How to grow plants from seed in Aquaponics

Planting seed in an aquaponics system is typically a lot simpler then planting them in soil. All you'll need to do is plant them in either your grow bed or netting pots and your mission is done! From that point, the only other thing you'll need to do is wait for your hydroponic plants to grow. As straightforward as this looks though, the time you choose for planting seeds in your aquaponic setup must be accurate.

Many people mistakenly introduce the aquaponics fish to their system and plant seeds in their net pots or grow beds the same day. This is a major timing error when handling a new aquaponics system as seeds planted this early will only grow for a little while with the resulting plants dying off when the nutrients contained in the seeds run out and leave the plants with no other nutrients to grow from.

The right time to plant seeds in the net pots or grow bed of your aquaponics setup is when the fish waste has been converted into nutrients. The procedure for acquiring this necessary plant food is really simple. Once the aquaponics fish are in the tank they start releasing waste products from their gills and in the form of poop. These wastes contain ammonia which is very toxic to fish. However, there's no need to worry about this as nature will take care of the problem. Special, naturally occurring bacteria will digest the ammonia and transform it into nitrites and a second species of naturally occurring bacteria will convert these nitrites into safer nitrates which are then ready for plants to use as a food source. Nitrates are one of the main nutrients required for plant growth so when the cycle of ammonia transformation into nitrates is complete your aquaponic setup is ready for planting.

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.

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