Hydroponic Farming

[cobbler]

Good morning all, wazzadg44, wow, thanks for the questions,
 The 30ltr drum is gravity fed, four plants per 20ltr bucket, 4 drippers per bucket, and the drain hole is as close to the bottom of the bucket as possible and a small piece of 4mm hard poly tube is inserted , drill the hole smaller than the poly tube so you get a tight seal , put a piece of fine bug mesh on the tube on the inside of the bucket and clamp it to the tube with a cable tie, that stops the tube becoming blocked by the coir. and the plants are growing in pre conditioned coir.
On the subject of how long will the 30ltr drum last depends on, of course,  how many buckets and how many plants are in the buckets, I use adjustable drippers so I can change the drip rate when required and I also use the valve on the drum as extra control of the drip, my system uses about 60ltrs per day, and the drainage is adjusted for EC and Ph. and then reused twice before it gets dumped in the soil garden.
The rule of thumb is that you get  drainage  before the sun reaches 80% of its intensity { which is easily done via the adjustable drippers } but you want to aim for certain parameters, that was the first one, the second one is  that you try and end up with 30% drainage at the end of the day, it takes a little bit of adjusting but you will get it eventually, the plants wont worry if you get to much drainage, as long as you get drainage, they should be draining a little bit for most of the day, but try to get around the 30% mark.
The plants are continually dripped all day and it gets turned off at night time, so once again if you meet that 30% parameter you are on your way to growing happy plants.
The "Nutrient Concentrate" Part A,B,C,D, you don't need to worry about, its a "Nutrient Management" trial that rice555 is helping  me with in the tropics, at this stage you only need to use a two part nutrient concentrate Part A and Part B , it is best to keep the set up as simple as possible, then will get a good result,  many people make the system so complicated that it is hard to manage and fails, the safest and easiest system is drip fed coir, you can grow anything in it, no need for a pump and its problems.
With the nutrient concentrate, you should just get a well balanced nutrient, I don't think you should formulate your own at this stage of your experience.
Hope this was plain  enough English
Cheers
Scoop
Let me know if you don't understand anything I have explained

Absolutely love this . Well and simply explained. So good . Awsome. Fanfkntastic. After being in rubber trees down south for years will be moving to sukhothai area. We are planning after doing more homework and my astute mia does a course (breathes) doing hydraponics. Hope to make some money. Hope???

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[gamesgplayemail]

hello, can you tell me if this equipment can be good to start hydroponics ?

 

http://www.advanceagritech.com/store/p4/iStack_6_Stack.html

 

or 

 

http://www.advanceagritech.com/store/p3/StarStack_6_Stack.html

 

 

Which one is better ? And if both are not good, can you tell me why ?

 

Thank you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 19, 2018 by gamesgplayemail

[JungleBiker]

1. What do you feed your tilapia? I guess you feed them commercial fish feed? If so, instead of that, why not put pig manure into the pond? It will produce algae/plankton and that is the natural food of tiliapia. The pond will turn green. I don't know but I wonder if the manure and green stuff will provide more nutrition for your veggies? 

 

2. Tilapia farmers usually raise fish of the same sex and age, not big ones and small ones mixed together.  

[JungleBiker]

Or perhaps you could use regular hydroponic (soluble) fertilisers to feed your veggies and those same nutrients will also feed the algae/plankton and the green stuff will feed the tilapia. I doubt the ferts will harm the tilapia because they are usually used in dilute solutions. 

Edited February 20, 2018 by JungleBiker
corrected typo

[carlyai]

My system is not set up yet, so I can't answer your question directly, but, if you Google ' aquaponic nutrient deficiency chart' you can see what nutrients your plants are missing. You will then maybe be able to dose that nutrient.If your plants aren't too healthy this could then effect the fish and the cycle continues.
You probably know all this.
I went on an aquaponics course with Robert from Aquaponics Thailand, and have bought his gear. He seems pretty knowledable and maybe drop him the question and see what happens.

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[rice555]

On 10/21/2015 at 10:31 PM, rice555 said:

Hello All, I don't do NTF or DWC or grow greens/lettuce, I grow in coir

so I have no experiance with what your trying to go. I can give you what

was on top of the sheet that WESCO gave me for tom/egg/chili.

See the 3rd. pic.

[email protected] this the @ to order from WESCO, send

them your address/phone# and what you want(see pic #1) and give them

your wish list and the will contact you back with an invoice with amount

and shipping(EMS) and you do a money transfer to their bank, send a Fax

with a copy of the deposit slip and they will fill your order and EMS it,

about 2 days. The Moly and Solubor in my bill are the smallest amount, all other micros are 1Kg. Buy the 25 Kg salts locally and save $.

Pic #1 is what wesco has, you should be able to find all in CM except the

Moly and Solubor, these can be ordered, see Pic#3, this is my bill for

all the micros if you so single TE's and don't use a STEM like Nicspray

like in the formula in Pic#2.

Clear as mud??

rice555 about to weigh out my TE's for Scoop1's new tom formula.

Hello All, you can see what the WESCO micro's cost. I'm still using

all of these except I've gone through 10Kg's of Fe.

Bt.250 for EMS from BKK to Korat.

[rice555]

On 7/7/2012 at 7:26 AM, Scoop1 said:

Wesco Fertiliser Salts Pricing { this is the quote i got a few months ago, because of the price of the Sodium Molybdate it may be better to use their Micro Mix or ask for a much smaller amount as you only need .2 of a gram to make 20 litres of Concentrated Nutrient Solution }

For PART A

Calcium Nitrate 25kg @ 30tbt/kg = 750tbt

Iron Chelate { Fe EDTA } 1kg @ 370tbt/ kg = 370tbt

For PART B

Monopotassium Phosphate 25kg @ 68tbt/kg = 1700tbt

Potassium Nitrate 25kg @ 48tbt/kg = 1200tbt

Magnesium Sulphate 25kg @ 20tbt/kg = 500tbt

Solubor 1kg @ 300tbt/kg = 300tbt

Zinc Sulphate 1kg @ 50tbt/kg = 50tbt

Manganous Sulphate 1kg @ 50tbt/kg = 50tbt

Copper Sulphate 1kg @ 125tbt/kg = 125tbt

Sodium Molybdate 1kg @ 3000tbt/kg = 3000tbt { very expensive }

Cheers

Scoop

Hello All, just to bring this to a newer page, but the prices of what Scoop1

got quoted from WESCO 6 years ago. The prices today are maybe Bt. 1-2000

more today's prices get somewhat of an idea of the cost.

With 1 ea. of the chems above, I would be able to make 20-10L. kits of grow.

and need a bag of potassium sulphate to make bloom.

Todays cost for the above salts and the micros cost from my last post comes

out to Bt7070.  +or- Bt.1000  doesn't cover the pot sul cost for bloom.

Buy another box of Fe and you can make 3 more kits before you need to buy

another bag of calcium nitrate and the buy as needed cycle begins.

rice555

Edited October 7, 2018 by rice555
forgot to add something

[rice555]

On 3/21/2016 at 9:06 AM, Scoop1 said:

Hi rice and any one interested, I gravity drip feed my Tomatoes with a 30ltr drum , 4 double truss stems per 20 litre bucket and there are five plastic buckets , each bucket has 4 adjustable drippers, what you need is to have leachate before the sun reaches 80% of its intensity and you need to have 30% leachate at the end of the daylight period, so you adjust your ON time and off time and your adjustable drippers to achieve those parameters, if you don't have leachate before that, you have the OFF time at the end of the daylight period going off too early or you have your ON time coming on too late, or your drippers are no dripping fast enough, so its a balancing act between those three parameters and the environment conditions and plant growth stage, and that is the best way of doing it, turning pumps on and off several times per day is not good nutrient management , consistency is everything in hydroponics and being "consistently clinical" and "clinically consistent" is so very important if you want excellent results , with good quality coir which has excellent drainage properties you cant really over feed them, but its best practice to get yourself comfortable with the system you are using, there are some photos on here of my system if any one wants to have a look .

Cheers

Scoop

Ps - I set my drippers to be dripping at a fairly good rate and try to have each bucket dripping at the same rate and then I adjust the supply tank valve to give myself[ a little more control as the plants and environmental conditions change

Scoop

Hello All, here's some info on Scoops1 drip system, there are some

other pics in some other posts also.

rice555

[Scoop1]

Good morning all , rice555 , how is everything going at the moment have you got plenty of produce growing ?

Cheers

Scoop

[rice555]

Hello All, Scoop1, not much of anything, waiting for the rainy season

to lower the EC of the water here,. Very high salinity here, the old place

had a good well, the village water was pumped about 250M away.

rice555

[Bilio]

On 2/20/2018 at 9:12 AM, Arjen said:

HI all experts!

 

I have a big concrete fish pond. from around 20M³. Mostly Tilapia in it.  Around 6 big ones (30cm), 30 medium sized ones (10cm), and a few hundred very small ones (2cm)There is also some duckweed and waterhyacints in it. 

 

I have already a long time an hydroponic system, we mostly grow Morning Glorie (Pak Boon) in it.

Now I placed the hydroponic system in my fish pond, and circulate my pond water through it. I started with around 25 plants. It looks like there is not enough food in the water to keep the plants happy. 

 

Ph value is around 6.8. Is there a way to give fertilizer to the plants without harming the fish? Or should I wait till the small tilapia are bigger? Any other ideas?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Arjen.

 

I know this is a fairly old post but I have a little bit of input that might be useful to have on the record here in this thread.

 

First of all this NFT system you have here is not really recommended for Aquaponics because of the solid waste from the fish. If you have a really good filter system then you can get away with it but otherwise any particles of fish waste passing down those pipes will get stuck in the roots and go nasty.

 

Also you have highlighted the aquaponics problem of having loads of nitrogen but little else, this has been a particular frustration for weed growers who want to grow aquaponically. Because you cannot add nutes without poisoning the fish. There is actually a way of doing it but it's a bit of a pain. Maybe worth it for weed, probably not for lettuce. Essentially the roots are split into 2 zones, half of the roots go in the aquaponic water and half into seperate hydroponic water (with the supplementary nutes).

[rice555]

Hello All, so of whats growing now. Big bags of Coir are up Bt. .20.

rice555

[Scoop1]

Morning , they all look very healthy Rice , you must know what you are doing , 555

Cheers

Scoop

[ireckonso]

Never been a big fan of aquaponics. I think you should either grow fish or plants, trying to keep both growing together is too difficult without a lot of automation and even then it is so easy to kill off one or the other. Trying to keep the system balanced to make it viable is a lot of work.

[Scoop1]

On ‎12‎/‎22‎/‎2019 at 12:05 PM, ireckonso said:

Never been a big fan of aquaponics. I think you should either grow fish or plants, trying to keep both growing together is too difficult without a lot of automation and even then it is so easy to kill off one or the other. Trying to keep the system balanced to make it viable is a lot of work.

Yes we did have a dedicated forum on hydroponics but as you can see it was merged with aquaponics which is useless and now very few posters read it and it has lots of useful information , I have no interest in it so I would rather not have to sift through lots of posts I am not interested in

Cheers

Scoop

[ireckonso]

Why is it useless ? Same forum and topic just a different name. I am not a fan of aquaponics but I know many people are, so I think they should have some room to post too.

[Scoop1]

22 minutes ago, ireckonso said:

Why is it useless ? Same forum and topic just a different name. I am not a fan of aquaponics but I know many people are, so I think they should have some room to post too.

Very true , and I did not say they shouldn't have somewhere to post , but two pinned topics would be much better, and they are not the same , one is hydroponics and the other is aquaponics , two vastly different topics in my belief and a lot of posters at the time would have preferred it that way , and as I have said previously there is a lot of excellent information on the "hydroponics" thread that not many people know of because not many people post on it so it disappears into the wilderness , to me that seems to be a waste.

Cheers

Scoop

[ireckonso]

Why not ask admin to move hydroponics threads to be accessible on the hydro/aquaponics forum, im sure its an easy redirect for them.

[Scoop1]

17 hours ago, ireckonso said:

Why not ask admin to move hydroponics threads to be accessible on the hydro/aquaponics forum, im sure its an easy redirect for them.

Merry Xmas ireckonso , It would be just as easy to pin the hydroponic forum which we requested at the beginning , I don't know why it is an issue , I thought it would be a simple thing to do , but might be wrong I am not a website wizz

Cheers

Scoop

[Math52]

On 11/28/2015 at 11:18 PM, rice555 said:

Hello All, SJS I've been looking at this place to get my roof pieces, they also have wider ones, I go

by this place and a fab shop shop that can bend 6" pipe to and from downtown Korat.

There are several adds in the Thai Ag Magazines for poly coverings and insect netting, and wiggle

wire, you can find snap channel if you look hard.

rice555

Hello All, Hi Rice555,

This is an old post from hydroponics thread from page 23 or 24 (out of 32 pages) which show some places where they sell ready made roof for GH. Do you know where to find the same places here in Bangkok where I can buy the roof part of my future GH. Bongsai Agro is selling their own (second hand) for 25.000 THB (everything included) but I beleive I can reduce the cost by 20% if I can do it by myself and it will also be brand new.

Thank you

Math52