Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

As for Mythbusters and fecal coliform, I saw that one. Truth is, it is just about everywhere. The testing I'm doing is more to confirm that urine will kill it. Obviously from the first round of tests, bacteria in fresh urine put into the test tube with the bacteria food tablet manages to survive and multiply at least for the first two days untill the reading. The aged urine has managed to kill off enough of the bacteria that the test comes up negative for it. I suspect that the contaminated urine that was aged will come up negative as well.

In my original test system there was little if any smell from the cycling system. Once diluted the odor from urine vanishes quickly especially if there is aeration. I expect that the cycling stalled as the pH dropped and I did nothing to correct it. In the future, I will be using well water for the larger system/test since we have rather hard water here and the buffering will reduce the amount of additives I need for pH adjustment/stabilization.

Results for the contaminated and then aged urine are in. The aging of the urine seems to have killed off the bacteria.

So, my conclusion from this, aging the urine till it reaches a ph of 9 will take care of any minor contamination by fecal coliform which is the primary danger of collecting urine from healthy individuals.

It should still be noted that there are some potential pathogens that can survive such treatment so collecting urine for use in a home system should be restricted to healthy individuals. (I have read that round worm eggs can of course I have also read that round worm eggs survive going through sewage treatment plants as well and hot composting is about the only proper way to dispose of them.)

Nice research TC

How long did it take the urine to reach ph 9?
Strange isn't it that we associate unpleasant smells with dirty/germs and yet its the reverse (sort of).

pints for doing the tests!

Just caught up on this thread.

Length of time required for stored urine to reach a pH of 9 will vary depending on several factors. I have seen it happen in as little as a week to ten days. The sample I contaminated to testing purposes went from fresh and contaminated to a pH of 9 in ten days. It could also take much longer (on the order of weeks or even months) depending on the body chemistry of the donor.

Important factors may include the amount of air space in the container. I don't think you want much air space in the container for a couple reasons. First, it lets more of the ammonia escape solution into the air which may slow the process. Second, the more ammonia in the air of the bottle, the worse the smell when you open the bottle. Remember that ammonia is rather toxic which is why our bodies change much of it to urea to more safely excrete it. It isn't something we want to be breathing lots of. In large scale urine collection systems this issues is of concern. For our purposes, the amount of ammonia in the air of a juice bottle is really more of a "yuck, stinky" factor.

I have several bottles that I am tracking to see when they reach 9.

I have thought of doing tests of stored urine but cant find bottles with large enough necks

If your aim has gotten that poor with age, F&F, I'm sure something can be arranged. After all, TC (who is of the feminine persuasion, I'll point out) is able to manage.

Get a funnel

nice comeback JP LOL

Just a post that is in My system thread but I thought it should also be referenced here.



I'm hoping that once my main system is up and cycled with fish, perhaps I can split the Barrel-Ponics unit off and use it to test the PeePonics idea for growing some plants and such to see what issues might arise from longer term Hummonia cycling. I don't expect that it would take much urine to run such a system.

I've been outlining the progress of the fishless cycling on my Main system tread so this is just a little updade about that. So far I only added the one dose of aged Hummonia or pee if you will. As of last night, there was still 1 ppm of ammonia in the system.

At some point I still intend to devote at least one system to pee ponics just to see how it goes. I expect that it will do just fine. I wouldn't be suprised if one dose per day from one person is enough to grow quite a lot of plants. Trick will be to pee in a bottle once a day for a few weeks before starting such a system so that there will be a daily supply of aged urine.

I did not read all this thread. I am sorry, but as soon as I understood what was being said, immediately the view of me peeing in my new aquaponics system came to mind - with our workers wondering what in the world I was doing...

Though my Spanish is very good now, I am not sure it is up to explaining this one.

Maybe I can teach our dog how to do it?

Perhaps you could they have such poor aim, or maybe it's good aim depending on the point of view and purpose of the marking.

Using a bottle makes it a little easier to dose the system without it being too awkward. If anyone sees you pouring a bottle of yellow liquid into the system, you just tell them it is special fish safe fertilizer. If anyone sees you peeing in the bottle, you should have shut the door.

Saving it in bottles has the added benefit of being a small storage container in which to age the urine, allowing it to reach a ph of 9 to kill off things like e. coli.

TCL,
I really have to commend you on your research. You have certainly taken the effort to determine the facts on the E Coli issue and I have good confidence in your results. I like your "fish-safe fertillizer" line as well.