Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The PP system is doing fine. Some plants are still showing some signs of def and I think the worst of them are the cucumber seedlings that would rather have a pH of 5.5 which could have something to do with it. otherwise, going well. Have harvested stuff and the broccoli is getting bigger.

I did add some potassium supplement as well as iron so hopefully things will keep going fine.

I worked out a little modification to my gurgle dosing bottle. I now have a little wick driper from the top tank drain over to the bottle so that the level in the bottle doesn't drop too much and the gurgle (read are lift) dripper can continue working without me having to add more water throughout the day.

The system has been getting 200 ml of aged urine each evening and I sometimes take water from the system for watering container plants. The system has a float valve top up hooked up so the water level can't drop low enough to kill the pump.

At this point I am willing to conclude that a pee ponic system is a viable idea. It does just fine for growing lettuce. We will have to see how well it does for the fruiting crops like tomatoes and cucumbers.

Here are a few pictures of the wick top up addition to the gurgle dosing bottle.

Hey, TCLynx...
I'm sorry if this has been asked and answered before, but would carnivore pee work in a system? I mean, I know not to use the poop from my dog and ferrets in the compost, but how about their pee in my AP setup? Urea is urea, right?

I can't use my own for various reasons...

I suppose it might work, I'm a carnivore. I don't know what sort of issues there might be with it. The trickiest part I think is gonna be getting the dog and the ferrets to pee in a bottle for you.

The safety measure I'm using on urine is to keep it bottled for at least a couple weeks before use. This seems quite adequate to kill off most bacteria like e. coli. One should probably not save urine while they have strep throat, typhoid fever, or other highly contagious illness or are taking antibiotics. Anyway, storing the urine for a time allows the urea to be converted to ammonia which has a rather high pH and tends to kill most bacteria. Different people's urine will start out at different pH and urine collected at different times of day will have a different pH. The speed at which the urine will reach a pH of 9 may vary depending on the sample and person.

As far as composting carnivore poo, well I do that too but it requires carefully managed compost. Look up the Humanure Handbook for more info about that.

Wondered about the surname TC

LOL

Well perhaps not actually a surname but Lynx has been my handle for a very long time, had to add the TC (the initials of the town where I'm from) by the time the internet came around though.

I am a carnivore though. Or the other one I sometime like to say is "I eat carcass" or "I like carcass on my pizza"

Just a quick update. Pee Ponics is still running just fine despite horrible neglect by me for the past few weeks.

Pee Ponic still running. Pulled out all the old lettuce that was bolting. Harvested and ate some broccoli. Move the Strawberries from the big system into here so as not to kill them with salt. Put lots of onions in after pulling the lettuce out. Hay, and there is that little cuc seedlings I though had died. The Tomatoes are getting big.

For a little while I was putting a whole bottle of aged pee into the gugle dosing bottle every other day but that just seems to be too much ammonia and nitrite for the small system to process quickly enough. About 1/2 a 500 ml bottle every other day seems just fine.

I'm thinking about running some other tests with this system like perhaps pulling what is in the top grow bed out and mixing the shells that are up in there with some wood chips or something to see what kind of pH I will get that way. I would like to see how hard it is to get a pH just a little lower than 7.6 yet keep it stable. I also think there might be some benefit in the potassium content of the wood.

Thank you by the way to whichever Moderator or Admin separated the thread into Humanure composting for me.

i sure will be trying peeponics, thank you tcl:)

all part of the learning curve that is this new forum

So the pee ponic system got a little dose of potassium today and the broccoli a little spray with BT since there are caterpillars eating holes in the leaves. About 10 caterpillars big enough to grab got fed to the fish, I'm not sure if they were interested in eating green worms though.

Pee Ponic still ticking along even though I've been neglecting it. I add a dose when I think about it (probably as often as every other day but more likely once a week.)

Have harvested a couple of nice strawberries and a wonderful burpless tendergreen cucumber. Toms are doing great.

Have you been adding potassium for long? I could not get strawberries to do well over summer (too cold now). Though maybe a lack of potassium.

Strawberries are day length sensitive so they should do much better in the spring. Come summer they should be working on sending out runners to start new plants. They should be triggered to flower and fruit as weather warms up and days start getting longer.

I had runners and fruit everywhere, but fruit didnt get big

Hmm, maybe some led growlights for winter

AHH ,, not all strawberry's are day-length type. I think their called day neutral.
I get 3 crops a year from mine.
OBO I think mine are Red Gauntlet ?????