Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Want to get into the detailed workings of an aquaponic system?

The bio-film, or benthos, or beneficial bacteria, are key.

Studies show differing benthic population percentages in EVERY body of water tested. Virtually unmappable and certainly uncountable are the legions that make up the families of life found in the benthic film.

As light and nutrients change, so do the inhabitants of your system. Clearer water promotes more algae leaving less proteins for cyanobacteria to work on. This means less food for your plants. Some may see this deficiency as a sign to feed more, and in short term, it is the fastest solution for system production (if your system is established), the long term solution involves adding algae eaters to the system to keep the protein recycling within the system allowing the cyano(nitrifying)bacteria an uninterrupted supply of nutrients to work with and, more importantly, to utilise energy for repopulation. Before this takes place algae dominate the system too easily, stripping protein, denying food to other benthic organisms, and bringing extreme pH fluctuations into play.

Various benthic organisms will eat algae, but the process is slow, and your bio-film may comprise an unwanted percentage of bacteria dealing with their own wastes and algae population blooms, denying your system this energy that could be converted to nitrification, making it a longer process to stabilise the correct percentages of the types of bacteria needed to maintain your bio-film counts on par with your fishes wastes and environmental factors... Each type has a job, who needs twenty directors and 1 man on the shovel? - The council of course!

Grazers of algae and the bio-film itself play an important role in diversification of bio-film life. The grazed area allow the continual intake of new bacteria introduced by air, water, plants and fish a chance to take hold and co-populate in your system. The more diverse your bio-film, the better the eventual buffering capabilities for pH, temperatures, light and O2 levels.

General hardness (GH) makes a lot of difference to buffering water too. Buffered water is more stable water. It is common practise to buffer water with various compounds (lime, seashell, wood, peat, etc) to stabilise it.

This is not so easy to do as a system establishes. Particulates in the water stream are taken up and utilised by bacteria to make their new bethic home. As the benthos establishes much of the initial buffering compounds are removed from the water stream and utilised by bacteria to form this bio-film.

Bio-film thickness depends on 3 main factors. Light, nutrients, and water flow. Through studying various algal growth on your system you can see how it differs in areas of diffused light, or higher flow, or closer to source of nutrients...

Controlling algae naturally takes patience but is incredibly easy to maintain long term (you forget about it!). Waterflow, diffused light, and polyculture.

Through controlling your algae you will help control many other factors including nitrifying bacterial counts, pH swings, water clarity and system efficiency.

OK, run out of steam for now. Who wants to get into this side of things, make some noise or say big words in a sentence

Please continue.

I'll take it up

Well, we are all back from the two days in melbourne (i had it easy )
And one of the bits of info that i picked up was quite interesting. I was going to post it in a different topic called aquaponics weekend, ut this will do!

Dr Nick Savidov, a canadian hydroponics scientist had some very interestng info. As a hyroponics researcher he was very skeptical about aquapopnics compared to hydro simply for the fact that the nutrients were not controlled by humans, they were controlled by the fish.

During his experiments and research he reaised that a MATURE aquaponics system actually left a hydro setup for dead! By mature i mean between 12 and 24 months old.
Now this is the bit that i like.........Still not convinced, they had a sample of the aquaponics water analysed and prepeared a hydropnics solution with EXACTLY the same macro, micro and trace nutrients and conducted the expewriment again, The results were no less than astounding, once again the aqua left the hydro for dead, and to see a cucumber plant in aqua 3x the size of hyro is a nice picture.

His conclusions that there was unkonown growth promoting component in the aquaponics water. His conclusions were that it was the diverse biological flora and fauna (i'm not talking about our nitrifying bacteria) ecosystem at play.

Who knows whay hormones / enzymes / proteins come work together with the plant in such a complex ecosystem as aquaponics.

Let me summarise:

You can have a fully functioning aquaponics system after the initial nitrifying bacteria growth and "cycling" of not less than 4 weeks but upto 12 weeks.

At some point within the next 12 to 24 months you will notice ridiculous growth rates in your system and this has been put down to a complex ecosystem having been formed and also having a synergistic relationship with the whole system.

A curious point was that Dr Savidov found that the addition of a minimum of 10% water from a MATURE (1 to 2 year old system) seem to fast track the new system to its mature state VERY quickly.
In my mind this supports his conclusions becasue you are introducing all the micro flora and fauna from the aged system and they will reproduce.

Steve

Two words: Amish Friendship Bread
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_Friendship_Bread

Thats three words

Nice. Yes I've read the literature I could get from last years Soiless Culture Conference where Dr Nick spoke.

I'd known this phenomenal growth of fish and plants in Aqua about 1 year before I read the published article, but the conference was 4 months before this. Before that article people laughed at me. Now I laugh

Always knew it was the bio-film. I've wrote lots of stuff about it, and abridged other peoples studies on bio-film as well.

I'll try find some of the earlier stuff. The families of critters. I got into it when I discovered a web spinning caddisfly in my basement I'm WTF!

Wanted to know what it ate. It was fishing! Spun a net and was fishing off a netpot hanging in my tank. Looking for smaller critters. Another WTF!

Delved deeper...

Gotta love this Aquaponics, so simple or a world of learning, go your own pace, bloody magic.

I'd tip that even thinking it is solely the biofilm comes up sort. I'll bet it the COMPLETE ECOSYSTEM, biofilm, water coloumn, and little things that fish off the pots all included

Oh, DD, your water looks a beautiful tan color. is that correct?

Another thing from the good doctors talk was that the colour in most mature systems is this tan colour. He stated that it was largely humic acid (i think, i know that tannic acid from wood looks the same) anyway, he stated that humic acid is a bild antibiotic which also helps in the balance of the system.

Ooops, another thing! The reason why mature systems fish seem so robust is that all the benficial ecology in the system seems to preditate on more not so benficial organisms, bacteria and parasites. Gotta love it. And to think i was about to do a major water change on the indoor tank becaue of the tan colour. HAHA, give new meaning to the mostly defunked "healthy tan"

That is really interesting Steve. My system's water has gone tan several weeks ago. At the time I was a bit distressed about it . It is tan in colour but sparkling, if you can imagine that. That is really interesting stuff.

Muzza

It IS very interesting. apparently the humic acid is created from the feed. And once you get used to it the tan is quite nice. Now i remember going for a nice bush walk in the grampians (VIC) and the culmination of an outsranding water fall cascading over a moss line bluff down through a rock spill way, was a tan colourd pool with visibiliy of maybe 50cms, but only due to the colour, it was also crystal clear as far as turbidity goes.

gotta say you guys, you really missed out, the lecture in melbourne was the one with all the freaky little tidbits of weird science. I loved it

Most informative, cheers for the topic crew!(;-)

Go hard with those details you recall Steve. Yes, tan water, and at lower pH values, it yellows.

Too tired to be clever tonight just painted my greenhouse - 6 hours straight no breaks. Had a gap in the weather and had a great time of it though. Put a fish in there, a huge orando (500 gms plus). 600 litres (only 20 litres Aqua water so far) settled for 2 days.

Were Dr Nick and company switching gravel and bacteria into new systems as well, or just the water and humic acid, microflora and fauna within?

Were they using wood and shells?

One thing I know occurs in the bio-film via DWC trials is michorizal fungi (spelling?). M Fungi hang out on the surface in your bio-film. They act like bouncers keeping bacteria such as pythium (root rot) and other undesirables from being able to enter plants root systems.

I have likened 6 month old Aquaponics to extreme organics 2 years old. ie: Well fed pigsty 1/3 of the size of the garden plot that is moved in the garden plot annually, after a year of pigs the soil is mixed with the corner where manure accumulated, it lies fallow year two, and planted start of year three (2 years later). This was fantastic, then a sheep got buried in a piece where the pigs were just removed from... EXPLOSIVE! growth. The fleece was a huge water sponge so this reservoir of water and the mass of nutrients resulted in the most ridiculous cropping I've ever seen, everything so heavy it lay all over each other. It was also a perfect season weather wise.

Nothing came close to what I'd seen there, then Aqua. With Aqua you can control an environment and have the best growth you've seen consistently.

The first system I ever cycled up took longer than 6 months though, I was winging it the whole way, it took 9 months to go nuts.

pythium was mentioned, i cant remember if it was a fungus or bacteria that they introduced to preditate it.

No, i think it was just the water the used to kick start it.

It is important for people to under stand the two terms "cycle" and "mature" if any one is confused just ask.

LOL, we were joking around that the next "FULL PACKAGE" that should be available from joel is on that contains the book, the bacteria, phone support and a 1/2 44 gallon drum of his system water

I suspect that 2 year old aquarium water would go a long way to doing the same thing!.

GD, if you're reading this, go and pinch 50 lts of your other halfs aquarium water and bung her in (the water, no your other half )

Hows the readings on your system (post it there, not here )

Fungal enzyme I'd hazard a guess at to deal with pythium, M Fungi?

Was just contemplating the water thing. I did it automatically in my herb garden but didn't stop and think why, didn't know hehe.

Selling it could be on the cards, wonder if they've tried Aquarium vs Aquaponic water to cycle up.

A very relevant question if anyone's seeing more of these guys.