Aquaponics system update week 17

Fishpoop tomatoes. Ripening! This week water magically cleared up and the strawberries started acting up.

I hope august will be enough to ripen the big ones. The trichoderma or the weather is at least slowing down the spreading of black spots turning into yellow leafs. The "roma" variety shown below not affected yet.

Water Quality

My goldfish demanded being featured in their clear water habitat, they are jealous of all the trout attention.

Big improvement in water quality, last week I couldn't even see the bottom. My theory is brown algae disappearing caused by lower phosphate values and sun getting less powerful, it dropped to 8ppm from 18 two weeks ago when water started getting brown. I still highly recommend having something to filter out excess solids.

Nutes in ppm

As I pointed out the drop in phosphates is the most remarkable thing. Otherwise continuing to see good balance. Potassium actually rose a bit so I can now switch to adding calcium to raise pH. Calcium dropped very slowly over the last month, maybe even low enough to affect my strawberries. Fruit is setting but deformed. Could also be lack of micronutrients or poor root conditions. Copper still not readable, which is good, but also maybe bad for plants.

Element	My values	Typical hydroponic solution
N	20	210
P	8	31
K	>45	235
Ca	140	200
Mg	40	48
Fe	0.8	1 to 5
Cu	0 (smallest I can measure is 0.1)	0.05
NO2	0.3	0

deformed strawberries	chives white spots

Looking out for

Peppers still green, rhubarb getting huge again. You are supposed to leave rhubarb alone after solstice to let it store nutrients for spring. I don't know if I will be able, rhubarb pie is so good :D