My plants are growing but not producing fruit

[Blooms-n-Bees Lavender & Honey]

I have some beautiful peppers and tomato plants growing in my system. They are both growing vigorously are producing some flowers but the flowers are not producing fruit.  1 of my cherry tomato plants has produced a few tomatoes but several of them have dropped off and they are only at the bottom of the plant. I do give the plants a shake every day when I feed the fish but I consistently find the remains of flowers on the bottom of the beds . My bell peppers I have only produced 1each. The flowers keep falling off before they can do anything or they develop tiny fruit and then nothing. My ph level is 7.0 ammonia 0, nitrites .25 nitrates 80

[Devoid]

What are you using to adjust pH?

Calcium would be my guess but it's not listed for blossom drop, just blossom end rot

[Jonathan Kadish NYC AA Chair]

This is definitely a chemistry problem. I ran into a similar problem a while back and the discussion was informative.

http://community.theaquaponicsource.com/forum/topics/pepper-flowers...

[Blooms-n-Bees Lavender & Honey]

Aqua up and agua down is what we use

Devoid said:

What are you using to adjust pH?

Calcium would be my guess but it's not listed for blossom drop, just blossom end rot

[Tomas]

It maybe lack of iron or high temperature.

[Alex Veidel]

Any purple-ing on those pepper or tomato plants? Phosphorus is a key element for fruit production.

Sometimes, you can see the stems or leaves start to turn red or purple.

[Blooms-n-Bees Lavender & Honey]

Just a little on the pepper s. Not on the tomato. I am using a weekly treatment of maxicrop

Alex Veidel said:

Any purple-ing on those pepper or tomato plants? Phosphorus is a key element for fruit production.

Sometimes, you can see the stems or leaves start to turn red or purple.

[Alex Veidel]

If I recall correctly, Maxicrop has a NPK of 0-0-0. It serves mostly to provide the trace minerals/micronutrients that a plant needs, but it's quite lacking in phosphorus.

Here's an article by Nate Storey on phosphorus: http://verticalfoodblog.com/phosphorus-in-aquaponics/

There's an attached video that's worth watching as well.

[Blooms-n-Bees Lavender & Honey]

Thank you very much Alex,

I will get some Rock Phosphate tomorrow and give it a shot.

[Blooms-n-Bees Lavender & Honey]

Thanks Randall,  I like inexpensive remedies

Randall Wimbish said:

I usually add a little Epson salt to help fruit set on my peppers. In my uneducated opinion, potassium helps them get ripe.

I have noticed that my plants seem to actually like it when I add a little pool salt for fish problems.

[Jeff S]

When I started last year I had the same problem. Tomato plants and everything else grew well but no fruit, not even blossoms but since I was in the survive the winter mode and keeping fish alive I didn't worry too much about the plants. This spring I finally gave up on the tomatoes and pulled them, put them in a bucket with plain dirt and watered them. Now they are producing a few tomatoes. My non-producing bell peppers are really producing now. I haven't added anything to my tanks except once I added some Epson Salt. I do feel like if I add some simple nutrients I'll get better results so I just picked up some Mai Crop today.

[Alex Veidel]

Also, as a substitute for maxicrop, I recommend getting the soluble dry kelp powder from this website kelp4less. There's a higher potassium rating than maxicrop. Plus it's cheaper. A lb of this makes an equivalent to around 4 containers of maxicrop, if I remember correctly.

https://www.kelp4less.com/shop/kelp/