aquaponics

[steve147]

I have been reading about aquaponics. There are many books and websites, along with consultants, DVDs, etc. All are very positive and enthusiastic.
I just had lunch with a friend who for many years grew marijuana. (I'm in Canada, and it is all legal here.) He knew about aquaponics. His comment was, "if it worked as well as claimed, everyone would be doing it". He thinks it's a hoax. I take his point, but on the other hand find it hard to believe so many people are publishing falsehoods. His comeback was, "it was the same with LEDs. Everyone said they were great, but they didn't work. No one ever publishes an admission of failure."

I would be most interested in comments from people on this forum. Has anyone seen a successful large-scale marijuana aquaponics operation?

[Chefbjy]

Well you may want to show your friend a video about it. Here's one I'd recommend.

https://youtu.be/AkMGH9910eM

[DoctorJohnson]

Give LEDs another year of three and gas-discharge technology will slip into memory the way white-hot filaments already have.

So are you planning a large-scale grow, or do you just want to raise a plant in your fish tank? The old threshold I remember for considering that an aquarium needed to be cleaned was about 20 PPM NO₃. That's not a lot from a growing cannabis plant's point of view. I would think that unless you want to run a commercial fish farm and use plants to remove the wastes, you'd be better off just buying a few bottles of fertilizer.

[Grinder]

Aquaponics suffers from several problems for growing plants and major problems for growing marijuana. It sounds great in theory but you need a near perfect growing environment to pull it off. The chemicals in fish waste is not great for marijuana it's much better for other plants. Fish poo contains lots of nitrogen which marijuana only needs part of its life. The solid waste must be removed or it will clog everything. You would be better off just straight hydroponics.

[KingKush]

Growing marijuana plants is easy, you could do it any which way, it's called 'weed'
Chronic, frosty, dense, worthwhile nuggets that are enjoyable to smoke or consume is the difficult part. There are plenty of hydroponic setups that mimic the idea, but during the flowering phase you need control because cannabis has certain requirements to finish strong.