Starting Up An Aquaponics Set Up From See The Easy Way

Planting seeds in your aquaponics system can be a lot simpler then planting seeds in the ground. All that's needed is for you to drop the seeds in the netting pots or plant them in your grow bed and the job is done! All you need to do to have a crop of healthy hydroponic plants then, is wait for them to grow. As simple as it sounds however, you've got to make sure of one important detail and that's to do with the time you choose to plant your seeds into your aquaponic setup.

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Many mistakenly put aquaponics fish into their tank and plant seeds at the same time. This is a big mistake make with any new aquaponics system as the plants or seeds incorporated to such a system, although they will grow for a short time, will starve to death soon after for a lack of food from aquaponics fish tank.

The appropriate time for planting seeds in the grow bed or net pots of your aquaponics setup is the point at which fish waste has begun it's conversion to nitrates (nutrients). Obtaining these nutrients for your plants is easy. When aquaponics fish are placed in your system, ammonia will be created via the fishes' waste, from their gills and poop. These wastes can make your fish very ill and cause them to die. However, nature has a way to solve this problem so there's no need to panic. Two species of naturally occurring bacteria will convert the ammonia to nitrites and then to the nitrates that the plants will use for food. Once this cycle of nitrification is in full swing it's time to start planting seeds in your aquaponics setup.

On it's own, it can take around 3 months for this process to be complete, before which you shouldn't plant any seeds in your aquaponics system as they will only manage to sprout then die from a lack of nutrients. There are however several shortcuts you can take to help speed the process in the aquaponics fish tank, including pouring in water from an established aquarium and adding a little ammonia (before fish have been added) and wait for nitrification to begin and once it's started you can plant your seeds and incorporate your fish or you can add nitrates to the aqauponics tank water prior to cycling completion. Many aquaponics gardeners don't like to hurry things though. Which ever option you choose, you will have to keep monitoring the amounts of nitrites, ammonia and nitrates in the water to make sure there's enough food available for plants and water is clean enough to keep fish healthy.



Success in growing your hydroponic plants and raising your fish in an aquaponics system depends on continuous monitoring of water quality both before and after planting and that planting seeds is done at the correct time. These two elements are key to an aquaponics system's ability to grow an abundance of healthy aquaponic vegetables and raise healthy fish.