Comment

Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on February 8, 2012 at 6:32pm

Scott,

Eric is right, there really is no way that I can think of to completely avoid water changes in a mineral-salts hydroponic system. Now, I (and many others) employ all kinds of strategies to lessen these water changes with good/efficient nutrient management, but this will only get you so far before you must change out the water/nutrient solution. That being said, you could probably run a fish-less system using brewed worm castings (mostly for the immediate availability nitrates...but there's other good stuff in there as well), some hummonia, a little bit of wood ash, and Maxi-crop+iron (for trace elements iron and a bit of K, but since it's a DWC raft you prob won't be growing very many K hungry plants...though you could if you wanted too). Your source water would also come into play a bit.

It would still be good to have a dedicated bio-filter, as any essential elements (aka nutrients) that are coming from an organic source, need to be broken down into their most basic ionic forms in order to be plant usable. Like Eric already said, this work is done by microbes (just like in all hydro-organic/bio-ponic/aquaponic systems. Since this bio-filter would not have to deal with very many solids, nor much NH4 oxidation, in all likely-hood it would be much smaller than what you would need for a similarly sized AP system.

pH I am coming to find, can be controlled by your ratio of NO3 (worm-tea nitrates) to NO2 (by way of NH4 which would be your hummonia. So you can regulate pH which will either go up, or down depending on how you control these input ratios.

I'm not saying (by any stretch of a convoluted imagination) that AP is easy, esp. on a commercial scale with commercial production schedules, but this fish-less route may not be any easier on a big scale. But again, that all very much depends on the operator, the conditions/environment in which the system operates, the operators reasons for needing/wanting to not have fish in the equation etc...My 2 cents.

Comment by Eric Warwick on February 8, 2012 at 4:57pm

Oh right, nutrient imbalance. This is caused, I believe, by the same forces for salt build-up. 

Comment by Eric Warwick on February 8, 2012 at 4:56pm

Scott: the reason people change out the nutrient solution is because of high salt concentration and nutrient imbalance. Both can be solved with a slow release type nutrient, otherwise known as organic matter. In the soil worms, and bacteria, decompose organic matter and turn it into ions (check chemistry for more). Those ions are what's available to the plant through the roots. This is why hydroponicists use salts; salts dissolve leaving ions in the water and thus nutrients. However sometimes when water levels go down new salts form. This salt becomes unavailable to the plant and like salting the earth produces unhappy plants and fruit. However, as stated, organic matter gets rid of this problem. So, you just need to fill in the organic matter. Some chose vermiponic systems, some chose worm castings, most people on this forum chose aquaponics. There,  I hope I didn't bore you too much.

Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on February 3, 2012 at 8:19pm

Thanks Jesse. Glad to have you here. Your input is much, much appreciated.

Comment by Jesse Hull on February 3, 2012 at 7:47pm

Vlad - Great group idea .  I've been using mechanical and biological filters in my hydro-organic system for several years now (it's actually how I got into AP).  

TC -  Once I saw Vlad's invite to this group, I had a feeling you'd be here.  

Maxicrop makes either/or, but unfortunately not a fish/kelp mix that I'm aware of.  That'd be nice, but I guess it's just as easy to add both, and it also allows for adding micros without much more N when you need to.  I do enjoy 'MaxiCrop w/ iron', although I haven't had to supplement Fe with my newest batch of compost brew.  

'Bio-ponic' has a nice ring to it.  I was taught to call it 'hydro-organic', and I actually like that there is the word "organic" in the term... seems to get that particular point across right away.

David -  Regarding fish emulsion, etc, I'm not sure what you mean by "better"... One thing you'll notice is that some fish fertilizer products have different NPK ratios, but this mostly has to do with how it was made.  The enzymatic method, for instance, yields a product that has a higher Phos level, but that's because it takes more acid (unless they use sulfuric acid) to rid the product of the remaining enzymes.  This causes the pH to drop really low.  To get the pH back up again, they'll often use Potassium which increases that 3rd # as well.  It doesn't have anything to do with using different fish or anything like that.  Typically the products with ratios with the higher N and lower P & K, such as 5-1-1 will be more natural (i.e., less chemical inputs).

The nutrient solution I use is filtered down to 50microns, but the mulm builds up no matter what, so I always use the mechanical filter in line with my system.  Of course, bacterial slime will build up on anything, so unlike with synthetic nutes, you'll always have issues with small tubes or sprayer heads whether you use filtration or not.

Comment by Eric Warwick on January 27, 2012 at 9:26pm

Sorry for the poorly written forum thread. I was too busy doing math.

Comment by TCLynx on January 27, 2012 at 7:06pm

Maxicrop might have a seaweed and fish emulsion mix that might be worth trying if you can find it.

I've been testing out some of the alaska brand to see how compatible (safe for the fish) it will be for switching back and forth between fish and fishless.

Comment by David Schwinghamer on January 27, 2012 at 5:14pm

I just discovered this group, I too have a fishless system. It started out as a hydroponic system but after one month using those chemicals I couldnt figure out what to do with the used stuff. I saw some fish emulsion by Alaska brand in two varieties so that what I have been using. Im using spray nozzles to spray the roots, things are working well. The only problem I have with it besides water loss is clogging of the spray nozzles so now I run water every month to clear things. Can anyone tell me if there is a better brand?

Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on January 25, 2012 at 12:28pm

Thanx for the link TC, you are right, Pee-ponics (in the classical sense, sure sounds funny to call anything about it 'calssical' hehe...) would certainly deserve it's own thread. Bio-Ponics is a great term IMO...

@Jon, Yeah, I don't think anybody really minded us doing that (wouldn't seem so anyways), but it could potentially get annoying to others if we kept it up :)  And besides, this way we can kinda keep things in 'one' place for anyone who's interested.

Nope, I usually use finely aged hummonia (like the 'we shall sell no wine, before its time' - guys:). Sometimes I'll use it str8 dilluted 1:15 or 1:20, but have even 'treated' in a box of rocks with the appropriate amount of water till nitrates show up, then use that as part of a total N concoction. The nitrate portion comes from worm tea (which is pretty much just all nitrates and microbes of course). Why would you do that you ask? Well it seems that it totally stabilizes my reservoirs pH for looong stretches of time. (3:1 or 2:1 NH3:NH4 ratios thus far). Having nitrites also seems to help with certain other ionic absorption issues (Mg mostly and possibly Fe and Zn).

Pissing in your system is probably better than flushing it down the toilet for sure. But it may last for quite a bit longer than an hour? It usually takes my urine about 2-3 weeks or so to convert from urea to ammonia. Once it is ammonia I can test for it (and it can then be converted to nitrites, or if desirable nitrates). Since my systems are very small and with ridiculously little bio-filtration capacity, knowing how much I'm putting in is important (not that I could kill anything...yet)!

Comment by TCLynx on January 25, 2012 at 11:42am

Oh, There are ways to "treat" pee/humonia

Years ago I did a pee ponics system for quite a while.

Perhaps Pee Ponics is worth it's won thread in the discussions and I can provide some links back to my old pee ponics BYAP thread.

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