Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

oh yes im way excited to wash gravel. digging is about the only thing im good at hahahaha

i think i will have to use bagged river rocks from walmart as thats all i can find here in dead oak i mean live oak floriduh. i have about a ton of flat type larger rocks (that wont leech) im going to place them in the bottoms of the totes to take up some space i cant afford to fill will little river rocks costing $3.50 per 50#

to make it worse i only have my womans little plush truck as mine blew a head gasket
yesterday. either that or a freeze plug.

im thinking head gasket as it runs rough when i restart it cold and will them smooth out. thats water in a cyl. its toyota 22re in 4x4 i know it would haul the rocks but not lesia's cushy mazda sled.

i sure got crappy luck. stand back ! hahaha

i forgot to mention it was 115 in the GH today but im so happy even if it was hot in there. gotta get shade cloth asap too.

i sure wish oprah would adopt my poor arse self. i would get all of us a new system from our host . yes i surely would

Keep pluggin digger

Let's see, $3.50/50lb is about $210/yard. OUCH! Out here I get the stuff for about $50! I think TCLynx got hers for under $100.

Might be a LOT cheaper in bulk: look for some concrete mix places as they often sell pea gravel and other decent stuff by the bag, weight, or cubic yard. I bet you would save enough by buying bulk to get it delivered. Landscape materials suppliers are good, too. I found this one on a quick google search:

Southland Rock & Stone
4266 S US Highway 441
Lake City, FL 32025
(386) 755-1884‎


I was really lazy washing my gravel: I simply used a sump pump in my sump to hose the gravel in the growbeds, let it settle, siphon the sediment out, then repeat. After a few times very little comes out and I call it good. Takes a few days of settling, but very easy on the back. It was fairly clean stuff (pea gravel) to start with; sandy or really muddy stuff I would have done more carefully.

Bring on the gravel!

All my gravel was gotten by going to the local sand and gravel place, telling the office lady that I only wanted about 50 gallons for some planters, giving her $2 and loading it myself. If it's more than a certain amount they have to weigh it (on the scales with your car on it before and after) and as long as you have so little that it's not worth weighing then it's $2. I have about 200 gallons of gravel that probably cost $6 or $8.

The next round will not work that way, so I'll be shopping for the best deal, delivery will determine the cost more than the actual gravel probably.

i have met with that guy in lake city and he is not much cheaper than bagged. and with my truck down i cant haul bulk now either.

i called all the redi mix cc plants and all they use will leech out. lime stone is king in this area and all i can find in bulk nearby

ima gonna cheat and use the big rocks in bottom. 20 or 30 bags of pea gravel for middle layer and finish them off with the smallish "filler" from the bulk fertilizer plant
in town. its 53 dollars per ton.

i have used this filler twice before in gravity fed buckets with strawberries. its super small but is inert and will drain and its cheap
(for here)

so thats some of the plan for now. im soon hoping to
try out an old chest freezer for another FT in hopes of some day keeping tilapia warm enough. if it does not work out ill use for the cricket farm i ordered.

as good as my egg sales are going i probably need about 500 chickens asap

i am thinking about it as i still have a candler and grader. was sorta worried about the neighbors but the way their "hybrids" tune up (all 9 of them) and do doggo opera. yon neighbor foot fits no limb of my concious tree.

hens dont make noise anyway unless they dropping some fruit . my only worry is the large commercial farms down the road might torch me from fear of "me" giving their flock diseases. its far more likely they would infect my small flock.

they dont know im ex commercial.but its fun to hear them spout how all the illness comes from backyard chickens. my parents had largest egg farm in florida for over 25 years. about 125-150k per cycle but thats small now with mechanization coming forth. the wash machine i operated would only run 30 - 30dz. cases per hour and i washed eggs
for about 8-10 hours per day everyday except weekends and they were 15-17 hr. days to play catch up weeeee!

we had a few poultry illness' back then(pox, merecks. newcastle,corriza, pullorum and cocidiosis) but nothing like now. commercial flocks are so vulnerable due to their genetic engineering recipe. constant pursuit of a better feed converting bird. i have heard there are as many as 17 illness now including what is called LT linotracatus (sp?) broilers and fryers are sexless. maybe not all or nowadays but the 1 mil plus week we hatched back then all were except for one little black biddy with the yellow dot on his head. he was the boy, the rest were neither boy not girl. i would wager that H five N one
is a joyous byproduct of LT and i do bet also the food birds are still sexless from GE i mean greed


i dont want any of that action again but selling these eggs i do get now is doing surprisingly well. and i think it will get better as economy keeps getting worse around here locally. we are at from my best estimate
and talking with a friend that's rotary said its at 35-38% unemployment in our county. we had been at 22% since i arrived here 15 years back. but rural agribased counties are always high because farmers have family so they dont have to pay for help. and the old country axiom "if ya not kin ya not in" surely is in effect around here. jobs are always scarce.thats why im making my own job.its only option and im looking for other ideas.

might be time to set the coal forge up again
and offer some beginner smith classes or anything else i can come up with.

here is a c.s. bell grain mill i power with an old edger and it works really well. i have been making my own chicken feed for a good while now. this little mill will do about 50# of hard corn per hour into polenta size or just crack it in 25-30 minutes depending on how many miller low lifes i have had on "feed making day"





i must make pretty good feed as im at 90 plus % egg
production for over the last 3 months and its been really really cold so thats rare. some days somebody dont lay but i have yet to see who. all of my hens are big and heavy rhode island reds. thats another thing
commercial makes feed from anything not packaged at the meat plant. thats comforting
NOT!

Great post JohnnyH, very interesting info! Go man go!

For blacksmithing do you use charcoal? I was reading a bit about what they're tagging "biochar" which is really just regular charcoal, and it would have some nice properties in an AP bed. Light weight, supposedly helps stabilize pH, filters heavy metals out, provides high surface area for microbes to live in. I wanted to mix gravel and charcoal in a bed. Maybe you could try using some homemade charcoal to fill out your bed volume instead of expensive rocks?

Very lightweight stuff, so would float. I'd also worry about an initial spike in PH from any ash left with it as well as interesting chemistry from condensed smoke.. I suppose one could mix the charcoal with gravel as long as it is a good hardwood charcoal and was burned hot enough to get rid of the smoke.

I've read about the man-made black soils of the Amazon basin and the idea is fascinating. I tossed about 100 gallons (about 400 liters) of charcoal my kid made into a raised garden bed and so far so good, but I think it needs to be ground fine and should be burned at a far lower temperature.

It needs to combust without the presence of oxygen. The Aztecs would build big bonfires, light them and then bury them somehow so they slowly (very) smouldered. The resulting char has differing properties to that burnt in the presence of oxygen.

Chatty

Johnny,
Great deal on the chickens. I got 11 not, all but two are Rhode Island Reds, the other two are New Hampshire Reds (almost the same thing.) I glad your girls are doing so well and I think it's cool that you can mill your own feed!

As for rocks. I think the larger rock in the bottom of the bins is good especially since your bins are pretty deep. Try calling a few landscaping places that sell mulch and such (even if they don't carry it normally, they might be able to get it for you or even tell you who to get it from.) See if any of them could deliver you a truck load of 1/2" brown river rock. It would definitely be better than having to haul bags in a car or even pickup. It might cost a bit extra for delivery but buying the 1/2 cf bags at $3 each would be like $162 per yard and you are having to waste gas on many trips to deliver it yourself. If you can find some place that can deliver you a cubic yard or even just a ton of brown river rock for a total cost of $162, it would be worth it for you (providing you have a place they can dump the load where they won't get the truck stuck.) I expect you could get the brown river rock for between $50 and $100 per ton or yard (a ton will be less rock than a yard since a cubic yard of the rock probably weighs 1.25 ton) and delivery could cost around $95. So if you can find a place that will sell a ton or a yard for $70 and deliver for $95, then it would be worth it to go for the delivery even if it didn't really save you much. If you were to find a place really close to you, delivery might not be so high but the cost of the stone is likely to be higher.

If you wind up going for the bagged stone, you might add some lava rock into the mix. Especially if it costs the same or less than the river rock. When buying bagged lava rock, look for the fullest bags, I've noticed some are really skimpy since the equipment must use weight to fill the bags even though they are supposed to hold a half cubic foot, the lava rock can hold lots of water which would greatly affect the amount loaded into the bag. Lava rock is nice in that it has lots of surface area for microbes but is relatively light. I used lava rock around the drain or mesh pipe in my grow beds to allow better flow there and keep the smaller rocks back.

I don't know if I would recommend mixing the finer stuff you can get cheap in with the other media. I expect that would greatly reduce flow . I think you might be better off filling a few grow beds with that stuff on it's own and see how they go. I fear a mix might tend to pack tighter than keeping them separate. Then again, if you grew starwberries in it, it could be just fine and since you are planning on timer and slow drain operation, the slower flow rate through the media might not be a problem.

thanks much TCL and all. i see there are different colors of lava rock at walmart.

i though lava rock was all black in color but now see red and also almost a beige color rock in the bags marked lava rock

i sure dont want to pick something thats been colored with who knws what. so what color is real lava rock anyway?

second thing this morning im working on long shallow GB . the side are 3/4 and uniseal does not go all the way thru of course. should i still use uniseal and then just silicone the inside after i get the drain pipe inserted or try to trim another uniseal down and run one on inside and the full size one on outside? they way they flare when pipe is inserted makes me wonder if 2 might not work so well in opposite directions

i really need bulkhead fitting but ...

second part of shallow GB setup. im runiing single water inlet to full length boom for supply. question is this for drain, should i also try to run drilled boom type drain between the 2 drain outlets?

how would you plumb drainfield in this 2'x9'x6" deep GB?

much thanks my friends, johnny

For the wood bed that is too thick for a normal uniseal, this is what I would do. Is that bed a wood bed with liner? If so, cut a hole in it where ever the drain fitting needs to go but cut the hole bigger than the needed fitting. The use a thin piece of material to patch the hole and crew or glue it in place. Cut the hole the right size for the uniseal through the thinner material and plumb though the thinner material with the uniseal. I did it for bulkhead fittings that way too. Let me see if I can find a picture (though that might not be much help to you perhaps some one could look and figure out how to explain it better than I.

Unfortunately this picture isn't so good for showing or explaining the situation.
Basically I drilled a big, (like 4", though the exact size doesn't matter as long as there is space to install whatever fitting is going in the location,) hole in the plywood and I placed a square of 1/4" thick plastic over the hole and secured it in place. Then I drilled the appropriate size hole for the fitting (I used bulkheads then but a uniseal would have worked even better.) Then carefully by hand cut the hole in the liner to the size of the hole. The install the uniseal or the bulkhead fitting.
That is how you can install a uniseal or bulkhead fitting through a lined grow bed that is too thick for the fitting. I suppose this could also be done through other types of tanks that are too thick but it would involve sealing the thin patch piece to the original tank very well as there is no liner to take care of that for you.

Do not go trimming the uniseals or trying to make them work through something that is too thick as that would probably just lead to leaks and headachs in the future!

As to lava rock. I know there is natural red and natural black lava rock. The color has to do with the kind of rock and minerals involved. I personally think that having some lava rock in a system probably provides some trace nutrients. As to the beige, I've never seen it before so don't know anything about it. However, pumice stone which I've seen plenty of grey pumice is actually a kind of lava rock I believe. Most of our ausie friends call lava rock scoria I think. I've got lots of the red lava rock buried in my system.

ok i understand about GB , make a plate that uniseal will fit into. this swine understands

so scoria is lava rock, i have learned something else today.


so would you also tie the 2 drain s together together inside each shallow GB?

im going to start with a boom type water supply but may end up with halo type rig depending on how thirsty my plants look.

one thing i do already know is this: this will be so far superior to planting in this sand. those poor plants even if you stay out there with them are always always thirsty

ill never flood here . my father would call them 2 inch per hour rains we get in florida a "frog strangler" even after one of those there will be no standing water and a few inches down is still dry as a talc

so even if my homebrew AP does not function as well as a pro build rig, it will still be far better than soil planting of veggies.

an added bonus to GB is that russell, my chubby serial killer pocket dog will not be
destroying my plants in pursuit of imaginary
vermin (well maybe)

he has destroyed all the wiring from john deere tractor, both marker lights and all lower radiator hoses and belts from lesias truck. the seat out of my truck. 3 feet of drywall from under kitchen sink. several dryer vent hoses. yes he got a rat each time but damn he is a costly exterminator

he made his 119th confirmed rat kill this morning. pound for pound jack russell is meaner than any sentry dog imho. russ has no qualms about jumping on my 100 # red nosed pitbull. nobody said jack russells had any smarts just that they are way brave and highly tenacious little killers.

i love him but wont be getting another jack russell. in fairness to him , he is very very good around poultry and domestic rabbits.


back to work...

Yes, I was assuming it was made properly without oxygen to get rid of any remaining combustible chemicals, leaving only the carbon. The methods posted on the web use closed steel barrels with the gases from the wood being used to keep the fire going (the gases from the wood are combustible biogas). Sounds like you have already more experience with it than most, can you post more info about how your kid made the stuff and maybe some pictures to the charcoal mixed with media thread?

Well, he just didn't want to take a bunch of brush from a job to the dump, but instead burned it until he had a 2' pile of red-hot coals. The stuff a few inches down was black from lack of oxygen! Rather than waiting hours for it to burn to nothing and wasting it (and adding more CO2 to the air), I suggested he shovel it into a garbage can of water, quenching it, so I could play with it later. Thought about using it in an AP growbed, but worried about charcoal fines and ash going into the fishtank. Ended up digging it into a garden bed instead. Sorry.