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  1. #1
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    Fish slowly dying, plants not growing

    To begin thanks in advance for any and all help. First let me explain the issue and than I will give some background information. My 7 plants, Basic tomato, an established big boy tomato up rooted from soil outside, green pepper and 4 strawberries, are all dying except for a very small amount of new growth. All the plants, except the big boy, were all bought at Walmart about a month ago. The Pepper plant had a small pepper on it. it has not grown at all. most the leaves on all plants are wilting. Not showing any other signs of issues. i.e. yellow or black leaves, color change, or spots.

    Ok so a little background. About 10 months ago I started a system. I started with about 2 dozen gold fish in my 40 gal tank. It is a basic flood and flow system using fish gravel as the medium. I tried several other systems before this but for different reasons none of them worked for my situation. Anyways most of the goldfish died pretty quick. only about 6 survived and grew pretty quick. I tried several different plants. Egg plants, tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, lettuce. Some from seeds and other from store bought plants. It was weird, none of them grew. they just stayed the same for months. one by one, weeks apart, a plant would just die immediately with no warning. Suddenly and with in hours would go from a full plant to literally nothing. The other plants would be fine for awhile. Eventually the last plant died. None of the plants ever produced fruit or grew. I eventually added a small frog and a sucker fish to help the cloudyness of the tank. That part worked well. After all the plants died I stopped flowing the water and let the tank be. The water got very cloudy. About a month ago I dumped the fish pebbles out and got expanded clay pebbles. I also bought 20 fish. 12 of them were small gold fish and the other 8 were a tetra. All of the tetras died pretty quick and about half the new goldfish including yesterday my biggest goldfish from the previous batch 10 months ago. He was about 8 inches long, kinda sad.

    Because of goldy dying I am jumping into action. Since starting the system I have done a lot of research but am constantly getting mixed messages and having a hard time getting my system working.

    With the first system I had the flood and flow on a 30 min on 1 hr off interval. I have read a lot of disagreeing info on how long to have it on/off. I currently have it set to 30 min on and a hr and a half off.

    The lights I am using are led bulbs. 6 of them are small about 20 watts and I have one large one about 60 watts if I remember correctly. They are currently on a timer for 12 hours on/off. I have tried adjusting the height several times with no noticeable changes to the plants.

    I am stumped. The fish don't seem to have any visible issues and they are definitely not sluggish. I do feed them a lot, three or four times a day, but the cycle seems to be working well. The plants just don't seem to be growing or absorbing the nitrate. A lot of forums suggest to add more plants but if the ones I have are wilting and not growing I don't see how adding more plants could possibly make things better.

    ammonia seems to be about 0.25
    Nitrate at least 200
    Nitrite about .5
    Hardness very hard
    moderate alkalinity
    ph about 6.8

    Any help would be much appreciated!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  2. #2
    Members David - WI's Avatar
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    It looks like your lights are way too far away from your plant for the number of watts you have; are they specifically "grow" bulb or just LED flood lights?
    It's all about the fish, dude.

  3. #3
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    They are grow lights. Half red and half blue.

  4. #4
    Moderator Jason's Avatar
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    How far from the bed are the lights? They look to be about 3 feet from the picture.

    Jason

  5. #5
    Aquaponics 101 Oliver's Avatar
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    It appears that you do not have enough light, especially red light, to grow flowering plants like the kind you are growing. You need to get some serious lighting. Mixing two colors of Blue (453nm - Indigo and 460nm - Blue) and two colors of Red (642nm - red-orange and 662nm - red) for chlorophyll A and chlorophyll B is what is required. Carotenoids absorb light maximally between 460nm and 550nm and appear red, orange, or yellow to us.

    Chlorophyll A: 433nm (Indigo), 662nm (Red)
    Chlorophyll B: 453nm (Blue), 642 (Red-Orange)
    Carotenoids: 500nm (green)

    The most important colors are those for chlorophyll A and B and the 453nm blue will suffice for the Carotenoids.

    For growing leafy greens, an equal balance of the four colors of light throughout the growth cycle is optimal. In growing flowering plants, you can start off with a red-blue balance then once they flower (bloom) more of the reds need to be added, about twice as much as the blues. One indication as to how much light is needed for LEDs is about 25 Watts per square foot at the wall plug (AC power) for leafy greens with an equal balance of reds and blues. When adding more reds for bloom then it will be up to about 35 Watts per square foot total at the wall. The best LED grow lights set up high above the canopy (3 feet), have added lenses that focus the light downwards and distribute the lights over an area. This prevents shadowing from a single source multi-colored UFO type of LED array that is popular. By using multiple secondary lensed multi-colored UFO type LED arrays and separating them, you get minimal shadowing and good light penetration down through the plant canopy, very important for tall flowering plants, like tomatoes.

    Regarding "white" LEDs, there is no such thing. It is really a combination of blue and yellow LEDs tricking your eye in to believing it is white. Some blue LED grow lights are really "white" with a single color of blue with some yellow added. Not the best choice, or even a good choice.

    For fluorescents, you will need between 40 and 50 Watts per square foot at the wall using 6500K T-5 bulbs and limit your growth to leafy greens with the fluorescent light only about 6 inches above the plant canopy. Using fixtures with T-8 bulbs will not give you enough light density but can work as long as they are 6500K bulbs. Don't pay any attention to Lumens on fluorescent bulbs as that is a measure of the 555nm yellow light brightness, which is of no value for growing plants.

    By the way, compact fluorescents (CFLs) do not put out enough light to be used as grow lights unless you get a very high wattage one, and then you are really wasting electricity. T-12s put out about 40 lumens and CFLs put out about 40 to 50 lumens per Watt while T-8s and T-5s put out about 80 to 95 lumens per Watt, as a comparison. The 12, 8 and 5 are the mm diameter of the bulbs. This is why T-5s are used as grow lights, as you can cram them together and get up to 50 watts per square foot. It would take twice as much electricity (and generated heat) to do the same with a high powered CFL and reflector combination.

    Cutting corners on lighting to save money is really throwing money away, as it won't get you what you need.


    Second, 200 PPM Nitrates is enough to kill your fish. Do a water exchange and get it down to around 100 PPM. I wouldn't go below 80 PPM for flowering plants, however.

    Oliver
    To measure is to know

  6. #6
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    I was wrong about the lights. They are not 50/50 as you can see by the pictures. The log strip is only about two feet above. The big light is only a foot above.

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  7. #7
    Aquaponics 101 Oliver's Avatar
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    From the above pictures, it looks like these lights are the ones on the bar. From the picture on the left it appears that all four colors are represented, with lots of red and not much blue. These lights are designed for flowering, as the red to blue ratio is fairly extreme. So, my original analysis was off about not enough red, as the strip appeared to be blue and white. Which light is represented by these latest pictures?

    Oliver
    To measure is to know

  8. #8
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    The picture from the tilted angle (first pic) is the ones on the bar. There are six bulbs. Each bulb has 38 led bulbs. The large one, the front picture (second pic) has 100 led bulbs.

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