Fish - Poor fishes, you have such a bad fishy mommy...
As the weather got warmer, I failed to add water to the tank. One day, the timing of the two grow beds filling with water, but not enough to trigger the syphon, aligned like a bad horoscope (does that even make sense?) and sucked up almost all of the water in the fish tank. The fish were left in about four inches of dirty water, and seven of them died. :-(
My son had been down there about two hours earlier and everything was fine. Since the fish weren't stiff from rigor mortis, I figured they were still safe enough to eat, so I ate them...and they were good! Then, a few days ago, there was another floater, so I ate him, too. I think I've still got six or seven live fish. They're probably about 10 inches long now.
Plants - In an attempt to reach real sunlight, my plants have been growing freakishly large leaves and stalks. I can't find the picture, but one of my broccoli plants, which languished all winter, and grew a skinny little stalk about the size of a thin piece of yarn, suddenly took off and grew giant leaves and a stalk about the size of my thumb. The weird thing is that the bottom of the plant was still the size of a piece of yarn, and was trying to support the giant thumb stalk. I decided to take everything out and stick with lettuce and other leafy greens. I transplanted the broccoli and a few strawberry plants in the garden outside. I didn't expect them to do very well, and my low expectations were met the next day when a long heat wave hit and withered the plants that were used to 70 degree temperatures. The broccoli plant is still alive, but the strawberries all withered and died.
One of the strawberry plants I pulled had some blossoms, which I didn't notice until I had already pulled them (actually, my husband noticed them and told me I should put them back in the indoor grow beds). I replanted it indoors, expecting it to die from shock, but it continued to grow and has produced several berries. One thing to note is that aquaponic experts recommend against planting flowering plants. These strawberry plants were in the bed for about six months, so I didn't expect them to flower. They were growing mutant-sized leaves, so I figured they would never have the energy to flower. I would still go with the experts' recommendations not to plant flowering plants, but it was kind of cool to get some actual fruit from these plants. I tasted one the other day, and it was kind of bland tasting. Even more bland than a supermarket strawberry. I guess strawberries love to grow in real sunshine. Don't we all?
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| Mutant Strawberries - The smaller berries in this picture are each about an inch long. Note the gigantic leaf - some of the leaves are larger than the palm of my hand. Kind of freaky for a strawberry plant. |
