Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

....if you can keep the proper temps throughout the year: It seems BFS larvae eat about ANYTHING and ALL!
[I understand there is projects to use them for bio waste clean up....]

Feed them with the Chicken and Rabbit poo and then feed THEM to the fish!
By the time the circle hits the veggies - no more problem....

Cheers,

thjakits

That's a good idea!

There's such a huge bounty of post-Halloween pumpkins around (and even deer corn at one site, which has already started to rot) that I wish I had a BSF ranch and/or compost pile ready to go!

Anyone have any experience composting a seemingly endless (if only briefly available time-wise) amount of pumpkins?

I'll probably have to post this over in "equipment for sale" as well as here, but I wanted to mention that I've realized I'm never going to use my 300-gallon (I think) horizontal tank, and thus I'd like to get it out of my back yard.

Unlike most of my equipment which I have gotten for free, I actually paid something for this thing several years ago, so I thought I'd ask $100 (or best offer). OR we could make a trade - your experience and knowledge for my tank (see below)...





I am still interested in using my 450 gallon cone-bottom tank to build some sort of massive swirl filter, but left to my own devices that will probably never come about (largely due to its weight and my shoulders). I'm including a picture of that below, and if you can help me figure out the best way to plumb this thing as a swirl filter, and get it into place (by which I most likely mean "dragging"), I'd be happy to just give you the 300-gallon tank as either payment or as my way of saying thank you for the help.



It is in Frisco, TX.

Please let me know if you're interested, and thanks!

I'm planning on using bales of hay/straw to insulate my IBCs in the greenhouse this winter, and to that end I picked up 18 of them the other night. I'd planned on grabbing a great many more - they were (and still are) free at a couple of Halloween hay-labyrinths - but I hadn't really thought through the whole "it has been raining here a lot recently" factor, and the bales are now stupidly heavy!

I plan on grabbing a dozen or so more when I can find the time (and strength), but since they've already gotten internally hot because they've started to decompose, the question I need to ask is: I've heard these things can self-ignite, but is that "really" a problem or is it such a long-shot I shouldn't lose sleep over it?

I can probably rig soaker hoses across the bales if I have to, but I'd rather just let them slowly rot and be a source of heat if given my preferences...

Any words of experience would be greatly appreciated!

AS for how to plumb the swirl filter, I recommend looking up RFF (radial flow filter) before you do it. It may be easier to work with if the top were open though.

It is possible for Hay to get hot enough when composting to start a fire (which is why farmers take great pains to keep the hay dry because they don't want their barn to catch fire.)

Problem with using compost to heat a greenhouse is you either need a heaping massive quantity to pile up along the outsides of the sides of the greenhouse to help insulate and add a little heat over winter or if you use smaller amounts inside the greenhouse you probably need to keep turning and adding to it all winter to gain much since the HOT stage of composting a small pile isn't likely to last terribly long.

You might be better off building a compost pile with those pumpkins and hay/straw bales outside the greenhouse and then come next spring it might be ready to make a garden bed out of.

If you do decide to use the bales inside the greenhouse, get a bunch of compost thermometers to stick into them and if they get over 160 F you may need to pull them apart and/or water them to limit the risk of combustion.

Thanks for the advice, TCLynx - I think buying compost thermometers is the way I'll go because I really want to insulate my IBCs with bales this winter, at least to see how well it works out. Also, I'll look up the details on RFFs.

Thanks again!

Some have used the heat off compost piles via heat exchanger coils of pipe to create hot water. So yes, they'll get plenty hot. Indeed, I was going to put a pile of rotting hay over the pipes in the still uncovered addition excavation to keep the pipes under there from freezing. My dually dump bed Dodge is also as yet unfinished, we blame the efforts to get our aquaponics project online. Anywho, now I'm thinking about sawdust from a mill nearby. It still gets hot, but I think or hope I'll be able to waterproof it so as not to exasperate the heat issue as it is right next to our house! I don't know though, TCLyncs is totally correct it may not be a good idea at all, and just too risky.

I'd love to have access to tons of free clean sawdust (by which I mean "not mixed with horse manure"), but I don't know of a source local to me. Thus: envy!

Good luck to you with that, and thanks for the advice!

"Good luck to you with that, and thanks for the advice!" You are most welcome and thanks. Sometimes writing something out helps cement the idea in my head. Thank you TCLyncs for your input as well.

Most common source of hay barn fires is a rotting or wet bale. They can get so hot, that the surrounding dry bales start to burn, far over 200 F.
If you just stack them one over a nother, you do not have to worry, they will never get that hot, just warm.
They just radiate the heat to the outside, which they can not if they are in a large stack of hay.

Pumpkin, smash them and than pile them up. They have enough juice, that the inside of the pile will start the process, you should turn the pile once a month or every other month, to get oxygen into the center.
If you can mix in some other compostable, leaves, manure, gras clippings ect. you will get a better composting going. You got some wet and warm weather coming this winter, should be a great time for composting

There may be a difference between the temperatures buildup of rotting hay as opposed to straw.I could be wrong. Important thing is dryness with strawbale building. Hay has much more bits a pieces of leaves to compost.

I've now been reassured that the bales I've acquired are indeed "straw" and not "hay". I guess that's a plus, since I'm not using them as animal feed. But speaking of animal feed, these ARE infested with small black crickets, which the chickens completely LOVE! The chickens are acting like I've built a fun-house and laid a banquet in the center of it.

little black crickets are at infestation levels up here as well.

I guess "get some chickens" would be my only advice then...

It's working for me!