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Post by Granny Smith on Feb 20, 2013 22:30:03 GMT -5
Especially if you let Dave bring the hose in.
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Post by Valerie on Feb 20, 2013 22:34:33 GMT -5
LOL, we'd have had to stick it through the window, I think. Rinsing all that rock would have been a joy!
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Post by Valerie on Feb 23, 2013 10:53:38 GMT -5
Nothing new to see yet. But I planted some radish seeds this morning. I'm getting ammonia at ACE hardware today, and looking for a nitrite/ammonia test kit at Walmart. We're about to start cycling, so we can get this baby rolling! Plants can start going in anytime, although they won't really thrive until the cycling is complete and we can add the fish. The lettuce has sprouted, but it's not ready to transplant yet. That's going in next. I'm still thinking of how I can support a tomato in there and get it enough light. This is the shady side of the house. I know I'll have to use a grow light, but I hope that will be sufficient. I wish my ground cherry seed wasn't old and dead; those things would love this environment! Hmmm..... maybe an excuse to order MORE SEEDS!
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Post by BigM on Feb 24, 2013 7:46:51 GMT -5
That is AWESOME! How many fish can you raise in one of those?
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Post by Valerie on Feb 24, 2013 13:47:54 GMT -5
Roughly one pound of fish per 5 - 6 gallons of water. There's a different rule of thumb that uses inches of the mature fish, but I forget what it is. If you use a 150 gallon tank, you can grow something like 30 tilapia, I think. This is my favorite website: theaquaponicsource.com/It's maintained by the same lady who wrote Aquaponic Gardening (a great book) and a lot of the info in the book is on the site for free. Mine is only about 33 gallons, and will be housing gold fish. I looked up that rule of thumb in inches, and it's pretty much 1" of mature fish per gallon of water. But that should be fish appropriate to the size of the tank. Growing three tilapia or bass in my little pond would not make for comfy fish, so I should stick with fish that are appropriatte to that type of tank.
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Post by Valerie on Feb 25, 2013 22:35:50 GMT -5
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Post by Granny Smith on Feb 25, 2013 22:47:28 GMT -5
As I was looking at your link, I went off on a tangent and started reading about raising crawdads. It doesn't sound too hard. If I can catch some to get started, I think I'm going to try that. I can add a buried pool (or tub) to the yard as I'm laying out the paths and beds.
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Post by Valerie on Feb 26, 2013 15:09:32 GMT -5
Sounds like a plan, Gayle! We planted some tiny plants out in the grow bed today. We took the 5 lettuce seedlings, one of the basil, and one of the rainbow mix tomatoes. We also "thinned" an eggplant and a banana pepper from out of the pots where they were with a sib. We figured if they don't survive the transplant it's no biggy, because they were about to get snipped off anyway. Some of them look a little shocked at moving from their cozy bedroom under the light, with nice soft soil, to outside (in the shade, though) and hard rocks. We'll see how they do!
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Post by Cyngbaeld on Feb 26, 2013 18:02:52 GMT -5
Why don't you make some manure tea to feed the plants? Should get them growing and healthy a bit faster.
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Post by Valerie on Feb 26, 2013 19:25:19 GMT -5
Do you think it'll hurt the fish?
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Post by Cyngbaeld on Feb 26, 2013 20:09:57 GMT -5
Not if you stop using it before you put the fish in. I had a healthy bunch of minnows in the goose pond and that was full of goose manure. The cattle egrets fished them out as soon as they discovered they were there though.
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Post by Valerie on Feb 26, 2013 20:22:56 GMT -5
I think I'll do that tomorrow, Kim. Those little plants aren't going to have any nutrients until the cycling is finished. It's supposed to get cold here again this weekend, so that could take a few weeks.
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Post by Cyngbaeld on Feb 26, 2013 20:41:42 GMT -5
I'm thinking of using manure tea and doing hydroponics with it. No fish though.
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Post by Valerie on Feb 27, 2013 14:20:53 GMT -5
When you do an organic type of hydroponics like that, do you have to change out the solution all the time, and test for those levels of stuff? When I was reading how they do it chemically, it sounded kind of complicated. Maybe that's cause it was a guy doing it, though. I think some of them take pride in turning everyday things into rocket science. Gotta love 'em.
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Post by Cyngbaeld on Feb 27, 2013 15:09:09 GMT -5
I'll probably run the solution thru once and drain to the garden outside. They have a name for that method, but I don't remember what it is.
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