Progress Report - Week 3

Nitrites and Nitrates are still undetectable.  I think there's little doubt at this point that the PH neutralizer the aquarium guy sold me included some resident chemical that kills ammonia.  Even though I *specifically* asked him not to give me anything that would affect the ammonia, nitrites, or nitrates.  Clearly he didn't understand what I'm trying to do here and I won't trust him again for anything except fish.

So meanwhile I did a 1/3 water change and dosed with some seaweed extract to provide some food for my plants (since that was the solution recommended by an actual aquaponics expert).  Wow, the extract says to use 1 capful per gallon of water, and I've got a 30 gallon tank, but I still only used 1 capful.  And the tank looked like someone had brewed some Lipton tea for an hour in there.  I couldn't see 2 inches into the tank.  But it's cleared almost completely now and the fish have been happy and active the whole time so I'm not going to panic.

Yesterday I hooked up the second growbed.  The seedlings were getting big enough and not getting enough light so I wanted to move them up under the LED, and putting in the second growbed seemed like the best solution since I planned to do it eventually anyway.  It's leaking a bit around the drain fitting, but the original growbed did that at first also.  So for now I've got a bucket under there and I'll keep an eye on it.

I took the original drain hose and put a "T" on it to run both beds out through the one line:

And I did the same on the line from the pump, to fill both beds:

And once I was sure it wasn't running too hard, I moved all the rockwool squares with their seedlings directly into the beds.  The hydroponics guys say it won't hurt the fish, but again I'm listening to people who only know one side of the story, so we'll see how it goes.

Later this week I'll get a second LED light (or maybe one bigger one).


Meanwhile, I've got two beds!