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Comment by Tray Rasco on July 23, 2013 at 11:15pm

I am in the late stages of design on my system before I start purchasing and building still need ALOT of advice on the best ways and what just wont work. Love the Poly Pvc "raft" idea! Letting the raft be a fixed height and not float and using a pvc drain tube to get the idea water height which from reading is less then 1/3 of the 2 inch net pot? My main question is has anyone ever experimented with shrimp in  DWC troughs? It seems like a lot of square feet on the bottom of the troughs not being used. Tilapia and shrimp both like the same water temps and shrimp feed off the waste in the system and will clean off the plan roots. My main concerns are will the shrimp breed to sustain the population and which variety of shrimp would "taste" best. Also how deep do the deep water culture troughs need to be 16 inches enough or should I think more like 24 inches? Thank you

Comment by Tim Sumrall on July 11, 2013 at 4:19pm

My first raft of basil. It's 4 weeks old today. I have a second raft in at 2 weeks old and enough pots started for a third.

Comment by Bob Campbell on July 1, 2013 at 9:01am

@Tarah Bertsch - A few pictures would help, but I'll go out on a limb and guess that the plants shriveled up near the top of the net pot media.  It's probably too late to save your plants, but you should remove infected plants, and sanitize with a 3% hydrogen peroxide using a spray bottle.

Here's one of many threads about pythium 

http://community.theaquaponicsource.com/forum/topics/the-dreaded-py...

Here's a search on this site 

http://community.theaquaponicsource.com/main/search/search?q=pythium

Comment by Tarah Bertsch on July 1, 2013 at 7:49am

Does anyone live in Michigan near Ottawa County??? I need someone with experience to help me as I am at a loss with saving our plants. If there is a mold problem do you take out all the plants?? What do you do. We finally had a few grow into somewhat of a lettuce but are now also turning brown. I am getting so frustrated as I have poured everything into them and it's utterly failing.

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on May 7, 2013 at 5:10am

John, I did something similar recently with similar results. Takes a little work to figure out the details to this planting technique for each seed but nothing good comes easy. 

Comment by John Malone on April 28, 2013 at 4:24pm

Starting tomato seeds

After getting feedback from this group I thought I'd tell what I did and show the results.

I got out my hammer and spent a 'fun' half hour smashing my largish 1" lava rock down to around 1/4" and less.  It wasn't all that difficult but if you've got access to cinders of the right size, I'd recommend skipping the hammer.

Instead of putting the pots in the DWC bed I put them in a plastic tray and filled it with fish tank water to about 1" deep and put the clear plastic cover over the top.  After a couple of days I thought I saw one of the seeds going moldy (I'm not sure, but it looked like it, and I lost a whole bunch of bean seeds last year to mold from been too wet, so I'm a bit gun-shy) so I took the plastic cover off and kept the water topped up.

In about 4 days I had shoots showing in most of the pots and in 1 week I have seedlings in ALL of the pots.   Needless to say, I'm impressed.  I must confess at this point that I was quite dubious about this process so sowed way too many seeds in each pot, probably 4-5+, but I don't mind.  Seeds are cheap and having 100% hit rate on the pots is very satisfying.

Thanks to all who contributed suggestions.  It is appreciated.

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on April 19, 2013 at 11:03pm

Just a fun pic from today.

Comment by Chris Smith on April 14, 2013 at 9:24am

Sorry it was in the raft/dwc group. Here is a link.

Comment by Bob Campbell on April 14, 2013 at 8:42am

@Chris Smith - I looked through all the discussions in Coastview Aquaponics group, and your web site, but could not find your post about starts.

Comment by Chris Smith on April 14, 2013 at 12:50am

Raychel, I seed net pots full of cinders in rafts then top water with system water and keep them out of the system sandwiched in plastic to keep in moisture in a shady area for germination. For most verities of leafy greens I have seeds popping in three days then I put them into a shallow trough for three weeks. Then they go to the trough at grow-out spacing. I have a complete description of my process in Coastview Aquaponics group. That posting was made several years ago and I still use the same technique today since it works so for me!

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