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Troubleshooting & FAQ

Organised by symptom. Find what's going wrong, apply the fix, follow the link for the full mechanic. Most answers come back to the nitrogen cycle: fish make ammonia, bacteria turn it into nitrate, crops eat the nitrate.

Agriculture: overview and fast start
Building a System: blocks, network, commissioning
The Nitrogen Cycle: ammonia → nitrate → crops, pH
Fish: stocking, growth, health, breeding, slaughter
Crops: planting, growth, vitality, harvest
Power & Supplies: Drive Cells and supplements
Food & Demand: hunger and meals

Numbers below are the baseline; your server may tune them.

Getting started

How do I get fish and plants into the system?

Stock by hand on the blocks. No menu. Commission first, then hold fish eggs and right-click a reservoir water block (one juvenile per click), or hold seeds and right-click a Grow Bed (one crop per bed). Needs MODULE_USE on the host. See Fish and Crops.

Where's the easiest place to start?

Buy an Aquaponics Starter Kit, right-click to unpack a small farm, stock cod (hardiest fish), plant lettuce (no supplements). See Agriculture.

Why won't the Console commission?

It's short a requirement and prints which one. Usual miss: a block that isn't face-adjacent to the water network, so it isn't counted. See Building a System.

Crops aren't growing or aren't thriving

Why aren't my crops growing?

Usually not enough fish. Growth is nitrate-gated; no fish means no nitrate. Growth follows Liebig's law of the minimum: the most-limiting factor caps everything, and the Console names it.

Limiter	What it means	Fix
nitrate	Not enough fish feeding the cycle	Add/grow fish, or grow the biofilter; a new tank also needs to cycle
light	No lamp coverage, or no power	Put a Grow Lamp within ~16 blocks; keep Drive Cells in the GENERAL hold
water	Too few water blocks for the bed count	Add reservoir water (~1 water per bed)
pH	pH has drifted out of band	Wait for self-heal, or dose pH Buffer
supplements	A fruiting crop's P/K/Fe pool is empty	Dose supplements at the Console (fruiting crops only)

See Crops.

Why is vitality dropping on my fully-grown crops?

It can't: ripe crops never wilt. Vitality falls only on still-growing, starved crops; if it's dropping, that crop isn't ripe. Fix its named limiter. See Crops.

My fruiting crops (tomato/wheat) just sit there.

Waiting on supplements. Fruiting crops need a dosed P/K/Fe pool or their growth limit drops to zero; leafy crops (lettuce) don't. Dose by right-clicking the Console with a supplement item. See Power & Supplies.

A crop block looks fully grown but won't harvest.

It's at ~98%, not 100%; the top stage is reserved for ready crops. Right-click to read the real growth %. See Crops.

Fish, ammonia, and the death spiral

Why did ammonia go critical "out of nowhere"?

Your fish grew bigger. Ammonia load scales with maturity (juvenile ×1.0 to adult ×3.0). It's not the crops; they only consume nitrate. Add Biofilter Media or thin the fish. See Fish.

I pulled all my fish and ammonia isn't dropping fast. Why?

The biofilter is the only ammonia sink; there's no instant purge. Standing ammonia drains gradually. See The Nitrogen Cycle.

Overstocking kills all my fish, but over-planting never starves my crops. Why the difference?

By design. Over-planting settles nitrate lower (a smooth throttle). Over-stocking is positive feedback: ammonia stress kills fish, dead fish dump more ammonia, killing more fish. See the asymmetry table in The Nitrogen Cycle.

How does fish health relate to how many fish die, and how fast?

Health is a buffer: drains under stress, refills when water is safe, fish die once it bottoms out, then fast. See Fish for drain/refill rates and the ♥ chip ladder.

The Console says "fish stressed" vs "fish DYING": what's the difference?

"stressed" = fish still have health left. "DYING" = health bottomed out, you're losing fish. See Fish.

Some fish tolerate bad water better than others.

Hardiness widens the ammonia tolerance band; the Starter Kit ships cod. See Fish for the species table.

Breeding, growth, and slaughter

How do I get more eggs?

Breeding. A mature, healthy fish lays eggs slowly over time; collect by right-clicking the Console, then re-stock as juveniles. See Fish.

What is "cycle %" / bacteria maturity?

How established the biofilter's bacterial colony is: a new tank cycles up over time, then sits at 100%. Drops only if the chemistry crashes. See The Nitrogen Cycle.

Why do my immature fish give no protein when I hit them?

Only fully grown-out fish yield protein. Hit a juvenile and it survives with a "too young to harvest" message. See Fish.

Why do my fish change size?

Fish size shows maturity: fry spawn small and grow to full scale. See Fish.

Does slaughtering fish hurt my crops?

Yes. It cuts the cohort's biomass, so less ammonia and less nitrate. See Fish.

Water chemistry

Can a tank get permanently stuck (e.g. after a pH crash)?

No: pH self-heals. It passively recovers toward neutral; a crash is recoverable. A chronically overloaded tank can still sit low. See The Nitrogen Cycle.

What does the Aerator do?

Oxygenates the water (bubble columns). Oxygen crowding climbs as fish grow; if the Console warns oxygen is low, add Aerators. See The Nitrogen Cycle.

Power and supplements

How do Grow Lamps consume Drive Cells?

Grow Lamps burn Drive Cells from the host's GENERAL hold while you're online, the only thing aquaponics draws from a hold. A fish-only farm needs no lamps and draws no power. See Power & Supplies.

How do supplements work, and which crops need them?

Supplements are P/K/Fe for fruiting crops, held in a dosed pool (not a cargo hold) fed by right-clicking the Console with a supplement item. Leafy crops never need them. See Power & Supplies.

Harvesting and building

How does harvesting work?

Manual. Break a ready crop (produce drops, bed auto-replants) or hit a grown fish (protein drops). Nothing auto-harvests. See Crops and Fish.

How do I build over reservoir water, or remove a reservoir?

You can't place a block into reservoir water; the game rejects it. To clear water (or remove a reservoir), right-click it with the Siphon, which refunds the reservoir block. See Building a System.

Right-clicking my build blocks does something. What?

Bare-hand right-click inspects a build block: names it and shows a live meter (Biofilter cycle %/NH3/NO3, Aerator O2, etc.). Read-only, empty hand only. See Building a System.

Why isn't my stray bed/filter being counted?

The network is a flood-fill from the Console through water and pipes; a component counts only if it's face-adjacent to the connected network. See Building a System.

Multiple farms and scaling

Can I run more than one farm (or Console) per station?

No: one aquaponics system per host. A second Console reads the same system. See Building a System.

What's the difference between a casual farm and a "hyperscaler" farm?

Scaling up costs more on three fronts at once: power, supplement dosing, and chemistry-management risk. See Power & Supplies.

Food and demand

How does the food/hunger system work?

Hunger drains over playtime; low food applies movement debuffs (never death). Refill with cooked meals, not raw produce or protein. See Food & Demand for drain rates, debuff thresholds, and the ration floor.

My crops and fish don't grant a buff when I eat them. Why?

Raw produce and protein are ingredients, not edible. Buffs come only from cooked meals that contain a fruiting crop (tomato/wheat), made at a Galley. Leafy + protein meals just fill hunger. See Food & Demand.

How do I make a meal?

Cook at a Galley (station/room module, built at a T2+ Fabricator). The meal recipes live in the crafting wiki. The Superfood capstone grants all six beacon buffs. See Food & Demand.