Veggie production- Tat soi

The fish production in these systems is almost a side product as it will take at least 9 months to produce fish of edible size.
In the mean time we expect to get many kilos of veggies.
The system has only been running for a little over 2 months and already we have eaten a fair few lettuce, pak choi and tat soi plants.
The first seeds actually went in before we got the fish as the system had cycled and there was enough nitrate in the water to support plant growth.
The total growbed area might actually be smaller that optimal for the size of the fish tank- If I find that the nitrates in the water build up to too high a level, (no real idea what that would be at this stage), I will probably add more azolla or duckweed to the fish tank and/or do a partial water change.
We decided not to grow or buy seedlings elsewhere but to simply sprinkle some seeds directly onto the growbed gravel. This seems to work really well- in fact a bit too well as we have had to do quite a bit of thinning once the seeds germinate.
The first picture shows tatsoi about a week after planting and the second shows the same plants after we have eaten the majority of those left in the initial clump and now about to harvest those which were transplanted from the original crowded area. Transplanting set the seedlings back about a week but in effect spread the useful growing season out by an extra week or two. The first picture was taken on 1st October 07 and the second on the 25th November 07 ie total time from planting to almost final crop about 8 weeks. We planted a new lot of seeds about a week ago so should have another harvest of tat soi in about a month.
In the background of the second picture you can see flame lettuce- this was planted about the same time as the initial tat soi but is very congested and probably needs a lot of thinning for individual plants to get away.