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The Learning Curve

Just five short weeks ago we heard about aquaponics from the simple purchase of lettuce from our health food store. We decided to check out growing our own produce and jumped in head first.........The rest is history.

Our system is now ready for fish and plants. We are learning new things every day. We started seeds outside in a make shift "cold frame" only to have left them in too long and they got leggy reaching for the sun. Then we placed them in the yard only to discover the lizards were quite happy to eat the tender new leaves! We are in the process of obtaining shade cloth to put over the troughs since the sun is so intense here in Florida that the seedlings will burn. We have since covered the rafts in the troughs with weed mat until we can get the plants in to keep the algae at bay. One day at a time. We stand in awe at what we have accomplished in our backyard in such a short period of time and are anticipating how great the fruits of our labor are going to taste! Thanks to the Aquaponic Gardening Community, we know we are not alone and help is always available. Special thanks to Green Acre Organics and TCLynx.

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Comment by Green Acre Aquaponics on July 5, 2011 at 12:59pm: Your welcome Brian! Sorry to have missed you this morning. Still waiting to see those pics!

Comment by Rebecca B on June 26, 2011 at 7:31pm: The algae won't harm the bacteria. It's actually evidence that the bacteria are working and you have nitrates. In a planted system, algae is unwanted because it it using nutrients that could go to the plants. And there's that dissolved oxygen thing when it dies... The bacteria are light sensitive; having the excess sunlight isn't good for them. People have actually introduced sunlight to their troughs during the cycling process in order to deal with a nitrite spike.

Comment by Rebecca B on June 26, 2011 at 7:24pm: Cutting the sun supply will kill the algae in about 7-10 days---but as it dies and decomposes, it will use oxygen. You are fishless at this time, so no problem there, right? (Otherwise, get as much air and water circulation as you can. If the pump is on a timer, run it constantly instead.) The algae is on the surfaces, right? So you could manually scrape it off and get it out of the system? Speed up the process....

Comment by Brian Thiesing on June 26, 2011 at 6:42pm: Yes, the sun iwas shining through the holes and thought the weed cloth would be enough. We still have the plugs. Do we need to get the algae out before we introduce the fish, if so how without killing the nitrifying bacteria?

Comment by Rebecca B on June 26, 2011 at 5:18pm: Are you getting algae in the troughs because sun is shining through the holes you cut for the net pots? Perchance do you still have the plugs of styrofoam you cut out of the holes? Those can be put back into the hole in a situation like this, or when a plant is harvested and another isn't ready to go into its hole.