Chapter Ten: Tips and Troubleshooting

General Tips

A few tips learned along the way are:

• Plants can die after transplanting. Make sure they get plenty of light and that their transplant from one environment to the next is similar. Plants do not like change, so try to minimize the move as much as possible.
• When fish are transplanted into a new environment, they can lose their appetite. Food for fish needs to be planned out in advance, meaning studied out as to what type and how much.
• Fish love hiding spots and are also known to jump out of the water when in a new environment. Make sure the tank is covered.

Iron Deficiency and Aquaponics

Even though fish waste, broken down by bacteria, is the ultimate fertilizer for plants, deficiencies still arise. These include potassium, calcium, and iron. Potassium and calcium deficiencies are quickly resolved through proper pH balancing, but iron is a whole different story.

For the life of your aquaponic garden, you may never experience an iron deficiency. If you wonder if you have ever had one, then you probably have not. Your plant leaves would be yellow with green veins, called chlorosis.

Iron can be a little challenging to manage because iron is reactive to its environment. It is not always easy to identify an iron deficiency. If so, an iron checker can be purchased that will detect the deficiency. It can also read the amount of iron in your tank. The target range for iron in your system should be 2 – 3 parts per million (ppm). Signs of a deficiency will usually begin to show at around 1.5 ppm.

Once you have decided you need to add some iron, the solution must be better than the issue. This means not throwing in anything just because you know it contains iron, like rusty objects.

One solution to an iron deficiency is an iron supplement called Chelated Iron DTPA. This product provides aquaponic plants to get the iron they need to survive, working with the plant's natural processes to absorb iron into their roots.

An organic solution could be found through iron-rich foods like liver, soybeans, lentils, spinach, chard, and kale. These can be added to homemade fish food that is blended at high speed and then frozen and cut to meet your fish's food requirements.

Backup Battery Systems

One of the biggest fears of aquaponic growers is the loss of electrical power. After all the time you've given to your aquaponic system, one power outage could crash the whole system. No worries, there are some solutions:

• AquaBackup Battery-On with Oxygen Infuser
• Homemade Backup Systems
• Solar Backup Systems
• UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply)

Chapter Ten Checklist

• Plants can die after transplanting.
• A fish transplant from one environment to another must match
• Fish can lose appetite when transplanted
• Fish love hiding spots
• Iron can be a little challenging to manage because iron is reactive
• One solution is Chelated Iron DTP
• An organic solution can be found through iron-rich foods
• One of the biggest fears of aquaponic growers is the loss of electrical power
• There are several backup systems available

Conclusion

Hopefully, you are reading this while enjoying your fresh, nutritious aquaponic salad, vegetables, and fish, thanks to the people who studied and worked so you could grow this type of eco-friendly garden.

There are a lot of valuable resources dedicated to the success of an aquaponic garden and many groups where you can receive support and have your specific questions and concerns answered, such as:

The Aquaponics Association:

aquaponicsassociation.org

American Aquaponics Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/163067483735761/

The National Agricultural Library, Aquaponics Division: https://www.nal.usda.gov/afsic/aquaponics

The beauty of an aquaponic system is that you control the ability to have nutritionally healthy food available to you any time of day or night. Some systems are completely organic, without the use of electricity and other human-made dependencies, so your system can function independently.

Just as important as the food you receive following all your efforts is the beauty found in the process of working with nature in a completely new and sustainable way. Many find more than fruits, vegetables, and herbs in their gardens. We hope you do too:

“To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.”

Audrey Hepburn

“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth,

and no culture comparable to that of the garden.”

Thomas Jefferson

“Life begins the day you start a garden. ”

Chinese Proverb

We hope you enjoy the journey and reap the rewards of your efforts not only in your garden but in all that you do.