OK, so it’s been two weeks. I needed to change out the pea gravel. there must have been some limestone in it. the ph would jump from as low as 3 up to around 7.5 or more. I kept trying to drop it. but after the next pump cycle it’s was rough back up. so now I have perlite instead. not quite sure how to keep the plants standing, the perlite floats… but here is a pic. the plants are doing really well. I got aphids really bad also. but now I have lady bugs cleaning them up
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Girls are looking happy! Great to see things are going well! How’s the humidity in there?
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When I ran krusty buckets, we used 3- 7lb, bags of lava rock, per bucket.
That stuff had to be rinsed out very well, the rock is PH neutral, the dust, however was not, maybe the coloring of the lava rock.
I’m guessing the dust is bitching up your reading.
I love your build out!
edit: rinsing perlite can also help with more stabilized readings.
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I’m not sure what the humidity is, but I’m sure it relatively high right now. it’s been very humid here
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We were gonna do Aquaponics outdoors in my buddies pond but the auto fem wasn’t cooperating, it only grew less than 8-9" and it started to flower in a cup of soil before we could put it in the pond…we will try it again next year…
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so, perlite sucks for ebb and flow… it floats, doesnt keep the plants upright, clogs the drain tube. my table over flowed twice. so I think I’m going to try lava rock. any thoughts? other than that the plants are doing great!
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Very cool! Looking great! Yep hydroton is definitely the way to go. You can get different sizes as well some places.
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I’m a sort of common idiot, but I really like using hydroton with some smaller sized lava rock, throw them in a net pot, or on a slab of coco mat. E&F there are so many combinations.
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so I have been looking for better substrate and in that time I think my table went septic… we had high heat here, alge all over the perlite, I think I see some mold on it, the plants are looking bad. I bought some lavarock and I’m going to clean everything and salvage what I can. the perlite held to much water.
now I’m in the middle of setting it up again. a new barrel set up to filter out solids for when I add fish. I found a better drain that is flush with the bottom of the table. if it’s not one thing it’s its everything.
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You run Hydroguard, right?
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nope. never needed anything. I used dwc in buckets. now I’m learning the hard way lol
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I would consider it. It’s a good bacteria that fights the bad. It will prevent algae growth, regardless of temperatures.
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OK, it’s been a couple weeks. I needed to chop all the plants. they were stalked out and no longer growing. I emptied the tables and used lava rock. put new clones in, and it’s going fine. I didn’t put enough labs rock in, so water was showing in spots. algae started to grow. I was able to cover the table and things seem to be good now. these plants were relatively large clones when I put them in on the 18th.
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All the best to ya !! Man, I’ve had to reboot so many times in my indoor grows.
The plants are looking good.
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Amen to that.
So do you have the fish in there yet? I love the idea of aquaponics but talk and a delicate balance with a side of learning curve.
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Hey @Jdem075! Just wanna say I’m a big fan of your thread! I love what you’re doing and win, lose or draw, I wanna see more!
Keep up the good work! 
Cheers,
Loggershands
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no fish yet. I plane on working all the bugs out first before I add in the complication of the fish. one thing I might change when this ruin is done is raising the drain a bit so there is more water on the table. I noticed that the plants near the drain are bigger. more water passes by them than other parts of the table.
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Smart to manipulate one thing at a time. Really rooting for you as it’s such a cool concept.
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