Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Anyone heard form Dan yet??? I guess the lights are still out in Texas. Along with phones, cable, gas stations, ect.

I hope Dan and his family are alright, it has been some time since he posted!

Sure has BRB... ditto...

Dan Last visited: Tue Sep 02, 2008 11:43 pm

Three weeks and still no Dan, I have seen a lot of pictures from Ike and boy what a mess. A lot of men from our plant went to Beaumont and Baytown and they are still asking for more. Baytown is cranking up but Beaumont went under deep. Just the roof of the Admin building was sticking out. It'll be interesting to see what photo's Dan has to show.

Hey DDM wondering about ya!

I'm back Been busy. The storm blew out the internet antenna and made all my plants lean over at a 45 degree angle..

So, for an update...

Fall is in the air, winter is coming and I have had some lessons learned.
My tank floated up as I said before, that dried out a lot of bacteria, I had to operate at a lower flood level till I could get my tank reset all the way. Then my pump impeller broke off for no reason and I did not notice that for a day. I replaced the pump (boy I am really starting to love those PVC quick splice connectors!) and then I notice some of the small fish started dieing. I checked the ammonia nitrite, and pH. The ammonia was high and the pH was 6 or lower. So I added some pickling lime, but did so to fast and killed three more fish. I added 25 pounds of crushed coral to help keep the pH up; which has the advantage of letting be now see how many black fish I have in the black tank. After few days more fish died so I checked the incoming water to see if the bacteria had been stopped by the cool nights and days; the returning water was reading 0,0,160. So I checked each tank and found that one tank had high ammonia. Even though I was running a cycle every hour that was not enough water exchange for 152 fish in a 300 gallon tank. I lost about 12 good sized fish and all but on of my new baby fish(20). Now after separating the fish by color no single tank is overloaded and everyone is doing fine. I have decided to selectively breed by color as the black and white fish are MUCH bigger than the orange fish. So much bigger, in-fact, that I am going to feed the orange ones to the worms. Speaking of worms, my soldier fly thing has processed all the waste I could get and reduced my feed bill by 50%.. Also, I had siliconed window screen over the drains in the tanks and the screen was having a problem clogging when I fed the fish a basil plant and I cut up a length of pipe and sliced the end several times so it would fit inside the drain and drilled a lot of holes in the pipe. So now I have no more tank over flow issues.

So far, everything I have planted in the AP system has done well. Some of the cyan peppers I planted did not grow many peppers, but the peppers they did grow were twice the size of any other cyan pepper I have ever seen! They mush have been hot too as when I fed on to the goat he started sneezing, lol. Now I'm afraid to taste them..

-Okra, grew into trees and mad more than I will eat, need to make gumbo BR Bill.
-Fancy lettuce mix grew like make, but I dont like fancy lettuce, gona stick to what I like.
-Mint, Yes I know, but it did keep the nitrates down
-Basil, me and fish love it, grows into trees
-Peppers, huge
-Summer Squash, did well, but to as productive as I would like
-Green squash, going strong
-Cucumbers, Grew like mad, never had such sweet cucumbers, EVER!
-Tomatoes, eaten/rotted by stink bugs
-Swiss Chard, awesome producer, think I will skip the lettuce and go with this
-Stevia, very nice leaf to snack on and make tea with, grew well and is going to seed.
-Vine Peach (native rock melon) taste weird, but does ok.
-Strawberries, do well, but moisture ruins fruit sitting on rocks

With winter coming and no funds to build a green house I am building an indoor filter/biofilter system to keep the water clean through winter. I am also installing a pellet stove to keep the fish warm. Between these two things I hope to keep the fish eating all winter.

YAY! You're still alive! We were getting worried about you!

Glad to hear about things, keep up the reports!

Sorry to hear about the fish Dan-d.... but glad you and the system made it through the blow...

BTW, Thanks for the warm welcome back!

Winter is coming and my water temps are down to 57. Not great for tilapia. So, I finally got the time and money to build my indoor poly-geyser bio filter. This will allow me to operate indoors over winter with partial water changes for lower nitrate levels. I do plan of circulating water to the grow bed once a day to keep the plants fed.

A polygeyser filter was going cost me over $4,000 USD to have the bio filter capacity for 1.5 pounds of feed per day. I purchased the "replacement" media for the polygeyser and used a couple $5 55 gallon drums. The bead media cost me $264; about $300 with shipping. I bought a deep water air pump and that cost me $55. I had the pipe laying around and the uniseals cost under a dollar each. So the whole filter cost me about $373; a tenth of the commercial cost!

Now, I just have to hope the bio filter gets active before my water gets to cold

If you are interested in what my poly-geyser bio filter looks like then you can see a video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7qwbRfMrf4

If nothing else its a lot of fun to listen to the filter purge

Oops forgot to add the water pump $88 USD..

Good Luck keeping the fish warm and well over winter. I've found that the tilapia are eating very little with a water temp of 70 F but I won't be able to keep the water much warmer than that for the next few months without some solar heating.

Keep up the reports on how your system does over winter!

Cool filter Dan - not sure I understand it 100%, but will look again sometime to get my head right around it.