Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Nice Zubin...

Last weekend I managed to get enough energy to do some work. I built a fork for the bucket in order to move the logs after dropping each tree. Hopefully I will be healthy enough this coming weekend to start clearing land.

Sorry to hear you haven't been feeling all that energetic, shame not to get to play with the new toy.

But I can understand lethargy, the heat here has slowed me down more lately than usual.

Well, there is a price for everything in life. I am paying for all the stuff I did at much younger age. Mostly in the Army!
Body has worn out! And there is no spare parts for it either!!

I just have to take my time, and then wait to recover before moving to other tasks. Back, shoulders, knees, and ................

Just read through all of this. Very, very cool.

Finding out that your tank was leaking must have been traumatizing. I'm dreading my first time, which it seems is pretty standard.

How many times per hour do your growbeds drain? I didn't see that covered anywhere. Just curious what you went with since obviously you thought this thing through.



One thing to note (I build and renovate houses)-- the reason wood prices are really high isn't inflation (aside from a few percent), it's natural market forces.

Six years ago we were building houses and producing lumber and materials and a really high rate. Then demand disappeared. For a while lumber cost less since there were tons of suppliers and no buyers. Over a few years, though, a lot of lumber companies shut down or drastically decreased production, reacting to the reduced demand that comes with a recession.

Now that housing has come back, demand is up again. Unfortunately companies have been rather risk averse lately and rather than anticipating an increase in demand, they're reacting. So right now prices are reflecting high demand and low supply.

It takes years for companies to vamp back up production, or for new ones to pop up take the place of closed ones. Once that happens we'll see prices return to normal levels.

Sucks until then. If you can wait a year for that big wood purchase I'd bet you save a bundle.

tedferret; the grow beds are filling and draining 24X7. I believe it takes about 30-40 minutes for them to fill, and about 5 minutes to drain. Never stopped there with stop watch and check it accurately.

I have placed my order for a saw mill. So, I will not pay for any lumber to the best of my ability. I have already for plenty of used power poles to use for posts and bases. According to what I know, the used power poles do not get attacked by bugs of any kind.

This is less than 1/2 of what I have already have.

Slow progress going on. In process of clearing an area to stack the logs.



And it came down.

Last weekend was all hard work fixing few issues.
I believe last time I harvested few fish using fishing hook and drop back few little ones into the fish tank, one or two of them did not make it. The dead fish never surfaced. So both of my pump, the one for cyclone filter and the other one that feeds the grow beds were stopped. So, I started my investigation and found fish bones had stopped both pumps.
The pump for cyclone were not repairable, but I did manage to take apart the external pump that feeds my grow beds. Took a lot of fin bones from the pump's fins.
Went to Lowes and bought another inside the fish tank pump for cyclone filter. Anyway, I just wanted to share with you that I am very happy with my external water pump, very simple and reliable. Easy to take apart and clean.
Here is a picture:

Have been having cool and cold days here. Water temp dropped to 54 degrees. I lost 5 fish. When water got to about 60 degrees, they stopped eating. I was crious to see what happen next.

So, I hooked up a water heater element from an old water heater, and dropped it in. Tilapia are happy and started eating and swimming fine again. This morning water temp was 72F

I think we are going to have a real cold winter! What the heck happened to this Global Warming?? I was happy to get some global warming coming this way!!

When I had tilapia they weren't happy below 70 and died at 50.