Ph: 7.0
Observation: chilli plant look like it is lack of iron deficiency and the four angle bean leave seems rather unhealthy for some part of it. The rest of the plats looks fine but do not have that green color on their leaves. Fish looks healthy and active.
Action: to add some potassium sulfate and ferum to the system to top up the deficiency.
It has been few un productive months for my aquaponic and few of my plants are not thriving as it ahould be. I have done few experiments and reasearch to identify what is the real problem. I have come into a conclusion that my aquaponic set is lack of potassium and iron. However, my conclusion is actually based only on my guts feeling. To ensure that my conclusion is correct I will keep track of my observation here and see what are the things that help plant to thrive in aquaponic.
To do that I shall record the water ph level reading, what was added or altered into the system and what are my observation. I shall start that in the next post.
It has been almost a week after we are away from home and also a week after the hand pollination procedure. When I came back from holiday I discovered that both of the female flower has turned into a cucumber. Will let you judge the rest on the miracle of aquaponic.
I must admit I actually has given up on cucumber because from what I read is that for the cucumber to develop it has to have bees around to help the polination. There are plenty on flowers but I cannot see any sign of cucumber until today. When I'm doing some prunning I saw this cucumber halfway grown. I was caught by suprised because I never bother to check in that area. The cucumber sort of uplifted my spirit to keep feeding the cucumber plant so that we can grow more cucumber. The feeling is awesome. Alhamdullilah!
I added worms in both of my growbed and lets see how they can help to improve the health of the plants. Lets hope for the best!
It has been almost a month and a half and things has grown quite well so far (maybe some plant still struggle to grow). My next plan is to introduce worms in my growbed this is to provide a cleaning service of the dead leaves and at the sametime become the supplier of worm casting. If they got sucked into the siphon of doom then they will be the bonus food for the fish.
I noticed that my tilapia love the kangkung leaves, so my plan is to install another growbed to grow kangkung for the fish. Remember few weeks ago I reroute my aircond water purging pipe to a container? It has been doing a good job and I use that water to top up the water loss in the fish tank. So far there is no sign of dying fish and I have been topping up the water since the day I harvest it.
My plants has grown and some of them is waiting to be harvest. Lately I have been feeding my tilapia with water spinach (kangkung) leafs plus the bugs that been eating them. That is the first time I feel glad about pest on my plant because it can become the food for the fish and the fish poop can provide food for the plant and the beautiful cycle can just go on. Anyway I noticed that my plant don't have a deep green color leaves but instead they have slightly green and yellowish color. I suspected that the growbed are lack of nitrate. Plus, my fish tank has started to grow algae and one sucker fish is not enough to eat all the algae. I decided to add more reinforcement to the fish tank by introducing 2 bottom feeder fish ( upsidedown catfish) to eat the left overfood and 4 sucker fish to eat the algae. Did a nitrate test on tbe water and as I suspected that the nitrate level is low. Hopefully by adding more fish can help to increase the nitrate level. That would also provide more food to the plants.
On saturday I practically spend the whole day to setup 2 growbed for my mom. Halfday wasted to find the frame to support the growbed container. At the end of the day I manage to setup 2 growbed enough to plant variaties of plant. That ought to occupy some of her time. I'm sure at this moment she is very anxious to plant as many plant as possible there.
On the other hand, today I added few more plants to my small humble growbed. Like I mentioned in my earlier post I like it to be a vegetable jungle. I introduced ginger, cilantro, pumpkin, curry plant and kangkung (water spinach). So far the plants are doing great and I got the feeling that the fish that I have in my fish tank might not be sufficient enough for the plants. They have to eat extra hard to produce more poop for the plants. Further, my tilapia has gone down from 40 to 10 fishes at the moment.
My next step is to get the system off the grid. To do that I need a solar panel, battery, and inverter. Today I start charging my 12v battery with solar panel and hopefully next week I can start operating the system off grid. That would be my ultimate goal. Lets see how it goes.
My mom asked me to setup additional aquaponic growbed since the pilot version really convinced her that we can actually grow things there. So last friday I head up to green lane sg buloh and grab 4 bags of hydroton and 2 containers from the growbed. Didn't really get a chance to setup the whole thing yet because I still dont have the pipes and the rack for the grow bed.
Planning to get the rack this coming friday and hopefully I can get things setup by then. Looking forward for the next coming weekend.
On the side note I have bunch of cherry tomatoes and chillies seedlings so maybe I'll transfer some to their new home.
My next plan for my aquaponic is to have a water input from a free source such as rain. Back then in australia, i actually harvest a rain water from my backyard roof. Since my apartment balcony dont have any available roof to be use to harvest the rain water then I decided to reroute my air cond water out take pipe to my water holding tank. Mosquito are more than welcome to breed there because I can use their larve to feed my tilapia. Will start harvesting my air cond water starting today and hopefully it is sufficient enough to top up the water loss due to condensation or transpiration process. Will keep you up to date on the progress.
After this my next big plan is to get the aquaponic off the grid. That ought to be exciting. Until then I tend to take things one step at the time.
It has been two weeks since I put the tilapia fingerlings to my fish tank. Since then there is almost 15 fingerlings has died (which i suspect) due to starvation and other reasons. Up til now the number has decrease to 15 tilapia. Will keep monitoring my tilapia health.
Anyway, my pump has stopped working due to its broken blade. I reckoned the material used for the blade is low quality. So lesson learned out there dont buy sobo pump. It wont last you long. I got the pump replaced with a new one and lets see how it goes.
There are few new comers on the growbed. My carrot has finally grown. There is a zuchinni or maybe pumpkin, not really sure which one, sprouted from seed. Also there are bunch of tomato cherry plant growing. I need to let go some of the tomato cherry because they do occupied a lot of space. We also intorduce a spring onion which we bought from supermarket. My cucumber has grown quite fast. Oh, I forgot we also put in a curry plat to our growbed. Things are getting pretty good now. Just have to wait for our first harvest.
My next plan is to reroute the pipe from my air cond compressor to the fish tank. By having this when I turn on the AC the water wont be wasted down the drain and I dont have to refill the water everytime.
Yesterday I received a bag of 20 tilapia fingerlings and they are now happly swimming in my aquaponic pond. May their presence bring more nutrient to the plants and may their growth provide a good stock of fresh tilapia to our kitchen.
Recently I talked about aquaponic. I actually set it up last weekend on my small balcony (4ft x 9ft). The set only take about 1ft x 4ft of my balcony space, that exclude the fish container.
It has been running about a week now and I got few plants growing on it. I planted a sweet basil, parsely and some "bayam merah" on the top tier and at the bottom tier I planted some cucumber, cherry tomatoes and carrot. I planted cucumber, tomatoes and carrot from seed and so far only tomatoes and cucumber has sprouted.
