I've got 30 strawberry plants growing in them, they are doing better than the ones in my GB.
Well, I decided to get all my DUCKweed in a row…went to Home Depot got $3.50 worth of PVC tubing and four 90 elbows. The window shade screen was left over from when I built my Self Sustainable Breeding Tank and the Plumbing Goop was left over from my Vertigrow Towers.
Duckweed floating raft will go into my main FT right beside my breeding tank, it will be 24” wide X 30” long and 5” deep. I also have a small aquarium that will serve as a back up duckweed tank, it will get more sunlight, water exchanges from main FT. Once a week or so I will transfer some duckweed between the two growing area’s. I will also be adding some DW to the center fountain of my Organic Garden...who knows it might love it, will improve the look of the water too.
I HAVE NOT FAILED. I'VE JUST FOUND 10,000 WAYS THAT WON'T WORK. Thomas A Edison
Top rail is not glued at this time, using it to mark size...will later be seal to the 90's to make it water tight.
3/4" thin wall PVC used to provide more air space...fastening screening to PVC side rails.
90 angles are custom fitted to the 5" corner supports, sealed at the top...to hold air.
Now just cut and glue are four corners.
Duckweed needs still water...if DW raft floats over to the aerators will that cause too much movement?
After my system cycled back in Dec 2012 my PH which was running at 8.2 - 8.4 it took 30 days before it hit 7.4
I then added quail egg shells which kept my PH between 7.4 - 7.8 and my plants were doing great.
In March the PH when to 8.2 - 8.4 all plants a doing less than OK, I removed the egg shells but can not get the PH down.
Are you trying to lower it naturally over time or are you willing to put in phosphoric acid to lower a little faster. If you do use the acid use small amounts
I was tiring to let the system recover by itself, or at the very least figure out what was driving it up.
My thought was to find and fix the problem, then let the system recover by itself. With no dead or sick fish, GB's are clean, my thought was that I might of killed off my red wiggles worms with maybe too many water exchanges. Too much chlorine over a short period of time or I damaged the bio filter. when I was tiring to bring my Nitrates down from the 200 range.
I have never used phosphoric acid to lower the PH, about how much should be used on a 850 gal setup?
Probably one of my biggest mistakes, I had read that if you do a water exchange of less then 50% that the amount of chlorine would not affect the fish. Since I was doing less than a 25% exchange per day I thought that was even a better safety margin.
I did not take into consideration what it might do to the bio filter or worms in my GB's. On top of all that I later discovered the PH on the city water was at 8.4
I did bring down my Nitrates but in doing so drove my PH levels too high. I was hoping that time would bring if back to normal, but it's been over 45 days with no change.
Well, my plants may not be growing very fast, my PH is still too high, my Nitrates still high but my fish seems to be doing fine.
Over the winter with the water temp dropping to 58 deg. about half of my Pink Tilapias turned almost totally black. Now that the temp is back to 82 - 84 deg. they are turning back to their normal color.
The larger Tilapia in the upper left hand corner is about 9" long and was almost completely black with the winter temp.