I am a newbie, my interest in hydroponics began 4 weeks ago when I was given an assignment in a classes at the Community College. We were told to use what was available to us and not to go out and buy something. I did some research and decided to try and grow some vegetables using hydroponics. I built an ebb and flow system which turned out great no problems. I also built a NFT system using 2 old rain gutters to grow different varities of lettuce. I like the idea of the 5 gal buckets for individual plants what type of system are you using in those?I haven't planted tomatoes yet, I didn't have room for them. I think I'd like to use the 5 gal buckets can you e-mail me the info. donnie1354@hotmail.com

You might want to look into vermicomposting. Worms are really high in protein, so if you got enough worms and had the garbage to keep them happy and breeding you could generate a constant supply for the fish. Plus, the worm castings would make for an excellent supplement to the fishy-water. You might also consider Tilapia. They're a much hardier species of fish than most, and are well-adapted to living in shallow unmoving water (like a big tank). Their dietary requirements are a lot simpler, but I'm not entirely sure what they are. Some commercial aquaponics designs actually grow retail vegetables along with some kind of plant to feed to the Tilapia using the fish tank water as a food source for the plants. Tilapia are fast-growing fish as well, and rather tasty, so you can grow food in both areas - plants and fish. Keep an eye on water quality and when the fish start to over-pollute the tank it's time to pull some out and fry them up.

Something like this pharma grade boric acid you may have in the medicine cabinet already would be fine, although pharma grade is overkill: Boric Acid Powder USP at Walmart Careful. and double careful. Boron is a micronutrient which means a miniscule amount is used. Use more and it will poison the plants. For this reason you need to be able to measure very small amounts. The application rate for boric acid into your working nutrient solution is just 1 gram of the pure powder per 150 gallons of water. Almost nutin! If you do 1 gram in only 75 gallons that will begin to be toxic to many plants. After dealing with these sorts of situation, hydro fertilizers that are premixed sure begin to look more convenient! If you want to do a quick and dirty addition in tablespoon-talk, you can trust the following: Take a standard level tablespoon of this boric acid crystal powder (verify your standard tablespoon is the same as three level standard teaspoons) and mix it into a well cleaned 2 liter appropriated coke plastic bottle using distilled, reverse osmosis or pure filtered rainwater and dissolve the crystals completely. Once it is completely dissolved in the water (bottle filled to 2 liter capacity with the water), one tablespoon of the resulting solution will be the correct dosage for lettuce in a 28 gallon res, which is what you are using. However that would be for full strength nutes and you are not using full strength (which is why I said consider this a learning experience and you might get results). So if you are doing the 1/10 teaspoon thing you could use 1/3 the dose - for your case: one teaspoon instead of the one tablespoon from your 2 liter stock solution - so the proportion is in line with everything else you are doing. This is quite weak due to the type of fertilizer you have (there is a silver lining to going weak, since you lack Ca, Mg, reasonably hard water may have enough of them to get your plants through, they will just grow slower since they aren't being fed a rich mixture. In other words you use a weak fertilizer, so don't add extra nutes at full strength since it will complicate the plant's uptake. EDIT: Your fertilizer is still weak, so keep your expectations along those lines expecting nothing spectacular. The comments made earlier in this thread by others regarding African Violet fertilizer and enthusiasm for a Walmart hydro tomato fertilizer are from very sharp hydro people and in my interpretation are not being made as recommendations. They are being made more as experiements since coming up with an alternitative to a specialty hydro fertilizer by buying stuff at Home Depot and Walmart is sort of a persistant challenge for all of us to see if we can get things to grow. There are easier and more inexpensive ways to do this if you are willing to order online and in the long run they will come out cheaper and far more effective using a hydro product. Take MaxiGro hydro fertilizer from General Hydroponics as an example to get nice, problem free as they get for an all-in-one hydroponic fertilizer. It comes in a 2.2 pound package and it can be ordered from places like Amazon for around $14.50 including shipping. It has everything in the right proportion besides calcium and magnesium and even has a reasonable amount of them so that with typical water hardness, its the complete package except for the pH adjuster. The only reason the Orchid stuff will last so long is because it is being used as weak as dishwater. If you could use more total plant food it would work far better, but you are prevented from doing so since some ingredients are in a higher proportion than the rest and limit how strong it can be made. You would use about 1.5 teaspoons per gallon of the General Hydroponics stuff because the proportions are well suited for hydro and can be used at the strength long term success hydro growing requires. Weak solutions usually work in the seedling stage fine and are recommended for that, and can be out of balance since the seed was a nutrient warehouse for the initial growth. But then things usually go south when the plant outgrows that phase, usually after around 3 weeks. Even if you used a correspondingly weak solution of MaxiGro (less than the recommendation of 1-2 tsp per gallon) it would give you better results than the Orchid stuff since it is a complete fertilizer that needs no mad scientist adjustments. That's why the rate of MaxiGro is more, because the stuff the orchid formula is missing all the rest. Neither the orchid nor the Maxi have any filler, they both have similar potency ingredients. This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Tue, Nov 12, 13 at 12:44

Nice overview. I would also recommend BACI's hydroponic FAQs for more detailed information. These are available by doing a search in this forum for "FAQ".