Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well, I've not done the "wicking bed" really but I have used wicks in containers suspended above AP water.

Hum, I wonder if I can find the posts on here where I showed the wicks in my NFT pipe cups so I could seed directly in those cups and not worry about top watering to start the seeds. Naw I'll just use some pictures form my web page



Those are old pictures from when I was doing Hydroponics.
The wicks are rayon mop string (Bright white Goodwill mop head from the grocery store for under $3 gives a good supply of strings to use.)

You might also think about using cappliary matting to draw water from the AP system and set potted plants on it to keep them bottom watered. It won't do anything to provide filtration since it will simply wick water out of the system but then all you need to do is top up the system instead of watering all the potted plants manually. However, I don't know that it would be all that feasable to put all your plants on one bench where you have a container of AP water next to it for the wicking and matting to be effective.

OK, wicking is probably the wrong word... the media would be the same clay balls you're using, just a single, deeper, big container of them. Instead of four-in-one, one in one. The Home Depot bucket gets set into another bucket which a) holds up the inner/upper bucket and b) contains the water.

Use a matched pair of cheap buckets. The top one gets holes in the bottom. And gets filled with media. You can do an external loop siphon on this. The max water level will go up into the upper, holey bucket but not past the top of the gravel.
One of these bucket pairs should support a melon (or pumpkin) plant with lots of vine. And fruit. I saw the packet of "moon and stars" melon and thought this would be a good home for one of those...
Heh, a whole different kind of "Bucket List"

Thanks TCL and Sminfiddle for the wick pics/ideas. I actually might try the wicking idea out in a pot or two behind my pond waterfall. Last year I grew some Bitter Gord/melon which gets made into a fantastic dish. Basically the melon gets hollowed out, stuffed with a mix of pork, rice vermicelli noodles, scallion, other spices then gets boiled in a soup... I never ate something that went from so terrible tasting (bitter melon by itself) to something so yummy... The flavors really balance themselves out.

Oops off topic again... /sigh... The problem I had with the melons growing behind the pond in their own little pots was that the pot was so small that I had to water it 2-3 times a day as the vine got bigger and the days became longer/hotter. Perhaps I can test wicking out with that and just lay the wick on the rocks the the water flows over.

I finally got the table coated with polyurethane and the AP on top of it so now I have to do a run to home depot tonight to get some more 1" pvc.



It has a larger profile than I really wanted so I'm going to put the "plater box" idea on hold for now until I work out the kinks of how I plan on filtering out most solids while making sure the flow is enough to push water into all the buckets while still being able to design something (without using a check valve) that will keep the buckets from being completely siphoned back into the pond if the power goes out or the pond pump breaks.

Oh and here is a pic I took 10 minutes ago =P

Anyone know of any websites that sell temperate carnivorous plant seeds that has a credit card system in place? I found one last year but it seemed like I had to mail an envelope with a check/cash with a printed list of what I wanted and I wasn't really too comfortable with doing that. I was thinking of planting some sundews, butterworts, venus fly traps and maybe a pitcher plant or two. I have a list of temperate varieties that I compiled a year ago so it's just a matter of experimenting to see if the conditions are right for them to grow/thrive =P

Ugh I have to run right now but when I get back I'll try and dig up the excel sheet that I made and link the seller that I did find that did everything through mail order in case anyone else is interested. I figured carnivorous plants/frogs could be a fun form of mosquito/pest control.

K...

I found the excel sheet that I made last year with the names/pics of carnivorous plants that would tolerate temperate climates as well as the website that sold the seeds. Since then they implemented a online store... yay for never having to leave to get seeds!

Here is the website:
http://www.bestcarnivorousplants.net


Here is the list that I had chosen to act as my living versions of sticky tape >.<
Drosera rotundifolia AKA sundews
http://www.bestcarnivorousplants.net/index.php?node=product&id=1029-drosera-rotundifolia-orava-mts-northern-slovakia-40s


Pinguicula grandiflora AKA butterworts
too bad they don't sell seeds of the one I want as it is quite the beautiful bug killer! They do have seeds of the ones with white flowers.
http://www.bestcarnivorousplants.net/index.php?node=product&id=1119-pinguicula-grandiflora-big-plants-aragnouet-fabian-france


Sarracenia purpurea AKA pitcher plants
http://www.bestcarnivorousplants.net/index.php?node=product&id=1081-sarracenia-purpurea-40s


Dionaea muscipula AKA venus fly trap
http://www.bestcarnivorousplants.net/index.php?node=product&id=1373-dionaea-muscipula-all-red-from-20s


Ahh so yea that's what I want...

I finally restarted the pond and connected/built the pvc around my little yard. Ugh what a headache! I built it so that it can be taken apart b/c the deck is going to be rebuilt and made a little smaller and b/c of the parts that I needed to get everything to work with the pre-existing conditions it wound up costing a lot more than I wanted it to...

Here are some pics of how I built it so that I could connect my deep water channel buckets on the other side of the yard using 20+ feet of 1 inch pvc, and flexible plastic tubing WITHOUT having to dismantle the waterfall rock by rock or running pvc around to the front of it thus destroying the aesthetics that I had created. LOL now I have to figure out how to hide the orange buckets...



pond pump <-> 5/8" ID tubing <-> 5/8" - 3/4" adapter <-> 3/4" ID tubing <-> 3/4" - 1" pump adapter <-> 1" ID tubing <-> 1"x3/4' (plastic barb/MIP) adapter <-> 3/4"-1" female x slip pvc coupler <-> 90 degree 1" pvc elbow(s) <->1 " pvc pipe

for the first corner... it got easier after the first union of an old pump that was using a socket that was incompatible with what I needed to connect it to the AP...







I used a 1" x 3/4" pvc T joint so that my deep water channel buckets don't siphon back into the pond overflowing it and draining all the precious water/killing my plants that will be growing out of the buckets. In hindsight I really could have designed it to be better and probably saved money building/buying 1 big container with a raft that I instead would up spending to tweak my AP to a working state...




Now I play the waiting game. I planted 5x kinds of lettuce for now since it germinates quickly while I wait for the other plants to germinate and grow indoors which I will then transplant when I no longer have to worry about frost.

The weather over the past 2 weeks has been amazing! We had about 4+ days of non stop rain to kickstart the early spring growth followed by a week of temperatures that ranged from 60F-75F (15.5C - 24C). most of all the perennials in the yard have budded:
Starkrimson sweet cherry tree
royalty purple raspberry
anne yellow raspberry
crimson red raspberry
lauren red raspberry
brown turkey figs
patriot blueberry
darrow blueberry
bunches of male/female hardy kiwi vine cuttings that I decided to take after the vines were removed from the ground last fall... it was too close and between 2x giant fig bushes that were trained to grow like trees.
I also threw down some Crimson clover seeds to help out the soil

oops I got off track! Here is a pic of some seedlings that I transplanted into the AP about a week ago.



All the seeds were started on march 11th in those starters that were placed in Aerolight

Clockwise from the bottom:

Red Sweet Corn
Tomato seedlings (ugh I am already getting sloppy with keeping track with which tomato plant that is...)
Lettuce - not sure what kind since it came from a variety pack
Cucumber
Pak choi

Oh and here is my boxer "Quaker"... I should have named him "Bubbles"

Ahh if only I could devise some tests to isolate if my idea of using moss on the waterfall actually works in regard to it being a supplemental medium for biofiltration! Even if it doesn't really work it sure looks nice!





Here is the moss producing sporophytes which will mature and form little spore capsules



Here are some of the more mature sporaphytes getting ready to make spores



If you want to see bigger pics you can click on the image,,, I kind of feel bad for posting gigantic images since it makes the browser page too wide

Sorry about that.

quick update before I go to sleep:

Near the end of march we had a frost following a week of 75F (23C) weather followed by a night time frost of 26F (-3.3 C)... The one rare night I decided to go out drinking with some buddies... Long story short, I "forgot" to move some of the seedling cups indoors and most of the plants died. Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Corn, and some other stuff bit the dust... Fast forward to now and growth is coming along. The weather has been abnormally warm here for spring IMHO and some of my plants look like how they looked last middle of may. Watermelon (Sugar Bush Baby, Moon and Stars) and white bitter gourd are doing ok... I planted seedlings that germinated at the same time in 2 different spots on the soil, along the rocks on the little waterfall and in the deep water channel buckets so I can get some sort of comparison.

You can click on the pics to see larger images at my flickr page.

Here are some pics! The "Fish Tank"
March 8th 2010


April 12th 2010


The "Grow Bed"

March 19th 2010


April 12th 2010

Oh... Forgot to add that my carnivorous plant seeds were shipped last week! I can't wait to get them although I will probably have to stratify them in the refrigerator before they germinate

I wound up ordering:

Drosera intermedia

Drosera rotundifolia

Sarracenia purpurea

Dionaea muscipula {All red from}

Pinguicula {mix of temperate species}

Pinguicula grandiflora x Pinguicula longifolia subsp. longifolia

I got the following seeds as a "free" bonus

1 x Bonus: Utricularia longifolia

1 x Bonus: Utricularia subulata

I REALLY need to make some sort of settling tank... notice the nasty synthetic cotton at the top! Also the fish poop goes into my buckets and I found myself cleaning the stainless steel wool yesterday which isn't such a bad chore since I don't do it frequently but I'd really like to replace the mound of pooey cotton at the top of the waterfall like feature.

I'm limited to the space I can use so any ideas would be useful

Here is a video showing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmSqz0DQ6Io

p.s. is there any way to embed youtube videos directly into the poste?

I decided to add some rock dust that I obtained from washing off a bag of river gravel (which I used to line the bottom of 5 gallon buckets that has grape vines growing out of soil). It looks like mud suspended in water and had a bit of a sulphur smell to it. I also added some of the dirt to my plants in soil for a little extra kick of minerals.

Looks like you are doing pretty good there with it all.

As to filtering before the water gets up to the top of that water fall......And making it look pretty without taking up too much space. That could be a challenge.

You probably want some sort of upflow filter where you pump the dirty water into the bottom of some container with some sort of media and it flows up through the media and then can flow out closer the top and over to the top of your water fall. (or perhaps have the flow go through said filter and out to both the buckets and the waterfall. However that still doesn't really answer how to make it fit and be pretty without rebuilding the waterfall.

Hum that requires more thought.

Thanks TC, for your always insightful responses!

The pump that I use to supply water to my AP has the flow split to my AP and the top of the water feature. I used to have a sponge filter on the input of the pump but it became such a hassle when the water temp/weather was really cold since I had to submerge my arm almost up to my shoulder in order to grab the filter and then putting it back on without being able to see it was even worse. I had some design ideas that involve either putting a sock on the output of the AP buckets to collect pewp every now and then as well as building a little plastic box similar to this.


It's a friend's "settling bed" with the input on the top right corner and output on the bottom. I figured I would use a pvc cross for the output to direct the water in the way I currently have it setup. I would just need to figure out a way to conceal it. Using more moss is always an option! It's like the ultimate living concealer for me. I'll try and take a pic tomorrow with a ruler to give an idea of how much space I have to work with.

settling bed before gravel was added.


perhaps one day I can convince him to post on these forums especially since he is the one who tuned me into it AFTER I convinced him to experiment with aquaponics! haha the irony

update:

ROOTS!

I need to eventually get around to building something around the buckets so that sunlight doesn't pass through and make algae grow on the inside surface =/