Pressed for Space System

sarsnavy05

After much one-sided debate and one too many times dropping $$$ on one part hydroponic nutrients, I decided to reorganize the 9 cu ft of space devoted to herbs and cram one more grow bed into my already packed plant room. Why aquaponics this time? Besides being a trial run for bigger things down the road, it seems like the next logical challenge after a few years of success with hydroponics systems, alone.

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File comment: The Plan (retroactive)

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After cycling the tank and fussing with the setup about a dozen times, the results are posted below:

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File comment: Grow bed

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netab32

welcome sarsnavy05 :wave1:

Looks like a nice little system... what sort of fish and plants are you going to grow?

Dave Donley

Welcome sarsnavy05, I'm just down the street from you!

sarsnavy05

Right... I probably should include a few details. The whole idea with this system is to scale things down and make due with the space available. In this case, the space available is 9 or less sq ft that was being used by another hydroponic system which wasn't effectively using it's landscape. For a 110 sq bedroom on the 3rd floor of a townhouse with no backyard that's already almost wall to wall with lettuce rafts, tomato DWCs, flood and drain trays, and autosprouters, every inch counts!

The setup is a 40gal wide profile tank with 27gal sump and ~8 sq ft grow bed. The sump is filled to about 15 gal to provide startup for the growbed before water begins to cycle. In addition to the growbed, the sump also provides a biofilter to filter off debris and suspended solids that are pulled into the overflow from the tank.

As of 21MAR, the only residents are the support staff (4 mollies and 3 golden algae eaters). These are pretty much the test pilots before the dozen or so White Nile Tilapia fingerlings arrive.

The expectations? Primarily, nutrients for the plants growing up above (ruby and gold chard, calendula, capsicum, etc. :drunken:

) Since my orders are up in 2 years, i'm not expecting a massive haul of fish, beyond maybe two rotations or so.
This is more as a learning experience for larger scale ops at some point. So far, the BYAP website has been more than helpful as far as considerations and parameters for starting up a system!

Dave,
Cool cool, that's just about an hour away from here.

netab32

Wow, sounds like you use your space VERY well! :notworthy:

I get the feeling after trialling AP for a while you'll end up changing all your hydro systems over, as its so much easier to just feed the fish and let the rest take care of itself to a degree... are you away for long periods?... Is that a concern?

Dave Donley

Hey SARS, downstreamdave's otterponics setups may be interesting to you, on one side of the room he has a hydro setup and on the other an AP setup:

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... =18&t=8628

sarsnavy05

@netab32: I totally wouldn't mind changing the majority of my systems in the room over to aquaponic based designs! :thumbright:

The original plan for this setup involved placing the F/T on the bottom rack and routing the drain from my top growbed to flow through my other 2'x4' F&D bed (off to the right of the AP setup). Fortunately someone talked some sense into me prior to venturing into something overly complicated. I should be inheriting another 55gal tank from my fiance when she moves up here, so it seems like the perfect opportunity to branch out.

To answer the 2nd part, the fish are the one weak link in the cycle (not counting the siphon...). Im rarely away from home for more than a week at a time, however travel pops up randomly and often with short notice! Just a couple of weeks ago, I found out on a friday that I would be flying out to the west coast for a week on the following monday! That wasn't a problem with the hydro systems, although it left me with only two days to harvest and clean the 16 heads of lettuce that were already growing and process a good 2lbs of wheatgrass prior to leaving. So for the short term, I'll need to find a way to automate the fish feeding over the travel days. Most of the retail automatic feeders have pretty terrible reviews, so that doesn't look like an option.

I'm sure someone on here has come up with a way around this, but i'll figure something out.

sarsnavy05

Dave, (lotta folks named dave here :think:

)

Those setups are pretty cool! I am wasting 40 cu ft under my lettuce table and 80 over it... It would be hard to resist doing something like that to better use the space over there.

keith

nice setup sars (search and rescue?) dave!
i wish i had a little more head room in my basement to do multi levels!

netab32

Actually I wouldnt worry about being away for a week... some people leave their fish unfed for 2 -4 weeks and prefer to do that than asking someone to feed them as there are a few stories of overfeeding and coming home to sick or dead fish and stinking water!

Suppose it would depend on type of fish but havent read anything to suggest that it makes any difference so far (although ornamentals might tho? :dontknow:

)

You'll be right... chuck a feed in before you go and they should be just about jumping out to say G-day by the time you get home :lol:

... maybe try it with 'canary' fish and see how you go?

Hope that helps!

sarsnavy05

Hehe, sounds good to me... I don't exactly have a history of killing my fish; however, now there's significantly more at stake than just replacing an oscar or two from the LFS.

I didn't even consider the food blocks! My travel plans for next week look like they'll be cancelled :headbang:

so I'll run a test to see how well the few who are in there now can do over the week on freezedry blocks or pellets.
Thanks for the advice!

sarsnavy05

keith wrote:

nice setup sars (search and rescue?) dave!
i wish i had a little more head room in my basement to do multi levels!

I wish I had a basement...!

Here's what I'm working with:

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File comment: Plant Room Layout

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BTW: SAR=Samuel A. Robinson :wink:

phivtoosyx

The system looks good!

What type of lights are you using (t5s?). I'm planning an indoor system and am trying to decide if I can use t5 floros or I have to use HIDs. Whats your opinion/experience on the different lighting options.

sarsnavy05

Bottom Line Up Front: Plants will grow in whatever light you provide. ::hears a dozen or so of the HP/AP purists fainting) The quality of your plants will depend on the quality of the light provided.

The lights in my setup are pretty much as marked in the diagram... Mostly T5 Flourescents or compact flourescents with the exception of 1 HID.

My question to you is: what do you want to grow?
If you plan to grow a small herb garden, any flourescent or even incandescent bulb will work.

If you plan to grow leafy greens like chard, lettuce, or basil, most flouros will work. The note on this is that tailoring the light you provide toward the "bluer" end of the specturm (as opposed to the warmer reddish end) will be more efficient. There are many opinions, but IN MY CASE, using an appropriatly sized T5 lighting fixture has produced larger and more resiliant leafy basil and lettuce than the other T8 and T12 flourescent lights ive used.

If you're goal is to grow tomatoes or peppers or other fruiting plants or denser leafy plants, i would recommend either a larger array of T5 flourescents with a mix of warm and cool spectrum bulbs, or a comparably powered HID fixture. I have tomatoes that are growing and fruiting now under a 200W CFL, however the plants are decently spaced out and are getting nice even light. For my peppers which are pretty densely packed into a 2'x4' area, I use a 400W HPS/MH light. Aside from the efficiency of HID (not getting into the details :shifty:

its getting early), the penetration of the light makes it more suitable for this arrangement.

These are some generalities about lighting... If you provide your goals for your indoor garden, there's a small army of people willing to help you out with your specifc needs! :cheers:

phivtoosyx

Thanks for the reply. Sorry I missed the light detail in the diagram. I normally read this forum on a phone and so its easy to miss stuff. I'm glad to hear you are growing tomatoes under a 200W CFL!! What type of tomatoes are they?

I would like to grow green leafy vegetables and peppers all the time and would love to grow tomatoes during the winter. I'm trying to avoid HID mainly because of the heat. My ceilings aren't real high and I don't see how I'm going to keep a HID light 3-4 feet off my plants when they will be sitting about 3 feet off the ground above the fish tank.

I'm thinking of getting a light setup that consists of 8 4ft t5 tubes to cover either 16 square fee (4x4) or around 12 square feet (4.5x2.5) It sounds like this would grow most about anything decently but it might have trouble growing tomatoes. But, if you have fruiting tomatoes under a 200w CFL than this may work fine.

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Pressed for Space System

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A place to discuss aquaponics