Pyro's IBC system

pyro

tomd1811 wrote:

Hey Pyro, Nice setup and great video. What brand was the paint that you used?

:wave1:

Thanks.
Video was easy really - done with iMovie. I love my new Mac Book Pro. I've been a pc guy since, well forever, but I won't go back, Apple stuff simply works!
3 kinds of paint were used First I sprayed the plastic with black pressure pack spray to give the next coat of Taubmans Endure outdoor Acrylic (4 coats) something to stick to. The Gal frame was painted in an almost matching shade of Rust guard all from Bunnings. With the heat ( the rust guard can't be applied over 30c) and re-coat times painting lasted about 5-6 days. I think I will spray the next ones I have a compressor and I can get a cheap enough spray gun from Bunnings or super cheap Auto

A lot of touch ups will be needed as the paint doesn't like to stick to the poly!

pyro

I have done another short video of work on stage two you can see it at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52zV-TYWdwA
I had looked at getting 12 IBC's at once but the extra cost of hire of a truck plus fuel was to be more expensive than doing 3 trips with my trailer - it will just take longer for the 400km round trips!

Fish are finally in 100 Jade Perch ordered 1 DOA
Whats with the rain - we have recorded 165mm in about 12 hours!

SuperVeg

Quote:

Not sure it is fair that they say that DWC beds add no bio- filtration, as all surfaces that are wet and oxygenated should be populated with Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter, they will just have a hugely smaller relative surface area to a media bed, but I take your point.

Ultimately the balanced carrying capacity of a system like an aquaponics system has to do with the removal of the nitrates. Nitrates are the end result of the bacterial breakdown of Ammonia and Nitrite from fish wastes, generated by nutrient inputs in our case from added fish feed, given that sufficient water flow rate, pH, oxygenation and surface area exists for efficient microbial bio-reaction. This system nitrate removal for us, is the harvesting of our plant crops.
I have seen formulas for calculating stocking rates based on grow bed surface area and fish feeding rates to supply nutrients to this square meterage of grow bed, but surely this depends on the rate of growth (rate of plant biomass increase?) of the selected crop as this will vary greatly for different plants. Has this been debated before in here?

Cheers
pyro

Haven't seen much in the way of debates about this Pyro. It seems all the kg fish to GB volume ratios are all based on converting ammonia and not removing nitrates as such.
Maybe this is the unintended result that planted GBs generally have a high rate of nitrate removal and just happens to be more or adequately efficient so that the kg:m^3 ratio works well...
Even with relatively deep beds I guess this is the case... depending on what is growing. Some people do report significant changes in water parameters and subsequent fish deaths when harvesting plants (surely only nitrate changes, unless the disturbance of the GB releases enough bio matter from breaking roots and such that an ammonia spike occurs from decomposition, maybe ph as well?), so I have been wondering if you would be better off just having extra growbed planting surface area. Having more shallower GBs than fewer deep ones would help mitigate this "harvesting shock" as one GB could be harvested while the others remain undisturbed.

SuperVeg

awesome video by the way....

Backyard Aquaponics A place to discuss aquaponics

Pyro's IBC system

Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics