell, but much less than I expected, smelled more like the ocean rather than the gnarly smell of the fish ferts.

This was lettuce outdoors in a coastal climate so not the same thing at all, just wanted to share for context. I tried throwing some other crops in that system, but the lettuce is what really took off.
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Yeah because the nutrient concentration was low. Not the same with a nutrient hog like cannabis. The reason teas need oxygenated is the sheer concentration of bacteria and high nutrient content. Remember ph can crash as bacteria consume o2 and release co2 from respiration so the more biological load and bigger the population the more oxygen is required. Teas usually shouldnt smell to bad unless it starts to die off. Thats usually the dead bacteria.
 
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