New MOBILE Rubbermaid stock tank system getting put together.

Side Test Batch of "Grown from Seed in-place"


Here is a pic of a side test batch of Black Seeded Simpson seedlings grown from seed directly in in place. There are 6 in the pic in a 1/4 section of bed.

Anyways, The two largest ones were germinated in-place and thinned. They germinated a few days before I organized up the other bed that is solid (old) transplants.

All of the other 4 smaller ones just popped up in random places over the last few weeks (disturbing the other bed led to more seed germinating). They were plucked from place as soon as their two baby seedling leaves emerged... and gently placed where they are now.

So these were moved just once... immediately after germination (directly in the gravel). I am mostly interested in this growing method because it is insanely easy. Almost as easy as just throwing down seed. But without having to thin the seedlings. A.K.A wasting seed.

Now, Obviously the two larger ones are smaller than my transplants. However, they are less than 1/2 the age and only 1/4 the size. They may very well Provide More Harvest. Time will tell. I know lettuce is time sensitive.


If you look back @ image # 1477 (Page 3) you can see how much the two larger ones have grown in the last 11 days. Not bad!

Prototype Flood/Drain/NFT hybrid I designed a while back...

I just checked in on this old contraption I designed in Sketchup a long while back. I can't believe it has been downloaded 11k times!

I still have the parts for my old prototype just collecting dust on a shelf in the garage. Perhaps I should get her up and going again. What do you think?

If not using gravel inside the pipe, short lived things like lettuce should do fine. Without a pre-filter the roots will indeed get debris stuck to them.

However, filling the pipes with something cheap like lava rock would work great as well! I would be able to introduce worms into the pipes to keep things flowing well. I would need MUCH LESS gravel than in a 12" to 14" deep gravel bed. Making it cheaper and much lighter. Easier to move as well. Should in theory NEVER develop dead zones wither. Making those long-term cleanouts much further apart. Maybe even non-existent if there were traps in place for solids to settle outside the pipes somewhere.

I actually spotted some SUPER sized pvc pipes at Lowes the other day. They are about $20 something dollars each. Might be a nice way to cover the North wall of a greenhouse one day. Just make the pipes a single long row in layers. Something like strawberries would do great with gravel in the pipe.

What is Cool about lava rock is that it adds Iron to the system over time... and many dozens of other minerals.

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/1946e6d9-942e-49b9-86ac-ed676d601491/Flood-and-Drain-NFT-Hybrid-Grow-Pipes

Time Lapse vid!

I just put up a 15 day time lapse vid of the lettuce growing in my aquaponics system. Ended up looking pretty cool. The lego man made the kids bust out laughing. lol

Marty Mitchell wrote:Time Lapse vid!

I just put up a 15 day time lapse vid of the lettuce growing in my aquaponics system. Ended up looking pretty cool. The lego man made the kids bust out laughing. lol

Wow, Marty!!! I just read every one of your posts in this thread and I gotta say THANK YOU for the detailed info. What a time-saver for someone new to aquaponics!! I never thought of the idea of ornamental fish in the system. Everybody talks about raising fish to eat and I don't like fish at all--at least not for eating. I wonder if one could raise expensive koi to sell for people's fishponds? What happened with  your fry? did they survive? how did you get rid of them?

M Wilcox wrote:

Wow, Marty!!! I just read every one of your posts in this thread and I gotta say THANK YOU for the detailed info. What a time-saver for someone new to aquaponics!! I never thought of the idea of ornamental fish in the system. Everybody talks about raising fish to eat and I don't like fish at all--at least not for eating. I wonder if one could raise expensive koi to sell for people's fishponds? What happened with  your fry? did they survive? how did you get rid of them?

That makes my day! Thank you.

I am glad to have helped in any way.

One can absolutely raise koi in these systems. I added two koi this past spring that were around 3 to 4 inches long. They are now 8 to 10 inches. They have done nothing but get even more healthy looking and grow rapidly. Much much faster growers than the goldfish.

At some point their poo will be too large for the water pump possibly. We shall see. lol (Of course a larger system would have a larger pump)

I could see buying a dozen or two koi every Spring and selling off the old ones through later Winter/Spring.

Making sure to get good new stock for grow-out. A good colored (But nothing special) koi that is 12" or more can allegedly go for $100 easy. Which would do more than pay for the system rapidly... it would pay for the power, fish feed, and still make a decent penny every year in profit. That is for a system my sized. You could use the cash to pay for beef/whatever other food you would like.

That would all depend on if there is a market for it in your local. Otherwise you would have to sell online and ship.

GREAT NEWS!!!

It turns out that green wood cuttings have been rooting at a 100% rate in the system. I pushed it and just used micro new growth tips and have still had a 100% success rate! I have just tried the easy things so far though.... Figs and Mulberries. That being said... I can make 100 new Smith fig trees per bed... and then sell them for around $100 each on figbid (I saw 4 CUTTINGS go for $85 the other day. Insane!). Sadly I don't have a Smith yet. I am doing Violette de Bordeaux, Negronne, LSU Purple figs and some Shangri La mulberries.

For the Goldfish fry... We still have them. I let them do "Survival of the fittest" training and still have 50 to 100 fish. Some of them are amazingly beautiful. Most are average. Some are wild/natural colors... but keep having one every now and again change to orange or whatever.

We plan to keep about 4 to 6 and grow them out before introducing to the big fish.

The rest are going into the craigslist "Free" section soon. I have done that before and had a dozen folks show up within an hour. Since this area has much less folks... It will take a while which is fine.

100% success for cloning!

I just potted everything up.

Observations....

The three fig types just cloned were LSU Purple, Violette de Bordeaux, and Negronne.

The two LSU Purples had significantly different/stronger root structures than the VDB and Negronne. I suspect this to be either because...

1) the LSU Purple is a MUCH larger tree (with more vigorous roots) OR...
2) they were also under about 2.5 time stronger light.

The VDB and Negronne are indeed considered dwarf and great for containers. I now see why the LSU Purple is resistant to nematodes and starting to be used as rootstock for figs in nematode paradises like Florida.

So.... New test.  

I have stuck a new Negronne cutting and 3 Black Jack cuttings into the section that has the most light. Before I had the low lights to start... and then swapped them out to the more powerful lights after a while. This time I shall be going full-force bright light from the beginning to see what happens. The cool part about the upgraded light is that I can cut them to 1/2 power at the flick of a switch.

I was always wondering: do we have to prevent fish from getting direct access to the roots? Will it damage the roots, eating them?

Fizpok Pak wrote:I was always wondering: do we have to prevent fish from getting direct access to the roots? Will it damage the roots, eating them?

I was just cruising through the old thread here and saw that you had made a post. I didn't get a notification for it. Sorry!

Anyways, in my system the fish are in a seperate tank and the gravel/media beds are in their own sperate bed. So the fish do not have access to the roots.

However, for the folks who have raft systems floating on the water.... they do indeed often have issue with fish fry or crayfish that work their way into those systems. Obviously, it is only a problem if they are an omnivorous species that will eat the roots.

So... it depends.

For my system... the roots were kepts clean by the worms... and the worms would go through and gobble up the dead roots of old plants that had been ripped out.