It Grows Fast! But...

In the “another simple system” post, I described one of my tanks with NFT in the hydroponic part. One of the great things about using this kind of systems is that everything grows really fast, even for me.

This aquaponic system has a lot of plants, more than I could think it can maintain safely, but I used every hole in the pipes to start all the plants at once; problem is, they grew faster than I expected. The idea was to use the complete system as a started while I was setting up the other one and then redistribute the plants, but it seems they got me beat.

Sorry, a lot of things to do. Anyway, I can use this as an example for two things. The first one is that everything grows fast; this plants are only a little more than a week from the previous post. The other one is that you can see the great difference between the plants in the upper pipe and the lower one.


These plants look green and healthy, with a steady growth. The root system (not visible) is white (which is good) and they seem to be doing fine.


As you can see in these ones, the yellow in the leaves is bad news. Normally the lack of magnesium and iron, this color says that the water has not enough nutrients to maintain all this plants. I was supposed to change that last weekend, but there is always something, right?

DIY Aquaponics requires testing. Some commercial acuaponic systems already have a history and can be a little predictable, but you just will have to test. Use “fast” plants like lettuce for your testing. Since they grow in less than two months, you can have a very good idea of what is going to happen.

Once you have a couple of plants, you can find out what you can do and when. This information will be great for your future planning.

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