Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It took about two weeks to cycle with ammonia for me as well. It's nice on the not-torturing-animals front.

Well the overnight temps cooled off a bit and perhaps slowed down the bacteria as I still have Nitrite 24 hours after dosing. Only a small amount.

Anyway
last dose was 7:30 pm yesterday

Today at 6:45 am
pH 7.2
Ammonia .5
Nitrite 1
Nitrate 10

Today 7pm
pH 6.9
Ammonia 0
Nitrite .25
Nitrate 10

Gave it another 250 mL (aprox) dose at 7:30 pm today 2/10/2008
We will see what we got as of tomorrow after work. Oh, since the pH made it below 7, I put some mashed up egg shells in a paint strainer bag and suspended it in the flush tank. Interesting, I thought there was a chance with my water that the pH wouldn't manage to fall below 7 unless there was a large influx of rain water or offset it.

For the last few days I've been dosing about 250 mL of hummoina each evening and by the next eve the ammonia is back to 0 and Nitrite has been getting closer to 0 each time. The Nitrate however is falling too so I suppose the plants are using that up too.
Dosed last even at about 7:30 om and the readings today at 6:30 pm were
pH 7.2 (and that is with some egg shells in the system for the past 24 hours.)
Ammonia 0
Nitrite between 0 and .25
Nitrate Between 5 and 10 but closer to 5

I dosed 250 mL again after testing and I think I will up the dose a bit starting tomorrow eve to see if the plants would like more nitrate.
Remembering this is a system unlikely to see any fish though a little of the gravel from it will be kick starting the big system that gets fish eventually.

Been following your experiment(s) TC and like the results...keep up the postings

Will do Ell,
Thanks

And this ends my detailed test descriptions of the Barrel-pee-ponic system on this thread. Since it was my first system cycling I had it here (also in the beginning, I didn't know I was going to use it for pee-ponics.) Anyway, I have done consolidation posts of the cycling process of that system into page 8 of the PeePonics Thread in Member Systems. I will commence reporting readings and info for that system there.

I picked up some lumber to finish building some big grow beds for the pond/tank system today. It got really windy/blustery out with scattered rain so I only barely managed to unload the wood and cover it up without being blown away. Hopefully I can get some work done on the beds tomorrow. If the weather is still nasty (had mental images of becoming a kite with the sheet of plywood as I tried to move it and the plastic was hilarious), Perhaps I'll have to order the pond liner and gravel instead of building outside.

Weather sunny but cool today.
When I went to order a roll of liner from a local place, they informed me they are going out of business. Real bummer! Anyway, went searching the net for the best deal I could find on a narrow roll of EDPM pond liner and ordered it.
It is only 5.5' wide so I will alter my bed dimensions slightly.
I did the basic framing for one of the grow beds and cut parts for the 2nd.
Beds are 8' long (93" inside dimension)
34.5" wide (32" inside dimension)
12" high inside dimension.
for 20 2/3 cu feet or about 154 gallons.
I plan on getting two of these going quickly with immediate plans for 2 more.
That will be 4 beds to give me a 1:1 ratio.

As things progress I expect to hook up various other grow beds like a few more barrels, some troughs, a pond plant water bed (will probably be at the end of the pond tank and built using the wire mesh with liner tank method.)

Here is a clipping from another thread (about the true cost of blue barrels)
that kinda applies here.
:arrow:
Ok anyway. Here is the price difference I worked out for aprox 600 gallons worth of grow bed for my two different options I looked at.
12 blue barrels (that would be 24 half barrels) and the assorted stands and plumbing needed would come to about $1080.50 US the way I was looking at doing it. That is about $1.80 per gallon of grow bed.

The pallet stand plywood framed liner beds I was looking at doing, I would need 4 of said beds to get my aprox 600 gallons worth would come to aprox $648.06 for all assorted plumbing, framing and liner. That is about $1.08 per gallon contained.

Grand difference between two methods, $0.72 per gallon or $432 total difference on project.

In the past two days I've gotten a few things done for AP. I built two big wood boxes, ordered some pond liner, and researched gravel.

The cheapest gravel options don't really cut it as they are recycled crushed concrete or limestone. Next better option won't work as I'm not about to pay for a 22 ton truck load. So, I think Pebble Junction and their 1/2" brown river rock is going to be the way to go (it happens to be the exact same stuff I got by the bag for the barrel ponics system.) At least I know it is easy to wash. Anyway, Pebble Junction is an easy place to shop as they have a price list and a show yard and are able to tell a person how much it costs for delivery etc.

The price on the 1/2" brown river rock is $50.10 a ton and they can deliver 6 tons for $95 delivery fee. So that would be $395.60 + tax. 6 ton is about 4.8 cubic yards which should give me some extra for barrels and other stuff after filling the 4 big grow beds.

Here are some pictures of the wood boxes I built, I expect I need to do a little leveling of the pallets under them and if there are issues with the sides bowing out, that can be dealt with pretty easily.

is it just me, or is there some "sag" in the middle of the two beds?

The one bed is very un-level which is probably making them both look way off.

right, good, so I haven't had that much to drink yet

when is the gravel arriving?

I haven't ordered it yet as my schedule is too crazy at the moment to know when to have it delivered. Hopefully sometime late next week though. And if I'm lucky the liner will arrive before then.

Of course I saw something on another thread yesterday that is causing me to think of some design modifications. Namely putting a 50 gallon barrel at the end of each GB in line with the drains and then a float valve from them into the pond/tank Sort of a mid line sump in a way so the pond/tank doesn't have to fluctuate so much to flood/drain the GBs.

I didn't have much time for tinkering today with having to work but I pulled the extra troughs of gravel off the barrel pee ponics system and hooked up some of it over the pond/tank (I had some strawberry plants I wanted to plant.) Ran out of time trying to get a siphon working so it is just continuous drip for now.

I did a quick set of tests on the pond/tank water just to know where I am starting from.
pH 7.9
all else 0

I saw the blue barrel under the grow bed on BeltieBandit's & CookieCow's Aquaponic Garden thread and it got me thinking about trying something sor t of like that for my grow beds though for mine it would require some major re-arranging for the two beds already laid out. I was thinking that if a large enough float valve is too $$ perhaps I could just hook up a swing check valve to keep too much pond water from trying to wash back to the barrels. I think that in my lay out the bottoms of the barrels (if on their sides) will be very close to the water level in the fish tank or perhaps just a little below. So the water would only flow from the barrels to the tank when the barrels are .......... <mentally trailing off in thought>...............
Ok so the barrels if sunk a little deeper in the ground would fit under GBs easier and about half the barrel would be above the mean tank water level. Plumb the bottoms of the barrels together and to the tank . Barrels would never completely empty but since each GB at flood holds about as much water as a blue barrel there should be a pretty good turn over of the water and they would expand the water capacity/volume to help mitigate the fluctuations...........
Hum, gotta keep pondering this, better decide before gravel is in the beds though.

Just a note from the pee ponics system. Even though I was told to expect that my water has more than enough buffering (well this was from a guy at a fish place) I've finding my pH on the pee ponics system is continuing to drop. This is making me think harder about using washed shell as a grow bed medium instead of the 1/2" brown river rock that is less than $2 cheaper per ton.