Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Charlie

Is the hatechery pumpming water out of the river and up nto the hatchery or is it gravity fed. Here in indonesia they just build all the hatechries on the side of the river they divert some flow in and then send it back. this means they use no pumps so trying to ecxplain to them to set up pumps that cost money to run is hard to do and in all reality not cost effective.

I was thinking about your idea for AP to clean the water and came across a road block. Or sytems cycle water therefor amonia is made into nitrates and nitrites and are cylcled around and around this gives the plants a chance to use them up. I am just wondering if the water will already have enough n/n for the plants (probably should) or if the amonia conversion is fast enough to allow it to affect the plants. Just some stuff on my head last night.

JT

The facility overview can be found Here

Charlie, seems like a fairly easy task, set your poly tunnels up between the drum filters and the burn.

do you have flow rates back to the burn and NO3 ppm?

From the document it looks like you have deaths in the ponds, is that due to water quality? Couldn't you increase water throughput during the max stocking densities?

My favourite plant for the week is watercress, i'm eager to plant some out here, asnd it seems to do well in a continuous flow system. Or were you looking at a higher dollar value crop like basil?

This will be FUN

Steve

Hey charlie i would love to know the scale were dealing with here.

hi there everyone, sorry for the lack of action on this thread in the last week or so - had to go to a conference.

anyway, just to say that i will be going to the farm to get some more detailed info on feeding rates from which i can run some models and exrapolate the nutrient loadings. i will try and feed this info to the group asap.

thanks again for all your coments.

in answer to a couple of the latest posts - gnoll110 - you may well be right about the superiority of the murray cod over out humble little brown trout, but given all the complications of exotic species lets not open that can of worms by introducing them to bonnie scotland

as for the scale well at maxiumum capacity, in the aquaponics part of the proposed system (the existing trout farm) there is up to 900,000 salmon (grown from eggs to 65g) and between 200,000 and 250,000 brown trout (grown from eggs to fry @ 4-5g)

the water flow of the burn (stream) that also feeds the hatchery and smolt facilities is around 2million gallons per day.

the proposed aquaponics part (using poly tunnels etc) can be as big or as small as we need it (within reason).

from feed data i am going to model nutrient outputs over the production cycles and then combine this with actual measured data from the stream to look at what levels we have to play with, and will be in touch.

and again just to reiterate, i really appreciate all your inputs, its a massive help and it great to have such a lively forum for discussion, the best i can offer in return is to keep you up to date with all the progress (pics, data, etc) which i will do my best to do.

many thanks, and i hope all your projects out there, are running smooth.
charlie

Charlie, probably a dumb question, but is the water "single pass" through the hatchery - biofilter ?

What sort of plants have you in mind?

I think you're best bet is to run a pilot poly tunnle with a given abount of plant area prefferable in a series flow rather than parallel. Then you can throttle the water flow rate to get your desired reduction in nitrates, and extrapolate the required number of poly tunnels to reach your goal discharge. Make any sense?

Steve

In the summer months with the greater amount of effluent were you getting higher levels of bacteria also?

bacteria as in nitros? how would you know? except for lack of ammonia spikes

we need longer day light savings

it kills me, i keep going till its dark, and then i'm like shite, its 8:30

no I meant bacteria in the effluent as in bad bugs like what poo farm effluent contains

Charlie will be able to confirm, but i don't think fish poo nessecarily has bad bugs (as far as humans go) i'm fairly sure they don't have e.coli as i think they're only present in the excrement of warm blooded animals?

confirmation anyone?

was just a thought due to warmer conditions making for better breeding of bacteria ( of any kind) and the greater amount of nutrient available for it to feed on in the greater amounts of effluent being discharged. Also would the greater amounts of nutrient remove oxygen?.....this rum is goin down well

All fair questions.

increase in ammonia load means that ben. bac. will use more DO in the oxidation reaction to NO3. further that that ??

quote --- Charlie, probably a dumb question, but is the water "single pass" through the hatchery - biofilter ?

What sort of plants have you in mind?

I think you're best bet is to run a pilot poly tunnle with a given abount of plant area prefferable in a series flow rather than parallel. Then you can throttle the water flow rate to get your desired reduction in nitrates, and extrapolate the required number of poly tunnels to reach your goal discharge. Make any sense?

Steve


definately not a dumb question, the way the water is flowing is there is the 2 million gallons per day flowing down the burn, regulated to some extent by an outflow valve in the loch (resevoir) above, from this burn some of the water flows directly to the top of a series of tanks in the hatchery (28 x 2.4m3), and also flowing directly to the series of tanks in the smolt unit (17 x 10m3). So both these facilities has fresh water feed in from the burn (the exact extracted flow rate in each system i will find out early next week) then the effluent from both these facilities is combined and flows through a drum filter to attempt to filter out particulates, and then this water returns to the burn.

plants such as watercress possibly (as that has the possibility of organic status - although that would obviously needs organics feeds used too) or the obvious ones such as tomatoes, lettuce, basil etc. any ideas?

definately will start with a pilot poly tunnel or two, what are all your thourghts on system configuration? NFT, ebb and flow, DWC etc, what do you guys all think is the most appropriate?

chees
charlie

ps dont think bacteria will be a problem, but if it is it will be something we will have to overcome somehow.

If you filter out the solids then you could probably go the NFT or DWC.

NTF is probably the easiest to set up. There seems to be a few guys well versed in hydro here, maybe they can give you some tips.

water cress lettuce and basil maybe?

Not sure that tomatoe would work with solids filtration, as you won't have a huge amount of P and K...........