Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I agree with cutting the centers out of the lids so the containers stay strong, the lid helps the sides not to warp.

So you will just slowly take worms from this "hotel" and put them into everything you can GBs, dirt beds, etc. The motivation here is to populate quickly?

My thoughts were to place them directly to GBs, but now that I see what you're working on I realize this might have other motives like composting or long term population supplementing.

OR... I am over assuming the possibility that earth worms could reproduce and thrive in GBs on root decay and AP sluge alone?? I was surprised to read they can live in the sump tank underwater provided there is enough aeration.

Finally I have a natural population of large night crawler worms on our property, but I understand those are not as suitable for AP as the smaller sized earth worms. This is related to the media used and space and weight they need to navigate through, or the diet perhaps? I'm eventually going to be reading up on worms when I get further along myself.

You know, I haven't really thought about what I'm going to do with excess worms. I suppose I'll add them to future expansion. I was more concerned with collecting the castings.

From my experience with worms they are very self managing with numbers, so taking a few out at different stages will keep em producing, then they can be used elsewhere which is tops. Haven't got a worm bin set up currently, but castings and even more so worm tea are gold!

Made a little video today giving a tour of our backyard garden. I hadn't had my coffee yet so there are a few miss-statements where I describe kale as basil and so forth. You get the idea. Anyway, pleased offer any advice you might think of. Thanks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dao9Tn_ ... e=youtu.be

Well done video, that was actually pretty relaxing I feel like I just spent a cool 25 minutes in Hawaii. Its nice sometimes to see AP work without all the technical narration, and instead focus on the fruit and veg!

Thanks. The organic fertilizer I mentioned in the video is Tomato-Tone available on Amazon.

Added a small air pump to the fish tank yesterday. The pump is undersized for the tank but it was the largest one they had in stock at PetSmart. It is suppose to be rated for a 100 gallon tank. Regardless, it adds some O2 to the water and the fish seem to enjoy swimming through the bubbles.

The hose is hooked to a long air stone I already had. I had a problem with the stone flipping over and traveling around the floor of the tank. It also wanted to partially float so I cut of few pieces of plastic from a piece of IBC scrap and zip-tied some wide feet to the bottom of the stone to keep it upright. I was hoping the plastic would hold it down but the bugger still wanted to float. So, I found a plastic canister I had laying around. I drilled a few small holes into the canister so I could zip-tie it to one of the plastic feet. I then filled the canister with black cinder from one of the grow beds. In the picture, the canister is laying on its side. The green thing is the lid of the canister. All seems to be keeping in place now.

This green squash is going nuts! Here is a side-by-side comparison of 4 days growth.
This thing has nearly tripled in size since I made that video! I'm almost tempted to just
let it go to see just how big it will get.

It seemed my #2 bed wasn't draining properly so I set out to investigate.

Amazing amount of roots... it looks like a piece of rope. Reminds me of how they force watermelon to grow in a square box.

If we look at the photos of the squash above we can see the leafs degrading from 12-4 to 12-8 and then to 12-21 on the video. But from the size of the squash (fruit) I have to ask if its near the end of its grow cycle anyway?

And I agree the canopy/privacy element is nice, but you can try lots of other substitutes that can do the same affect for you. Personally I would go for sweet potatoes just because they're delicious.

Thanks. I had tried cucumber and pole beans when I first set up the system but they didn't do well. They were heavily assaulted by aphids and I don't think the newness of the system provided enough nutrient to help the plants defend themselves. The pole beans just withered whether there were aphids or not. I may try again on both. But first, I want to give this squash a chance to recover. I'll give it a few weeks and see if the foliage comes back. There are still three nice fruits on the vines as well.

"A farmer depends on himself, and the land and the weather. If you're a farmer, you raise what you eat, you raise what you wear, and you keep warm with wood out of your own timber. You work hard, but you work as you please, and no man can tell you to go or come. You'll be free and independent, son, on a farm.”
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy

Looking good!

Just a little update. I haven't been on the forums much lately. Work got kind of busy so I haven't been devoting much time to the AP. We are still harvesting and enjoying everything we get. Aloha!

[youtube]AlgqBO_rSIw?t=1s[/youtube]

Looks good!