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Old 06-06-17, 10:44 AM   #831
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A couple of the things from garden today.


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Old 06-15-17, 11:53 AM   #832
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I took a short video of the fish eating food and corn.

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Old 06-22-17, 12:13 PM   #833
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The nitrifying bacteria makes nitrates that plants love but it lowers the PH. So you are always adjusting it up. Most plants likes it around 7 PH.

When I first setup my aquaponics system I just bought PH adjusting compounds form an aquaponics store.
I knew there was cheaper ways to adjust the PH but I had way too many things I was building to worry about it.

Now I am out of the compounds to adjust PH. It was time to buy cheaper items that still work well.

Builder’s lime is good for adjusting PH I called about 20 places no one had builders lime Quikrete has a lime product Lowe's stocked it at one point but the stores here don’t stock it anymore. I call the Quikrete they said they don’t ship to our area any more.

You can also use hydrated lime that is what I found locally. $7 for 5 pounds. I used two teaspoons and it brought my PM right where it was needed. So this stuff is very powerful. This stuff is Lots cheaper than what I was using no shipping.

I could also get hydrated lime 50 pounds for $10.75 but I just don't need that much lime when I only use teaspoons of it each time.




I bought some Potassium Carbonate off ebay $19 shipped. It good to alternate between calcium and Potassium to adjust PH to give plants what they need.

I have some Oster shells in a bag ( This helps buffer PH ) with water flowing over it to help with PH. This is cheap but very slow acting.

This should be enough compounds to adjust PH for three plus years. I have around 1,000 gallons of water in the whole system.
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Old 06-28-17, 12:25 PM   #834
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Today's harvest and some plants.

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Old 07-12-17, 12:26 PM   #835
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Wow, those look good! You might be saving some bucks this summer..
A lot of crops were harmed by too much cold and rain this spring.
Vegetables might be costing us non-farmers a lot more this year..
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Old 08-28-17, 10:14 AM   #836
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My fish eating. They are getting big and a fish meal is in our near future.


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Old 08-31-17, 12:24 PM   #837
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Today’s peppers

All the peppers are from the same plant 9’ tall pepper plant except the one on the top right.
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Old 09-21-17, 04:25 AM   #838
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project is really interesting...this is really a good setup actually..
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Old 09-21-17, 09:47 AM   #839
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Another good supplement to consider adding to your water is magnesium sulfate, aka Epsom salt. The Solanaceae family of plants you are growing (tomatoes and peppers) are gluttons of calcium and magnesium. Both hydrated lime and Epsom salt act to buffer the water around a pH of 6.5 or so, which helps avoid nutrient lockout issue. Definitely keep the pH below 6.9 to stave off all kinds of nasty side effects.

As a general rule, when you add lime, you also want to add a little gypsum (calcium sulfate aka plaster of paris) with the lime. If you're using dolomitic lime, it already has some magnesium in it, so the Epsom salt isn't so necessary. But if you're adding calcitic lime, it has no magnesium in it, and adding Epsom salt will get your available magnesium balanced.

The reason I point this out is because next to npk, the next 3 most important elements to watch are sulfur, calcium and magnesium. In aquaponic systems, nearly all of the trace elements are taken care of by the fish poop.

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Old 09-25-17, 11:40 AM   #840
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Good suggestion, Epsom salt is a good cheap additive.
I do add Epsom salt sometimes but I bought a magnesium tester to know when to add it.
This being a closed system it could build up very easily so now I test before adding it.

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