Aquaponic/Aeroponic system of a noobie

So, I'm a medical card holder for my state, and I've have tons of experience with hydroponics. I'm also still learning and still consider myself a novice to all growing. The state allows me a total of 18 adult plants; 6 in flower and 12 Veg, and unlimited seedlings. A seedling is any plant that can fit in a 12in cube box without touching the sides. I'm about at my max, even though recently I lost most of them to the ex, also a card holder. Lets just say, it's been a bumpy road to get here, and leave it at that.

How it works:
Aquaponic systems are much like hydroponic systems without spending all your money on chemicals, and instead, raising fish. Cleaner buds too, from what I hear. With most of the proper nutrition for the plants being supplied by fish waste, you dont get the chemical taste when medicating. To make it even more complicated, it's aeroponic as well. Most don't like mixing aquaponics and aeroponics because of the solids that move though out the system, and I have to say, it's been a choir to keep the sprinklers clear of plant matter, hydroton crushed by the pump, and fish food.

I won't be going into how basic hydro systems work other than telling you, as long as the plant doesn't drown with a large amount of O2 in the water, and has the right nutrients with the proper lighting, you'll be very happy with results.


Here's one of my tanks. It holds about 325gals. The picture shows about 500 fish (1in - 1.5in Comet feeder fish). My fish numbers have dropped a bit. You cant have more fish than the number of plants can clean the waste, and you can't have too many plants for the fish to support. Take note that there is no common fish filter on this tank. In the top left you can see I used an overflow like the one that "Joey" talks about on youtube. ( ) Great channel, btw, for the fish tank guru's out there.

325gal

Right now, I have 4 more tanks with about 50 assorted fantails (~1.5in) and about 30 shubunkins (2.5in -4.5in). The tanks are daisy chained, adding up to about 550 gals for them.

The total system has about 1000gals total as of now.

Down below, I have a 39gal garbage can as a swirl tank and a collection tank as shown in this picture.
I know, the picture is a bit confusing with all the pipes.

In the background you can kinda make out the swirl tank (gray). I'll have to post it later because I don't have a picture of it. That drops into the collection tank, as shown. There is only one pump I use right now, and that's a pool pump, bought at lowes. I also have a livestock water auto-fill from Tractor Supply, with a hose on it.

You also see two 2in pipe drains from the aeroponic system that I use. The collection res itself is a "tuff bin", with a yellow top, from Lowes.

The aeroponic system I built was based on the "Aquamist IV", by Growgenie. You might have seen them used in the video by "See More Buds, 15lb in 80days" ( ).

I fell completely in love with that video, for obvious reasons. Thats what I bought first for a system and I liked it, but it had some major flaws that I didn't like, so I built my own.

One of the major issues with the Aquamist systems from Growgenie was nasty brown mush that was once roots. It's a aeroponic/deep culture system hybrid so you get the bad too. This can be helped by adding H2O2 to the system, but that's not the route I wants to go.

BTW, this is not my picture and it's not the Aquamist. It's jus a bubble bucket, but you get the idea. I Googled with key words to find it. I hope he doesn't mind; it's for education.

One of the other major issues with the Aquamist is the plumbing. If the pump goes or get clogged, you can imagine how hard it would be to clean or replace in a mess like this; although those are some nice roots.
...another borrowed picture from Google.

My water runs about 7.0pH, 75*F, and around .08 EC. The EC seems low for any type of hydro, but after looking online I've come to the conclusion any higher and it wouldn't be worth my fish loss. The ladies seem to like it anyways.

Here's a list of the parts to make the DIY aeromist system:

1 - 25 Gal Reservoir, SKU:HGRES25B, Brand:Active Aqua

2 - 6" Wide Lip Bucket Basket, SKU:HG6RDBK, Brand:Hydrofarm

3 - 2 Part ABS Shower Drain from Lowes Hardware, wih some pvc.

4 - "Orbit" Cut-Off Sprinkler Riser, 0.5" x 12"

5 - Antelco Rotor Rain Mini Sprinkler

6 - 27.125in × 27.125in cut of Starboard (for top)

7 - assortment of cupplings and hoses to connect the pump to the sprinkler head.

All of this can sit on top a large trash can as a fish tank res. Obviously, my system is a little more elaborate being daisy chained to 6 res's at a time, and the fish being on a different floor all together.

For my sprinklers, I used a 1.5in pvc cap that I glued a thin piece of 1.5in pvc to, to hold on the screen (as seen in picture). This help keep out roots from tangling the sprinkler head. The riser is feed through the center of the drain so the top can be lifted with plant(s) and all for minimal tangling from plumbing. The metal drain top itself, holds the riser in its place at the center of the bottom of the active aqua 25gal sprinkler res.

The custom spray head

This isn't a current picture, but I've noticed that Blueberry strain does not like the fish water as much as AK-48, Green Kush, Northern Lights, and Sour Desiel. Maybe one of you guys can help?
I like to say she's, moody. My Ex told me she always had problems with that strain. Needless to say, Blueberry is no more.

The light is HPS, but you can kinda see the tips a little burnt, chlorosis, and browning. Fe EDDHA helped tremendously, but I can still see a problem. A problem not found in any other one of the girls, other than a similar problem with Blue Dream in the past, but not as bad. I wonder if its the whole blueberry line just not liking hydro. With the Blue Dream in a normal hydro system, the nutrients were changed every 5-6 days based on how much the girls drink.

It's weird, if this were normal hydro, I'd just drain, flush, and remix nutrients, but you cant do that with aquaponics.

So far, the only additives I've used are FeEDDHA, Steamed Bone Meal by FoxFarm, and the fish food pellets. I hear that Earth Juice as some bat guano that I might need as flowering happens, but so far so good.

Additives...

Another thing to think about when picking the strain for your needs is "flower time". I like to pick Green Kush or Northern Lights for the less time involved. They seem to veg faster too. AK-48 is decent on flower too, but I don't like it as much. On the other hand, Sour Desiel is awesome, but it takes a ton of time to grow. I also have to make sure I have a bunch in cure before I decide to grow, so I don't run out. More "grow" and "flower" time means bigger power bill too. I find strains with a ton of time involved is more for when I'm running out of cure space (from what's legal for my state, being 8lb in cure and 1.25oz ready to go every week). So, if I only have a couple of ounces left to fill, I grow a strain like Sour Desiel, so I have time to use up some that is still in cure.

I've seen super cropping many time and never tried it, so I thought I'd give it a go.

This is the Sour Desiel I kept. I'm not flowering any due to space, so this is going to be my new mamma. We'll see how this does for bushiness.

The cool thing about any DIY system is that you can change it. I'm always thinking of new things to try. Some things work well and some dont. I tried putting in Hydroton in the aeromist res's to see if it would work for worms, but I think it will be too much water for them.

This, also, is a good example of the aeroponic system.

In the picture you see my Green Kush seedling for a new momma. Again, something new I'm trying with only one plant for the reservoir. It was set a little deep in the reservoir and hiting the srinkler head so I used the top half of a Lowes bucket for a spacer.

I also used a small cut out of the same bucket and screwed it to the bottom of the net cup so the roots would have to grow a more outward direction (shown in picture 2). I might be finding a new design for this part. By the time the roots do fill in like in the third picture, it will hopefully not tangle the sprinkler, but we'll see in this test.

There's four main reasons for trying these:

1) Trying to put worms in the hydroton directly below the plant so they can help clean any roots with necrosis in the reservoir.

2) With only one plant per reservoir, I can concentrate on maximizing the way the plant bushes out and use trellis as a balloon. The plan is to use eyehole screws on the four corners of the kingboard top, and as the plant grows, add the netting as needed. This way, when in flower, the overlapping light with be used for the maximum yield.

3) The idea here is for ease of growing. With the roots not tangled to any plumbing, the whole kingboard can be moved to the flower room, plant and all.

4) Finally, I believe this will work well because I can clone new plants in the same aeromist reservoir as their mamma. Working on many types of strains, mistakes happen even when well experienced. It would suck to realize you mixed two different strains after a few weeks in flower.

Flower room pics... about 25 days

I'm very open to suggestions to where i am so far. Please comment, thanks

AK-48 and she petty. She took a hit, but she likes the fish water and coming back slowly.

Those are Northern Lights clones

Dumme said:

I'm very open to suggestions to where i am so far. Please comment, thanks

Click to expand...

Hi Dumme

I have no experience in aqua-aeroponic so I can only say amazing !

I however know a crazy dutch grower who plays with and I know it's far from easy to run !

nice work bro