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soil Soil vs DWC vs Aquaponics grow

SentencedToBurn

SentencedToBurn

Growing Red Morugas from the same batch of seeds in Soil, DWC and Aquaponics.
 
These plants germinated 15 days ago and I put them into aquaponics, DWC and the pot the same day they popped through. Normally I wouldn't do that but wanted to see how the growth differs from the start. To my surprise they all seem to be growing at the same rate. Each got their first set of true leaves about 4-5 days ago, so no difference in growth yet.
 
Soil: Terazilla mix from the local supplier (cant find a link online to the type of mix) - currently in 1L container, but will pot it out at a later stage.
DWC: the most basic DWC method without even an airstone. 2L container using low ratio of this 7-4-10 mix
Aquaponics: I have a glog on this setup, but pretty much its just a few crayfish in a 160L tank with 2 100L growbeds. A couple of months ago I ended up cheating and added some of the same mix of nutes as I'm using for DWC as all my plants were suffering from some serious deficiencies. The ratio is much lower than in DWC though as it wouldve been too high level of zinc for fish.
 
All 3 plants are in the same heated greenhouse, all 3 are exposed to 4 hours artificial lighting in the morning and then whatever sunlight our NZ winter weather decides to bless us with for the rest of the say. Watering of the soil plant at this point is with just water without any extra nutes - I might start adding some in about a month's time perhaps.
 
Soil:
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DWC:
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Aquaponics:
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D3monic said:
If you're going to use DWC as one the caparisons give it a 5gal bucket with air disc. My hydro easily out does my outdoor plants in size and density. 
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I guess that'll make it on a level playing field. Sounds good mate will sort that out this weekend.
 
LordHill said:
DWC definitely needs an air stone. As I understand it the reason it works so well is the super oxygenated roots
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Yeah after reading Demonic's reply i figured without an airstone and in a small bucket it won't be a fair experiment. Sussing that out soon - I already have an air pump for the aquaponics tank so will tee off one of those lines.
 
Ok it's been just under 2 weeks since the last update and I can see a lot of progress. DWC and Aquaponic plants are slightly bigger at this point but the soil one is not far behind. Next time I might have a ruler next to them to help see the difference in size.
 
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I think youll see a bigger difference from the DWC after your plants get a little bigger and you can up the ratio with more nutes.
Also, just a comment.. but using the Flora 1 part I'd think your missing out on one of the prime advantages to Hydro. That you can tailor the mix for the plants growth cyle, or bloom cycle. Adding big amounts of Nite for growth helps a lot. I've never used the 1 part though so just kind of going by what I know, which isn't really all that much anyway haha.. I just learned what I needed a few years ago and experiment a little but stick to what works for me.
 
scrufy said:
I think youll see a bigger difference from the DWC after your plants get a little bigger and you can up the ratio with more nutes.
Also, just a comment.. but using the Flora 1 part I'd think your missing out on one of the prime advantages to Hydro. That you can tailor the mix for the plants growth cyle, or bloom cycle. Adding big amounts of Nite for growth helps a lot. I've never used the 1 part though so just kind of going by what I know, which isn't really all that much anyway haha.. I just learned what I needed a few years ago and experiment a little but stick to what works for me.
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Hey just to clarify do you mean with aquaponics and me adding some the nutes to overcome defficiencies? I'm planning to add some bloom nutes when the time comes as part of my regular water changes in the tank. And same goes for DWC too ofcourse. Is what what you meant? Or did I miss something. Im always keen to listen to any advice thats offered so please let me know if I've misunderstood.
 
I was talking about the DWC that you are using the flora single bottle nutrients with. I've never tried Aquaponics because of too many cats and raccoons in our neighborhood so they'd get to anything I put in a pond. Not sure how the Aquaponics would work adding stuff. I'm thinking it might foul the water for the fish, turtles, crayfish etc...
 
Oh ok cool yeah good point. WIth my aquaponics setup I did have to add some of that same nutes mix in as the plants were seriously deficient. And crayfish / fish seem to be doing ok - i did add minimal amounts though.
 
But will definitely be adding bloom stuff when the time comes.
 
Nice experiment but maybe not enough controls, having just a single plant in each won't give any conclusive results, gene variations and such from plant to plant... I found using aquaponics that my grow bed area was way too small for using carp (goldfish and koi) and the nitrogen was simply way too high for growing peppers.  I would have been ok with about 10x the grow space I was using but all they wanted to do was leaf out and then stall and yellow when they tried to bloom.  Running leafy greens was great with it, I was getting a week's worth of lettuce...well just about every week out of it.  Tomatoes did phenomenally, had a plant a few years ago that literally grew 4 feet a week which was pretty cool but again with the grow space being small.  If I ever do it again I'm not going to use carp I'll use a low waste temperate fish like perch or crappie. 
 
I have a feeling with your experiment you'll get best results with regular hydro if you can keep the nutes straight. :)  Nothing wrong with the soil grow, I'm reverting back to it myself but may try some hydro with some other types of plants like tomatoes and...other.
 
Helvete said:
Nice experiment but maybe not enough controls, having just a single plant in each won't give any conclusive results, gene variations and such from plant to plant... I found using aquaponics that my grow bed area was way too small for using carp (goldfish and koi) and the nitrogen was simply way too high for growing peppers.  I would have been ok with about 10x the grow space I was using but all they wanted to do was leaf out and then stall and yellow when they tried to bloom.  Running leafy greens was great with it, I was getting a week's worth of lettuce...well just about every week out of it.  Tomatoes did phenomenally, had a plant a few years ago that literally grew 4 feet a week which was pretty cool but again with the grow space being small.  If I ever do it again I'm not going to use carp I'll use a low waste temperate fish like perch or crappie. 
 
I have a feeling with your experiment you'll get best results with regular hydro if you can keep the nutes straight. :)  Nothing wrong with the soil grow, I'm reverting back to it myself but may try some hydro with some other types of plants like tomatoes and...other.
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Hey thanks yeah I have limited growbed space, and didn't want to grow multiple plants of the same type. I'm doing the same with a Dorset Naga as well, also same batch of seeds, soil, dwc and aquaponics. So will be interesting to see how they get on.
 
Here in NZ keeping fresh fish (apart from small aquarium fish) is pretty much illegal, especially carp - they are considered pests, i tried reading up on it but seemed like a massive mission to apply/obtain the necessary license, etc. But our native crayfish is no problem at all. My nitrogen levels are pretty low, I just harvested my 2nd load of lettuce, but the chilli plants are now big enough so I think they'll suck enough of it out. I'll also probably end up adding some bloom ferts to the crayfish tank a bit later to help the plants. Seems that doing aquaponics with peppers without adding nutes is on a whole different level.
 
A lot of changes in the last 20 days, especially with the aquaponics plant. I probably shouldn't be calling it aquaponics since I'm adding hydro nutes to the system, but the ratio is much lower than in DWC. Either way - it seems to be working great.
 
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SentencedToBurn said:
Yup I'm using the same nutes for DWC I've used for the past year, works mint as: http://generalhydroponics.com/site/index.php/products/nutrients/nova_series/
 
To be honest I'm waiting for DWC to kick in, although as mentioned above this isnt a true comparison as I only have 1 of each plant. Ideally you'd want about 10 each so to discount runty seedlings, etc.
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That stuff is seriously thick. I used to use it for 4 or so years until I realized it costs a fortune and its performance vs price ratio isn't worth it.

I also hated how thick it was and how I would sometimes get clogging no matter how well it was mixed. It would goo up on occasion with my 8 bucket dwc with res setup at the right angle fittings on the return line back to the res. it would also gunk up my airstones.. I tried the biue planet nutes 3 part intro system and that's all I've used since in my hydro setups.

I will say that the flora nova series does keep it simple and even controls the ph of the water. Helps people new to hydro without much hand holding. However, the trade off is no explosive growth.
 
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