My aquaponic adventures

I’ve been trying to keep a log of my misadventures in my grow tent, but I never remember where I put the damn thing, and I can’t add pics… So, might as well put it all together here :grin:.

After an in-house room rearrangement, I started getting my tent setup again in October. After a month of running water through the system, getting the bacteria built up and everyrhing balanced, I dropped in some seeds in November.

I started with a Pure Powr Plant (left in the pics), something I’m going to have to look at again to update this with (in the middle) and an xtreme something-Er-other (right)… Good thing I have tags on the plants, memory is always my biggest issue 🤦😂.

In the tank I have some snails to try and clean up the algae, and 8ish goldfish. Then on the far left of the tent pic is my garbage can of biomedia.

Under the grow bed I have a canister filter for the aquarium (more biomedia in there) and some power and my sensors to record air temp, humidity and water temp. At some point I need to find and get my pH sensor in as well, right now it’s just manual testing, when I remember.

I have had some bad advice in the past regard trimming, hence the brutal haircut the pure power plant got… Any advice or links to good videos would be hugely appreciated :grin:.

These three are 5 weeks into flower now, they should be good to pull down at the end of January. I’m currently setting up a little cloning area in the sump of a 7’ tank I have going, so I should be able to get some seedlings and clones going in there :metal:.

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Previous grow to remind myself how to deal with my plants… 🤦



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I like your setup! Trimmed buds look fine. I’ve changed to doing the trim in 2-3 phases; and for the most part just pluck whatever’s left while I break down. I don’t like handling them too much. I won’t do longer than an hr, usually 30min per day or so. I’m following along!

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looks good trimming wise, consider who your trimming for if your self does leaving sugar leaves on or being a bit looser bother you, or are you looking for bag appeal… as time has gone on the less i trim the better i don’t care how it looks anymore unless say giving to buddies ill clean it up for them but otherwise im not gonna notice when made into rosin or ground up to smoke.

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Thanks, appreciate that :blush:.

I’m using the wrong term… Trimming, I mean pruning/defoliation. I wrecked my current ones, but I started them too early (toootally jumped the gun, lol) and didn’t have the system ready, so I was trying to keep them small enough fit in the little grow area I had at the time, I turned into a string bean and 2 into bonzai plants :joy:.

Next grow will be better, waiting on some seeds in the mail and I’ll be getting the next round going :grin:.

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I messed up and meant pruning, but that’s interesting… I’ve always trimmed my buds up because I’m trying to get them to look like the buds I buy 🤷. Lol, call it ego, hahaha… But I did leave them on once and found it a little harsher, but that totally could have been the grow too.

What do you use for a grinder?

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SUPER stoked…the new light arrived for under the big ass tank :grin:. Tomorrow, if my back will allow, this bad boy will be going up :grin::grin::grin:

SEAMETAL LED Grow Lights for Indoor Plants Full Spectrum 300W 500 LEDs Plant Growing Lamps for Greenhouse Seeding Veg Flower Hydroponic https://a.co/d/gV1WKpF

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Ah yeah, im one for leave as may leaves as possible unless shaded by others and over lapping then i pluck if it exposes bud sites and or takes away leaves that are laying ontop of each other or are below the canopy line that there kinda just point less apart from store energy reverses for mishaps.

and when i roll have an old space case 2 piece, always figured no sense in a keif catcher when it can go into what i roll.

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Thank man, I will be referring back to this as I grow.

How often do you prune those fan leaves out? I’ve heard/read/watched anything from weekly to a total of once in Veg… Personally, I go against everything, including my own knowledge, and am in there almost daily 🤦😂… I just cant stop checking them out, haha

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I only snip off the big fan leaves when I harvest. I leave all the small sugar leaves. I am very interested in your aquaponics system. Could you draw a diagram of your system so that I can understand how it functions ?

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You leave the sugar leaves when harvesting too, eh? I may have to leave them with these ones (and bad as the grow is) and check it out :grin::metal:.

As for the system, it’s actually pretty simple. The idea behind aquaponics in general is for fishy water to get to the plant roots, right? So, with this particular system, I have one pump pushing water into the garbage can from the aquarium (the garbage can has a ton of air going into it so the air has lots of oxygen), and that just drains back into the fish tank. I also have the pump pushing water from the tank into the grow bed, which also just drains back into the tank.

In an ideal small system, it would go tank → garbage can → grow bed → tank, just so your fish water is being filtered a bit before getting into the grow bed. But I have enough filtration on it already that I’m not overly worried about fish waste solids in the grow bed.

Aquaponics is nature, right? Think about a stream, a slow moving river or a lake… That water all has fish in it at some point, and all sorts of stuff grows in it, grasses, lilly pads, and anything else you see flowering along side the banks. That’s all aquaponics at work :grin:. That’s actually a really good fishing tip too… If you see a ton of stuff growing in water in a river, go a little up stream and you’ll find fish hanging out :grin::metal:.

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If you want though, in the morning I can take some more detailed pics and draw some stuff up :blush:. I don’t do much these days, so I might just do it anyway, lol.

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i pluck when needed, the whole specific week time thing typically is just a guide line but it all depends on genetics your space how crowded your space is and the likes, so a blanket pluck at 4 weeks of flower one honestly cant say, will you possibly need to be plucking by then to expose some bud sites or remove over lapping and touch leafs sure but again the plants and situation dictate that.

Just remember the leafs are the photocells of the plant, you take them away they are gonna have to regrow them to keep going, saying that plucking harshly can allow you to slow down plant on purpose if needed.

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Ok, thank you for confirming… With everything I was reading, I was staring to think I might be doing damage to the plant by pruning to early or to much… It didn’t make common sense to me, but these days 🤷😂. A clear case of why WebMD is a bad idea, lol

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There is an active thread about “ to defoliate or not to defoliate” or something like that. :grinning:

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Sweet! It definitely helps, searching with the right term, lol 🤦

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Its “defoliation vs no defoliation .

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Sweet!! I found and bookmarked that one, thanks!

2200+ comments, I have some reading to catch up on :grin::grin:

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Oh wow, this post is brilliant… I’m copying it here so I can find it right away again (and I’ll probably print it out and stick it to my tent so I don’t decide to be dumb again, hahaha).

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A couple more pics with more detail of my current setup… It’s working well, but I want to figure out a container so I can get a much larger grow bed so I can have more plants growing with more space.






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