SnailPowered's Aquaponic Adventures

Those would work for the bottom but the sides I want to seal off completely from letting air through. Saran Wrap would work except that I wouldn't be able to open the drawers. All night I have been rolling that idea around in my head. Kind of thinking that if I put the silicone on there, wrap it in Saran Wrap and let the silicone dry then cut away the plastic blocking the drawers it might work. Really, the easiest way would have been to make this thing out of wood and just have slots cut in the boards of the sides making places for the egg crate to rest. Of course, I have limited wood working tools and a myriad of other random things for all sorts of crazy projects lol. Thanks for the ideas! They are all getting considered and have helped me modify the design in my head.

So I decided to try Saran Wrap around the drying rack, with a bead of silicone all the way around the front. I waited about 24 hours then cut the opening in a U shape so that I could re-secure it if necessary later. I can feel the air movement at the bottom now so I feel like this was a success. I don't think an entire roll is necessary, like I did, but I get carried away sometimes.

The Silver AK plant in the aquaponics has started to change on the leaves and have that "finished" look to it. The hairs are still very white, but I have never harvested this strain before so I'm going with the overall appearance of the plant. Yesterday it looked basically like it had since the last time I took pictures of it. Here are the pictures I took tonight. I don't think the pictures look much different. Of course, I will reassess in the morning before harvesting, but I am confident that tomorrow will be the day.

This also means that tomorrow the clones will all be moving into the aquaponics system. I will be doing a large volume water change, something like 75-100 gallons, in order to drop all the nutrient levels in the water for less shock. Also, it looks like it is time to do a water change anyway. The Green Crack and Sugar Plum clones don't appear to be doing well and I'm really hoping that moving them into their final destination will help stabilize them.

Here you can see the Green Crack, Durban Poison and Sugar Plum clones in that order.

And here are all six of the clones.


I'm confident that they will all do fine once they get into the AP, but only time will tell.

The first buds clipped, before I had to do homework and watch my Panthers lose again.

Then, while we watched the Cowboys beat down the Green Bay my in-laws came over and helped me clip the rest. Not that I really needed their help, but they enjoy it and it is fun to hang out with them. This plant could have gotten larger before I started 12/12 but it was one of 5 at the time. The next six will get larger before I start flowering, as they're clones. Anyway, here are the pictures!

And now that the aquaponics tent was empty, I moved the clones downstairs into that. You can see the dry soil on top of the soil that was in this box. I tried to get as much out as I could but the bigger clones had been in those cups for about three weeks since I got them and had pretty good root structures. The strains are; Blueberry (left corner), El Fuego (middle) and Purple Mayhem (right).





Here you can see the sativas up front. They are Sugar Plum (left), Green Crack (middle) and Durban Poison (right), They had very little root structure but there was new growth showing on the stems so I'm confident they will be alright. I also moved the 300W LED they were under upstairs into the tent so they are now under 1200Ws of LEDs so they certainly won't lack for light.

@SnailPowered, out of curiosity, what kind of fish (and fish food) are you using? The reason I ask is because your plants seem to be getting all of the necessary nutes without having to add anything else. In my case, I've been having to add epsom salt as well as maxicrop plus. My having to add this stuff to the water kind of defeats the purpose and is not what I consider to be 'true aquaponics'.

I've been feeding the fish mainly API Pond food but I think it has been a problem possibly. The clones aren't looking very good after the three indica were thriving. I also feed Tetra brand TetraCichlid because it was the one food that doesn't mention clean water formula at all. All of the clean water things are intended to inhibit plant growth because algae is a plant. I also feed them the frozen blood worms, frozen brine shrimp and frozen plant food. I have been feeding the TetraCichlid more the past couple days and I'm going to stop feeding the API products I think. Kaytee brand pond food looks like a natural diet without weird chemical formulations that even includes chelated iron. The only concern I have with it is the size of the pieces.

I experienced a problem with a previous fish food from Tetra that had their clean water formula. It is way back in the thread under lessons learned...which I don't think I learned very well since the API Pond was bought afterward. I was feeding the TetraCichlid once a day and the API Pond once a day before IIRC. It was all going so well I didn't keep paying attention to the finer points.

When I was gone to Hawaii I put two Tetra brand 14 day feeder tabs in the tank and the plant was growing excellently when I got back. I'm thinking about dropping those in there to maybe get it back on track.

Sounds like a lot of trial and error. What kind of fish?

SnailPowered said:

The Silver AK plant in the aquaponics has started to change on the leaves and have that "finished" look to it. The hairs are still very white, but I have never harvested this strain before so I'm going with the overall appearance of the plant. Yesterday it looked basically like it had since the last time I took pictures of it. Here are the pictures I took tonight. I don't think the pictures look much different. Of course, I will reassess in the morning before harvesting, but I am confident that tomorrow will be the day.

Click to expand...

Beautiful

I'm using comet goldfish. I added three mickey mouse plates and three otocinclus catfish the other day. I left the pump on all night last night and saw marked improvement in leaf coloration. I'm going to get pics later today as long as they continue to improve. It seems they need to have limited water exposure in flower but full time in veg. I will keep this updated!

your a fuckin beast bro... mad props!!! gunna be following and pouring through this thread as often as possible this is fanfuckintastic man good shit!!

SnailPowered said:

I'm using comet goldfish. I added three mickey mouse plates and three otocinclus catfish the other day. I left the pump on all night last night and saw marked improvement in leaf coloration. I'm going to get pics later today as long as they continue to improve. It seems they need to have limited water exposure in flower but full time in veg. I will keep this updated!

Click to expand...

I have seven comet goldfish in a 20 gallon tank. Perhaps I should consider switching fish food to the Tetra 14 day tabs.

With the 20 gallon tank your water volume makes you more susceptible to nutrient spikes like ammonia from the fish poo or even over saturation of nitrates. Do you check the water parameters? It seems that the 14 day tabs worked well for me so I feel confident that they will yield good results. You would only need one and as long as you're home you can replace it once it is gone. The TetraCichlid sticks have about 40% protein which means about 4% of the food you fed will become ammonia which gets turned to nitrates, according to what I have found. So if you use anything higher protein it is more important to not overfeed.

Here are pictures of the clones. The lights and pump are off for 3.5 hours in the middle of the day. I will try to get some more pictures tonight in hopes that there will be visible difference.
Sugar Plum

Green Crack

Durban Poison

Purple Mayhem

El Fuego

BlueBerry

The plants are seeming to maintain their look now. The leaves that were yellow are possibly curling more but I don't see more yellow...right now it just seems to be holding where it is. I'm hoping that they're just building root structure and that's why they're not visibly improving lol. A guy can hope!