Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Testing has been kept up regularly on Mondays but with garden week, monthly workshop and installs we have been pretty busy. I didn't actually realise that the pics hadn't been posted up. I shall add it to the to do list, customers have to come first though
I can tell you that the chillis are going crazy and the fish are feeding well if that is any consolation.

Trial System Data & Progress Photos 4-04-11

I'd be calling that a draw, especially matching the feed totals to the pictures.

Pretty much... But the bloody fish in the first system just don't want to eat like the others. It's almost like we need to swap all the fish from one system to another see if that makes a difference..


There's still some more pics of harvest and another months test results to come, should be up tomorrow.

Personally, the way it's going, if things don't change mush over the next 6 months or so I reckon we will be changing all our systems to constant flood..

Are there worms in the beds?? Autosiphon beds drain quick and I have found lots of worms in the fish tank when there have been no fish in it. Maybe they are adding to the food in the autosiphon system,

[quote="earthbound"]


There's still some more pics of harvest and another months test results to come, should be up tomorrow.
quote]
Does that mean I have to find where I might have put them? And before the morning

hahahahahaha......

Well she can put up the pics from today I guess...

I still say you need to hook all the systems together or do an experiment where all three types of beds are getting their water from the same fish tank so you can get a more accurate read on if the plants really do better in one than the others without the extra variables of them being separate systems with fish perhaps not performing the same.

But yea, re-confirms my estimate that "it all works." Some stuff might work slightly better in or for different situations but in general it all works. And the constant flood has the extra benefit of more stable temperatures.

You could just ask for submissions from members. there must be a stack of decent musicians out there in BYAP land that would be happy to give you their music for video usage. I would be ...

if I could play anything

I just found/finished reading this thread.

Thanks everyone.

As usual from this community and BYAP, an excellent thread.

It might be interesting to see a graph of temperatures from each bed every 10 minutes over a couple of hours. I wonder if there is a large variation in temperature consistency. The temp results look a little strange to me, probably as a result of just when in the cycle the temperature happened to be taken. It's possible that the average temperature of the systems is not reflected in the tests because of this.

Temperature and variations in any given hour could perhaps explain the difference in system performance. Plants and fish.

A few people throughout the thread suggested running the systems from the same water source, and as much as that would be a worthwhile test, it might not show up the influence of things like temperature variations.

things I wish I knew...

The environment the fish live in changes the feed requirements. Temperature does, but does pH change fish performance and thus nutrient output?

Also does anyone have any idea of what might have created the pH fluctuations in these later results ie after everything was cycled?
Even after the additives, the systems each behaved a bit differently. It looks like the size of the bacteria colony is always changing.

All we need is a flood and drain, constant flood, timed, siphon system! I'll run it through the invention engine and see what it comes up with

Got one already

"The environment the fish live in changes the feed requirements. Temperature does, but does pH change fish performance and thus nutrient output?"

Yes it does. So does alkalinity. You will see this being rather important in the fish farming industry.

You are correct that a combined set up would not reflect things like the temperature characteristics, pH variations, nutrient variations, or evaporation among the different methods. It would only show how the plants respond in the beds with all those variables removed.

It would require some pretty good data logging to track the temperatures as they relate to cycle timing and such. Easier said than done though but it would be very useful information.

the variations in pH I expect might be impacted some by water top up and pH correction variations as well as feed rate so that one gets complex to track but it is a powerful variable.

Trial System Data & Progress Photos 17-05-11

I guess that's the thing, this trial is not meant to be a narrow reference of which style of bed irrigation works best, but rather as a system, as a whole what is going to work better.. If you have all of them on the one fish tank then there are feedbacks that aren't going to show up because they are all just one tank, with one lot of fish.

See if they were all on the same tank we wouldn't have known that there seems to be an issue with system 1 causing the fish to be less hungry.