Aquaponic Medical Marijuana

[silverarm32]

That's how it turn out my blueberry cross with pineapple express

 

[Electrocity]

What different in aquaponic and gidroponic?

 

[indicabush]

^^^^^^^^^Hopefully you meant hydroponic.....I'll take a stab at this:

1. both are soil-free methods of cultivating.
2. Aquaponics combines hydroponics and aquaculture in a controlled environment, to create a balanced ecosystem that benefits crops as well as the fish.
3. In a hydroponic system, plants are placed in nutrient-enriched water. Some hydroponic systems also use inert mediums such as gravel, sand or vermiculite. The plants placed in the water easily absorb its nutrients. Once the nutrients in the water are used up, it is recycled or additional nutrients are added to it.

Both have advantages:

Hydroponics....higher crop growth and yields, which makes it very profitable.

Aquaponics....provides a harvest of crop as well as fish, all without the need for soil. There is no waste involved because of the continuous recycling that goes on. Aquaponics systems function on less water as well, because additional water is only required when sizable amounts of moisture are lost to evaporation.

 

[Electrocity]

what d u recommend to start? What is the most easy?

 

[indicabush]

Neither are for newbies imho but if you want to start somewhere:

http://backyardaquaponics.com/Travis/Aquaponics_Common_Sense_Guide.pdf

http://hydroponics.about.com/od/hydrosystems/a/An-Absolute-Beginners-Guide-To-Hydroponics.htm
http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-Marijuana-Hydroponically

And of course you can google for both or look to our forums for further assistance.

 

[Electrocity]

Thank you so much!!

 

[indicabush]

Thank you so much!!

Your Welcome

 

[Jephostus]

@Electrocity

what d u recommend to start? What is the most easy?

depends on your specific skill level, if you have never grown a plant in your life, then i would recommend soil, and not going crazy with nutrients until you understand what they all do, and mean, and how they interact with each other. But on the other hand if you have a green thumb already and are anxious to move into cannabis, then I would still recommend soil/coco/inert mediums to mess with. Mary is a fickle girl and she likes her boyfriends to put in the time to get to know her.

I've been running an aquaponic setup for almost 2 months now and its very easy...the drawback is the setup time (establishing your bio-filter and amonia/nitrite/nitrate bacteria) other than refilling the water loss weekly and feeding the fish, there is very little maintenance. I have it set up with a few ghost shrimp, snails, and a handfull of goldfish with some submerged plants in the tank. I have not brought anything into flower so i could not tell you anything about the yeilds related to aquaponics but the cost already has made me a beleiver. ive spent may-be 50$ so far on aquarium stuff and then its like 15$/m for fish food after that basically. and thats vs the 2-300 one might spend on nutrient solutions. The ph has stayed pretty constant, though a tad high, so theres no messing around with that stuff. My girls have only been nested for about 7 days but they are already responding by getting thick green leaves and pushing out the inter-nodes. If you are interested ill be starting up a grow log soonish once it gets more than just a few new girls in the ground

//]][[\\

@indicabush
those pictures look pretty awesome, i have a few questions if i may,(if you have a growlog with this info just gimme a slap on the head and point me there sorry).

do you have any extra systems going, like co2, what is your lighting setup?
Have you run into any problems along the flowering process that might not be common knowledge,
and do you use any additives to flesh out the PK numbers in your tank or do you just use natural processes/worms etc

thanks in advance!

 

[Gnostic]

That be true nothing out of peat coco or other soilless medium is for the Noob, no offence, but if new and you want to do water plan on some failures early on.
LOVE IT. been considering adapting one of my rdwc to this type of live rez. my only concerns have always been the amounts of nutrients produced and the amount eaten and there per-portion to what maryJ wants . Flower is the concern but your picks are solid.
green growth is easy in these systems usually great for lettuce and other leafy green produce.
Biologics? "good bacteria?
co2?
P,K ?
what are your yields ? flavor? quality? when compared to traditional hydroponics?

 

[Jephostus]

@Gnostic Ill reply with what i can, that which covers the more general questions. Most of these i know only through research, not experience but if i mention it here, I'm personally putting it into practice so i can come back and let you know if it worked.

The amount and variety of nutrients produced are limited by a few things, mainly:

• fish to gallons to square foot ratio
  • people say different things, but most commonly i hear 1lb of fish per 5 gallons of water, and 1 square foot of grow per 5 gallons of water. i have about 12 1.5-2inch goldfish running around in 35-40gal of water feeding a 5x3 tray with 6 girls. after measuring my nitrate levels once the girls went into the substrate for a while, im pretty sure i could run a second 5x3 table if i had the space.
• Fish food
  • fish can only poop out what they take in, so a fish food rich in vitamins minerals and multiple protein sources is best, some research into the species is best to find out what they eat in the wild and all that, find some variety to throw in. it also depends on which fish you raise, I dont care about eating them so I have used goldfish (they also poop the most which is essential to running many/big girls). I personally haven't found a food i feel strongly enough to fully recommend but ive currently gone with the one with the most pronounceable ingredient list while also advertising fish health etc. I'm also supplimenting with sea monkeys see below.
• Bio-reactor age
  • this applies to your biologics/good bacteria question. In short a bio-reactor is just an inert substrate which your water flows through, natural worldly processes create colonies of bacteria and fungi in this substrate which filter and process the water along with the plants that are in it. I have heard that it takes up to 6 months for the reactor to be fully colonized, and also that it is ready in 2 weeks, so there is a wide variety of opinion but I can summarize like this. the "2 week" version is just the Amonia-Nitrite-Nitrate cycle after this is complete you CAN put stuff in the ground and like you said its great for veg. the "6 month" version is the adult, fully colonized version, where all colonies have balanced themselves out and you have a constant and steady reactor. Also as long as you are keeping your water oxygenated then there is no chance for root rot! the good bacteria at work in the system outcompete the pythilum!
• Secondary lifeforms in tank
  • like with the food, a fishtank is a closed system, you cant get out, what you dont put in. AND we are trying to reproduce nature in a barrel. In nature, given a random stream or river, there is never just one type of fish and thats it, there are always variety of fish, bugs, crustateans, algae and plants all living in harmony. So you want to do this in your tank, I have a small handfull of snails cleaning algae, a squad of ghost shrimp helping them(i think most have actually gotten eaten by the fish...circle of life i guess...but its good more poop), and a few random aquatic plants and grasses. One of the major problems in aquaponics is getting chelated iron into the system, I plan on solving this by adding sea-monkeys to the tank, which i assume the fish will eat, and poop out the little shrimp bodies and this is supposed to add the iron to the system. There is also talk of putting red-worms in your bio reactor helping but im running hydroton mainly and dont really understand how they are going to have a good standard of living in there.

Ive also seen people talk about an additive called something like 'aquaponic additive' or something like that which covers your bases for P/K/chelated iron without also killing your fish and can be used while your digester is still young.

As for CO2 in general I've just heard that there is the potential to make your water ph have mood swings but as long as you are checking it on the reg then there is no problem, business as usual.

As for yeilds etc I cant speak to that yet personally, but ive seen grow logs claiming 10-14oz/plant under SCROG, and adult bioreactors and ive seen 1oz/plant logs with young bioreactors and ph problems. So with any new system, its a learning process theres ups and downs but personally, as far as ease and maintenance its a breeze, once your bioreactor is established, your ph should be pretty constant(mine sits between 6.8 and 7.2) and all you have to do is add in water from evaporation, and feed the fish.
hope this helps!~

 

[egeiger72]

i have a micro aquaphonic system running and it so far is great i have been running similar with veggies.
recently i brought a strawberry in to boost and got mites in the closet . the tank was established and producing cucumbers but it is only 15 days with some new filtration so slowly coming back to levels. i understand they do great in veg but have been told wont do flower by so many people that i am going to give it a whirl. my closet is 3'x2.5'x5' with a 75 gallon fish tank in the bottom the water is on a constant pump was going only into the dwc and back. i just added 2 media beds and filters. and water quality is looking great.i think i am going to boost the ft with 2 supplements locally obtainable from petco.
the first is tetra flora pride 0-0-3 and a product for ponds called leaf zone plant fert. . will post pictures of the setup soon

 

[Shaun485]

Blueberry marijuana plants can produce some impressive medicinal effects in a lot of users. It is particularly useful for disorders like anxiety and depression because of the mellow euphoria it can produce. It has also been used to treat other disorders like insomnia because of its long-lasting, relaxing effects.

 

[Storm Raven]

Looks good my friend.

 

[Jephostus]

just wanted to drop an update now that ive been running it for a month and a half-ish. Ive grown in soil medium and now aquaponics and ive gotta say the cost effectiveness and lack of real upkeep is crazy good, plus its super easy. Only real problem is ph, mine sits between 6.5-7.3 which has made veg growth pretty slow comparatively, but my samples took a while to get ahold of themselves because they were initially very stressed, but once they did they have gone crazy in just 15 days(the pics i put up are 30 days appart but it took them about 15 days to get established and a draining problem messing the roots for a few days) but then they exploded and are super green. anyways longstory short, if all you want to do is grow some plants and not have to worry about all the nutrient math, then this is the way to go, all ive done for the last 30 days was feed the fish and add in evaporates which was about 15 gallons every 2 weeks.
View attachment 511752View attachment 511751

there are a few small problems here and there, but nothing a little google-fu cant cure. but again i got all that growth, that healthy green by almost litterally _just_ feeding the fish. no buying nutes, no mixing, no rez's, no salt buildup cleaning(much) so in terms of ease and cost effectiveness, aquaponics is the way to go, unless of course you are planting your girls in the backyard and watering with the garden hose. You gotta learn a little bit about fishtanks but thats pretty easy to master especially with cheap goldfish.

 

[egeiger72]

the pics did not work?

 

[Jephostus]

sorry thanks for the heads up...