Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

There seems to be a distinct excess of enjoying your property and a lack of slaving day and night on your AP system G2N!

You noticed that, eh?

Actually, for the past couple of months I've been working an extra job to help pay for the greenhouse, etc. for the AP system, so I haven't had much time off. Last week, the last week of my second job, I (naturally) got sick (turns out what I'm always telling my patients is correct: one day off every other week is NOT sufficient to keep one healthy), so I'm not back up to full steam yet. I have this whole week off, though, and am hoping to get things moving again -- got a whole stack (as BW says) of half-finished projects waiting for my attention, and hopefully I can plow far enough through them to actually at least do some IBC cutting to make myself feel like it's really happening.

Wish me luck!

Shoot. I was enjoying having you hang out here. I hope you'll still drop in for a visit now and then!

I have been learning more about slime mold tonight. They are pretty fascinating. After watching this video I'm wondering if the ones in my back yard might help me with figuring out the best way to plumb my AP system.

The slime mould in my fish tank grows for a bit, then breaks into lumps. Decides on who is the leader (my favorite bit), then forms a conga line and moves around in their little collective until the area is clean.

How do they decide who to follow?

From what I understand, at the end of their parade, after a few days, they form a bit of a tower, and the ones at the top get to throw spores around. Pity the ones at the bottom, but perhaps they are genetically identicle or something so they dont mind so much.

Amazing beasties.

I wonder if the leader is chosen based on policies, charisma, or a game of tag. I realise there may be other methods, but those are the ones I wonder about.

More pictures!

I'll have to take more of the slime mold. It's moving along (about six inches total, since I found it) and going through life cycle changes, from fluffy white when I first found it, to sort of a transparent jelly today, with some brownish areas starting to form at the leading edge. Very cool stuff!

Meanwhile, here are some projects I'm making progress on:

Rainwater catchment system for watering the goats/chooks:
I should have painted the siding before I put the barrel up, but when I went to get the bucket of paint the previous owners had left, it was empty, and I didn't get around to taking in a color sample to get it matched right away...and then the rain started.

You can't see it in the photo, but the roof is corrugated tin, sloped from front to back, with about a 6-inch overhang. They don't make rain gutters for mounting on such setups, at least not that I could find, so it's kind of jury-rigged. The end where the goats are was kind of a covered "porch" off the garden shed; I'm (very slowly) working on enclosing it to make a goat/chicken shed.


Goat-proof chicken feeder:
When the only tool you have is a reciprocating saw, everything has curvy lines. Hopefully the chickens won't care. It's kind of a proof of concept prototype anyway...unless it works, in which case it will stay in service for as long as it lasts. I'm actually getting better at cutting straightish lines--or, at least, they look that way until you butt two of them together. I had to caulk some of the seams where they were more -ish than straight, so I can't test it until the caulk cures, and it's cold and wet here now, so it's taking a while. Anyway, the idea is you fill the box with feed...the floor slants down toward the front, where the holes are, and there's a slanted shelf that goes across a few inches up (barely visible through the holes) to act as a baffle so the food will, theoretically, just fall down a little at a time. Then the chooks can stick their heads through the holes to eat, but the goats can't. Theoretically.

The thing I don't know is whether five feeding holes will be enough for eight chickens. As soon as I can tell who's cockerels and who's pullets, two of them will be going to live with someone else, which should help lower the competition a little.

I hope.

Chickens feed at their own pace, it all depends on the pecking order. Even if you had eight holes if the boss lady does not want you eating while she is you will not be eating. Five is plenty just watch them feed a few times to see if you need bigger holes.

Nice ckicken feeder!

To cut strait lines with a reciprocating saw, just clamp a 2x4 to the wood to act as a fence.

I tried that...but it turns out my $29 Harbor Freight reciprocating saw doesn't have any parts to put against the 2x4 to hold it straight. The collar is rubber, and the metal guard the blade sticks through swivels from side to side to allow for angled cutting. Argh.

But for $29, I can't really complain. If I wanted quality, I should have been willing to pay for it, right?

Deploying the goat-proof (hopefully) chook feeder:

Turns out the goats know all about feed bags. When I emptied the bag of chicken feed into the feeder and tossed it aside, all four of them stampeded the bag, which kept them occupied while I showed the chickens the new buffet. Jezebel ended up with the bag over her head, and tottered in circles for a while until I took pity on her and pulled it off.

Her bag experience taught her nothing about keeping her nose out of things, though; she shoved right through the chickens to have a go at the feeder. Apparently I made the baffle tight enough to keep the feed pretty far toward the back, though, because although the chickens weren't having any trouble getting to it, the goats didn't seem to even be able to reach it with their tongues.

I say this because they gave up surprisingly quickly, and went back to their own buffet. I think if they'd gotten a taste of the chicken feed they would have kept at it longer.

I'm thinking I may need to put some sort of metal plates in the spaces between the holes in the chicken feeder, or eventually the goats could gnaw through the wood there. But aside from that, it appears to be a success!

Or just paint some hot chilly powder around the wood openings. (Or even spray a little critter ridder around the wood openings.) See the hot peppers don't affect birds but it tends to burn most mammals so be careful around touching it yourself.

In other news, Hubs and I started on the greenhouse today. First we pulled the wood off of one end. It's not obvious from this angle, but if you look for it, you can tell how off-center the door was. Instead of a centered 4' door as called for on the plans, it was more like 2' from one side and 4' from the other.

Then we pulled off the rim boards down the south side and put them back on correctly. I didn't think to get a "before" photo, but for some reason he had attached them level instead of along the grade, so there were huge gaps underneath where each 2x4 overlapped with the next one as they stairstepped their way down the slope.

Also, take a look at the other end we haven't pulled off yet -- see the gap in the door? It's not open. That's actually how it's framed.

Here's the first end going back up *properly*. Note the angled knee rail, it was missing before. The end bow is now actually perpendicular to the ground, and supported by the angled pipe, so it won't blow over in a windstorm. We also installed the baseboard that was supposed to have been there, and have started applying the new pressure-treated outdoor grade plywood, and anchoring it securely to the frame and baseboard instead of just having it hanging there flapping in the wind.

One thing I really can't fix is that he put the whole thing too close to the landscape timbers on this side, so there's no way to install the rim boards and attach the plastic properly. The boards are actually screwed into the landscape timbers instead of the greenhouse bows, and the plastic is caught between them, which will make replacing it a pain when it wears out. Hopefully it will last the 6-7 years it's supposed to. I was worried about water running into the greenhouse when it rains, since it flows down the curve of the plastic and then into the crack between the landscape timbers and plastic, but it's been raining for weeks, and no puddles, so the drainage here must be good enough to handle it. Which is a relief, but I also wonder how long it will be before the landscape timbers rot out.

Ooh, good idea!