AquaSprouts Aquaponic Lettuce and Microgreens Experiment

Experiment time!The greens get a little light colored as they grow. According to the wisdom of the internet, yellowish leaves with green veins means a lack of iron. The internet also says that this stuff is safe for aquaponics.The instructions say like a teaspoon a gallon and it's a 10-gallon tank. This is about half a teaspoon in a coke bottle. That's a bit dark...Couple tablespoons in the tank and I'm gonna ahead and stop there. Holy cow! The tank is a bit overgrown at the moment- my old snails kicked the bucket and I just added a new batch. They haven't had time to munch on the walls yet.Anyway, the water has a definite red tinge to it. The fish seem okay, but in the future I'm only going to put a little tiny bit in at a time, assuming the plants green up.This is after a day or two, and it looks promising. That big leaf on the right, in particular, seems to have some solid green expanding out from the veins. I'm going to wait for the latest batch to grow up a bit to decide whether or not the experiment is a success. Not having any dead fish is also important of course.

I haven't had much with lettuce- it always comes up stringy and week. I have had a lot of success, however, with microgreens. I think I'm having an issue with a minor iron deficiency, but the tank is stable and healthy.

The lettuce in this one keeps bolting on me. I am unsure if this is because the tank wasn't established enough yet, or (more likely) my light is too high. I really need to get some rope or chain and replant this one. However, the fish tank seems to be doing well, so if I can get the lettuce growing nicely, this should be a really neat project.And just because I can't help but show off the tank. Unfortunately, fish aren't very cooperative subjects. There are 2 Dwarf Gouramis, 2 Fancy Guppies, and 5 Neon Tetras.

My other aquaponics kit came in yesterday and I did another Petco trip today to get the tank furniture and a few tetras. The plants are whatever young lettuce plants I happen to have right now, with a few new AG pods to fill the space.tldr: There are definitely some things I like about this kit (and a lot I don't), but in general I think it is more difficult to get going than the Water Garden.This system sits on top of a regular 10-gallon fish tank. I've got 11 lettuce plants in there making this around the same productivity level as an AG farm, if I can balance the nutes right. The measurements for the bowl are 28"x8" so it's almost as big as one. With the light bar, it's about three inches taller than the 24" AGs.Cost me about as much as a farm by the time I got the kit, the tank, all the stuff for the tank and a couple fish too. I already had a light, but if I factored that in I would definitely be close to the AG Farm in total cost. It works similar to the Grow Bowl, with clay pebbles as the growing medium and a pump that runs on a timer. The bowl is much deeper though, so the AG grow baskets worked really well for planting in it. I just made a bit of a dent in the pebbles and used the basket as kind of a spike to pop the plants in.Something that sucks about going from hydroponics to aquaponics, in general, is that you have to buy all new chemicals and test kits. The stuff you buy for hydroponics isn't necessarily safe for fish, and the standard fish tank treatments aren't always safe for the plants. While a really neat system, and possibly more productive than regular hydroponics, it sure isn't "set and forget"www.amazon.com/AquaSprouts-Garden/dp/B01B4ZRVR4/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1519789534&sr=8-8&keywords=aquaponicsThoughts so far on this kit:--Yay for a light bar! It fits a standard 2' light setup very easily. I hung the light directly from the hooks, but it would be easy enough to use chain or rope to make the light distance adjustable.--Boo for not really being a full kit. I may not have noticed if I hadn't bought the Water Garden, but this set doesn't come with any seeds or the bacteria solution that converts ammonia from the fish into nitrates for the plants. Instead, they suggest starting the plants a few weeks early and going through this big drawn out process to get the bacteria to grow. It's a $5 bottle of solution in a kit that costs nearly $200. Just throw some in the box for me.--Yay for leaving space to actually access the tank. The tank is 10" deep, but this setup is only 8" leaving 2" of open space for feeding the fish.--Boo for not providing a cover for those 2". Snails are a popular choice for algae control from what I've read, but without a cover, they could crawl out of the tank.--Holy cords batman! The pump has a cord and a timer, the heater has a cord, the top light has a cord and a timer and the tank light has a timer and a cord. I'm going to see if I can get both lights on the same timer, but still.--This sucker is LOUD when the pump runs, which they suggest 15 minutes every hour. That's a lot of noise to put up with a quarter of the time. I'm experimenting a bit with the return spouts (which is the noisy part) to see if I can get this down to a reasonable level.--While the fact this fits over a standard 10-gallon tank is pretty awesome, I feel like the Water Garden is a better product. It's noisy, the setup is harder, and there are little things like the plastic legs not quite sitting flush with the tank that is just frustrating with a product that costs nearly double.