Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks!

We'll probably leave for Sweden around late May, so I can still see the aquaponics system growing.

It's only been 4 days since my last post, but things are growing so fast that I thought it was time for another update.

The strawberries have suddenly decided to produce lots of buds:


I placed a large polycarbonate plate to keep the tomato plant out of the rain. I still have to cut it to the right size, but so far it's kept the tomato plant dry, and it's growing nicely.


15th of April:
pH: 6,5
NH3: 0,3
NO2: 0
NO3: 0,5
KH (carbonate hardness): 2 German degrees
GH (general hardness): 19 German degrees
Water temperature: 15 degrees Celsius

Nitrate is very low, which tells me that I need to feed the fish more! The lettuce I planted confirm that; they're growing, but not as fast as the same plants that I planted in the dirt garden.
The fish food is 35% protein. We have at least 6kg of fish (probably quite a bit more), so they should need about 100g of food a day, I guess. In the past couple of weeks they only got about half of that on average.

Xzorby, I just read (or more so scimmed & looked at the pics) through your thread. Wow what a neat and tidy system. Your persistance with that leaking liner at the start was well worth the final result. Your worm & fish vids on youtube are great too. Amazing how worms live in AP systems, being flooded with water every hour Great seeing your fish swim around in a school like they do, almost like they're following the largest fish in the pond.

Off the AP topic here Xzorby, but did you model the Beta Sterling Engine in Pro Engineer that is on you Youtube videos? Cheers, Taz

Hey Taz, thanks! Yes, I did model and design that stirling engine in ProE, but I still haven't tried making it yet - I always have so many projects!


Just got back from Sweden this week! My girlfriend and I have been WWOOFing for almost 4 months. We went to two farms quite far up north, and we really enjoyed it there. No aquaponics there though; it would be impossible to keep the water liquid during a couple of months of no sun and -20 degrees Celsius.. But it was very interesting and educating to see how (on the first farm) they manage to grow just about all their own food, and organically!

I also learnt a lot about what kind of daily rhytm works best for me, and that gave me so much more energy! I encourage anybody who is having trouble keeping up with daily life, or having emotional problems, to make sure you have no obligations at home and take a looong break to go wwoofing or otherwise volunteering in a foreign country.


Anyways, on to the ponics. Although my father and sister have looked after the fish very well, the plants had totally overgrown the system. I forgot to take a picture of it, though! This is the system after weeding:


If I recall correctly, they had 2 fish deaths during the time that I was gone, and they were both sick already. The fish have all grown a lot, which is not surprising since they went through at least 7 kilograms of high protein feed while I was gone!
During the exceptionally hot summer, my father had to take the pump out and clean it almost daily, because it clogged up with fish poo and algue to such a degree that the flow was too little for the siphon to kick in. I really have to get a bigger pump.

My sister thought the three tomato plants I had planted, had died. But when I cleaned out all the weeds (yes, there were lots!) and overgrown radishes (the entire system was covered in radish seed pods) and onions (which were at the end of their second year, and so had flowered with HUGE flowers at the end of very thick stems, my sis was even scared of them!) and bee balm (which by then covered about a third of the system) I found that two plants had survived and one, although not looking very healthy, had small tomatoes. Yay!


The spring onions should've been harvested when they were small, but they are very nice now as well. They have a very sharp taste.


The berry bush that I almost killed (by drowning it in fertiliser) seems to be recovering, now it's in the aquaponics system. All the old branches are dead, but there's one new one that looks rather healthy.


Also, during the hot period, my sister said they had a very large amount of really nice strawberries hanging over the side of the system. Right now, the third or maybe even fourth load of strawberries is starting to ripen. The strawberry plants are packed very tightly together, and I'm thinking about maybe thinning them out, but then the root systems are probably interlocked so I wouldn't be able to just replant them further apart.


I think I'm going to get a much bigger pump soon. Maybe 200W bilge pump, instead of this 30W fountain pump, and then put it on a timer (and later on, maybe on an Arduino-controlled system).
Also, I feel that the system is really too small for the biggest fish in there. Even though the water values are fine, and so is the oxygen, I think it's a bit cruel that the big carp can't really swim around a lot. I'm thinking about either giving them away, or better still, making the pond a lot bigger. It'd be really cool to have another pond (maybe a bit smaller, say 1000L) on the other side of the garden, connected by a long, shallow 'tunnel'. If we did that, I would probably also add a 3 meter long strawberry trough in front of the current GB, and maybe even more growing space. I still have a lot of hydroton left.



Also, I'm going to have to brace the bottom of the grow bed. It is strong enough for now, but I'm not sure about the distant future, so I'm going to put two thick beams (100*50mm?) lengthwise under the GB, with smaller ones at right angles to it, to support the weight. Better to be on the safe side.


4th of September:
pH: 7,0
NH3: 0 (test fluid ran out, so not accurate)
NO2: 0 (test fluid ran out also)
NO3: 0 (strange, but I think it might be accurate)
Water temperature: 9 degrees Celsuis

Good to see your still alive and your systems still kicking along Thomas.

yeah welcome back. Bet it was good to get home and find the system going well. What exactly do you mean by this?

Getting up at 7 or 8, work from 8 or 9 to 12, long lunch break, work from 2 till tired, do fun things, have dinner, do more fun things, go to bed around 11.

I never had a daily rhythm - sometimes I went to bed at 12, sometimes at 5 in the morning... And that meant that I had a lot of trouble getting up early. Also, I never took the time for breakfast, and had a very small lunch also, making up with lots of quick snacks in between. By promising myself to have three big meals a day and working at least 5 hours on neccesary and less-fun things, and going to bed earlier, I eat better, sleep a lot better and find that I have so much more time and energy to enjoy fun stuff also!

Ugh, it sounds really stupid, writing it down like this, but it works for me.

No not at all! I know what you mean, I'm one who finds comfort in routine. As much as I love going away on holiday or having long breaks from work there is always a feeling comfort when it comes to an end and I can slip back into a more structured lifestyle. I guess that's life, very repetitive and over time you become used to it. Anyway sounds like you had a great time. Looking foward to seeing what you learnt get put to work on your AP

Structure is a good thing. Then again, don't be so hard on yourself, you are young and there have been plenty of studies that say young people, especially teenagers don't yet produce proper levels of certain chemicals like melatonin and therefore have difficulty getting to sleep early. This can play all sorts of havoc on people in school and electric lights and computers have only made the condition worse.

I can say, getting outside early and doing some heavy work during the day out in bright light definitely makes living with a diurnal schedule much easier, and being out of my twenties helps too.

Thanks! I didn't learn much that can be applied to aquaponics though, but I did learn that I really love berries and small fruits.

I think next year I'm not going to put in lettuce or cabbage any more, nor tomatoes. Even though I have lots of big fish eating lots of food (at least compared to the GB size), I still can't get enough nutrients into the system for those plants to grow healthily enough.

I am considering growing mostly legumes (which live in symbiosis with nitrogen-fixating bacteria, and so need less nitrogen). Also, I'm looking into sea buckthorn, which is one of the few non-legumes that also lives in symbiosis with nitrogen fixating bacteria. They grow locally (since I live near the sea and a lot of dunes), and they say that its extensive rootsystem fixates so much nitrogen that plants like stinging nettles can grow around them in an otherwise sandy and infertile area. Then most of the nitrogen is left for the strawberries to use, which I still want a lot more of!



I've been thinking about buying this pump:

Gardena 6000S
Rated power: 220W
Max capacity: 6000 L/h
Max head: 5m
Use: for clean to slightly dirty water, max particle diameter: 5mm.
Made in Germany
http://www.gardena.com/RES/resources/UK ... n_UKen.pdf

It is not rated for continuous use, but since it's about 8 times as powerful as my current pump I plan to put it on a timer, so I hope that's not a problem. This pump should be much better at pumping up solids, and shouldn't have as much trouble with clogging up as the one I have now (or so I hope!).

If I buy it, I think I'm going to put it on a mechanical timer first (15min on, 45 min off), with the siphon as it is now. The pump will probably put more water into the growbed than the siphon can remove, so I will need to add an overflow. This means that the GB will be filled for 15 minutes, then the pump shuts off and the siphon will drain the GB in about 5 minutes, then there is 40 minutes of dry period before the pump fills the GB again.. Hope that's not too long!

The radishes (which were a meter tall before I took them out) have really reproduced; they´re coming up all over the system! I really have to clean up all the leaves everywhere, though.


Bought the pump today! It looks quite sturdy and it emptied a 60L tub in maybe half a minute. Wow!


The rotor shaft is placed vertically, and the pump sucks water from the bottom up. The crenellations at the bottom are big enough for fish poo, but I don´t think that fish´d get sucked in. The bit that protects the rotor looks like it won´t clog up quickly.

Now for an overflow on the GB, so I can put the new pump in the system!

Heh, yeah it is a bit oversized for your system

Probably make an impressive fountain water feature...

The pump is a bit overkill....


And it does indeed make an impressive water feature!



But it's not for continuous use, and it'll be on a timer. It fills the GB in 2-3 minutes, after which the autosiphon kicks in. But the siphon just can't keep up with the pump; the difference may only be a couple of liters per minute but I really need an overflow.

Also, the water flowing in from the pump was so violent that it dug a small canal in the GB medium, so I added a 32mm PVC pipe with 6,5mm holes over most of the length of the GB. It doesn't look as nice as the white PVC I see all over the forum, but it works.


I made a no-holes overflow out of some PVC bits, after this one. It doesn't work yet; I have to add an air tube to get the air out at the highest point and glue everything, still. Hope to get it working soon, so I can replace the old pump with the new one.




I'm already thinking about all sorts of new things to hook up to the system. Strawberry trough, extra GB, extra FT connected by tunnel, etc...

How are you planning on starting the no holes overflow?? They dont restart by them selves....

The open part on top of the T will help break the siphon, leaving the over-the-edge U-bridge full of water. In theory.

I'm going with a slightly different design though; the one talked about in this aquarium thread. It works almost the same.
It has another bend inside (or a pipe-in-pipe) and a lower T-piece. They say it can keep it's siphon for years without having to be primed! Reading through that thread again, I think I'm going to use that one instead. Here's a drawing: