Originally Posted 17-July-2009

10 days ago the Hybrid Striped Bass (wipers) supplier finally reported that they had fingerling's ready. I contacted the State Dept. of Ag to see what I had to do. (I'm already licensed to keep them). It required an Import Permit. 10 fingerling's had to be inspected and tested for disease, then they issued the permit (after a dozen phone calls). Then I arranged for 100 to be Fedex'd to me on Friday. They arrived at 10am. My wife called and I came home from work and by 10:30am, I opened the box in the greenhouse. Bad news, the larger fingerling's were belly up!, but not dead. I immediately put an air-stone in the water, I had previously test my system water parameters and quickly tested the shipping water. Almost an exact match, PH the same, temp within 2 degrees, hardness close, etc. Given the condition of the fish, we immediately transferred all 105 fingerling's to the main tank. All made attempts at swimming, none were fully dead, but there were a lot of struggling fish. By evening I netted out 37 dead, by the next day the death count climbed to 64 and has leveled off. Of course it is the larger ones that died. The supplier says they will send another shipment this week to replace these. The others appear happy. They should have shipped overnight fine, either they were improperly packaged (not enough air), or had rough handling. Who knows. (pictures in the next post)

As for the system. as posted in another thread, I noticed small (very small) snails clinging to the underside of the rafts in the DWC tank and snail egg clusters also. I Put 5 of my starter goldfish (now 4-5 inches long) in the tank and did not feed them for 2 weeks. Now I don't see any small snails, and a lot fewer egg clusters. I've started to feed them every other day so they don't eat all the young roots off the new lettuce plants. I'll watch closely and if the snails disappear completely, or I see root damage, I'll pull them out, or feed them more. The snails are my fault, they came in the filter squeezings I used to start the system. As the weather warmed up, snails showed up in my small pond that I got the squeezins from that is in the greenhouse also. Live and learn.

The plants are doing well. I can tell when nutrients drop as the older leaves on the tomatoes go brown and die back, and the new cucumbers will dry up. I pretty much add 2 tablespoons of chelated iron every other week, along with a little Epsom salts, and potash. The nitrates stay around 10ppm, so I don't add anything else at this time. I add about 1/8 of a cup of Phosphoric Acid each week to keep the PH around 7.0-7.2. There is virtually no algae in the system. there is green scum/?algae on the edges of the tank, but no growing masses plugging things up, even using the phosphoric acid. I have 6 goldfish in the sump tank, 5 in the DWC tank, 100 Bluegill and now 40 Bass in the main tank and everyone is happy.

We have a steady supply of cucs, tomatoes, lettuce and celery. The broccoli and cauliflower grew, but did not produce as well as I like and the gnats, bothered them. I will stick to tomatoes and cucs, they give a continuous supply. I want to start bell peppers as well and see how they do. Celery takes 3-4 months to grow to maturity, but grows very well in the DWC tanks. I just start 3-4 stalks every month for variety. I'm trying different varieties of lettuce to see what does well in the summer verses winter. I'm also trying varieties of Romain lettuce. The head and leaf have done well. I'll give a report in a few months on which varieties do the best in my system. (I can already tell that Prizehead is a favorite and Laurel P (butterhead) did well. the Celery is "Utah" Celery and grows well. The cucumbers are a greenhouse variety - Discover - that are Powder Mildew resistant. It still affects them, but not enough to stunt production. It's a European, burpless type. Generally, 14-16" long 1.5-2" round seedless cucumbers.) The tomates are Mostly Romas and they do well.

I've had a gnat problem in the greenhouse and used gnatrol to control it. I've also had a runaway scale insect problem on my citrus trees. I finally resorted to spraying with a 50/50 Rubbing Alcohol, water mix + 1 teaspoon of neem oil, which I hand sprayed on the affected leaves. I still can't tell if it worked, but I'll let you know. The Gnatrol is supposed to be fish safe (although it is not applied to the system, only to the potted plants).

I took my first Dissolved Oxygen test (I've had the kit for months). The system is running at 7-8 ppm, well into the safe range (5-6ppm is recommended).

I have noticed that on the roots of the older lettuce, a lot of fine particles do hang on. This has been one of the negatives of not removing solids and just letting them break down in the gravel beds. I have found that if I lift up the foam boards, and spray down the roots periodically (every other week.) that the plants keep growing and doing well. If I don't, then the older lettuce will wilt and bolt easier. My preference is to wash off the roots (the fines return to the tank and flush out to the sump and are recycled back, going into the gravel beds and back into the DWC tank), so wash off the roots AND pick the lettuce when it's still young and tender anyway. The water temperates stay below 72 degrees (22C), but the air temps can reach 90 degrees (32C) and some of the lettuce bolts and wilts in the heat. I have 50% shade cloth over about 1/2 the greenhouse to reduce the intensity in the summer.

All in all, I'm very happy with the system. Now if I can just keep the deer from eating my Giant Pumpkin plants... (see more at www.utahcountyweather.com) I also have temperature probe in the gravel beds that is monitored and reported at that site also.

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