Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

thinking the bacteria is required for morphing ammo to allow plant take up!-A N N

Hi Charlie,

Just a thought ...

poly tunnel/nft (if you remove some % solids) or poly tunnel/lots gravel beds...

maybe release to a trickle/reed pond(s) type setup to cleanup the rest of water nutrients then release back to stream??

whats the biggest dollar crop over there charlie? I should add "legal" before all the deviates make wise cracks

Don't forget flowers.

How often is the particle filter cleaned out, what is done with the sludge?

hi there steve, the particle filter puts the solids into receptacle containers that store the sludge until sold as an agricultural input, they are cleaned about every two weeks. looking to try using the water pre drum filter (to look at dissolved and suspended solids as well as post filter just looking at disolved with perhaps some residual suspended solids, and then a control with just water from the burn, then the possibility to spilt these three categories into 6 with micronutrient additions vs no micr nutirnt additions.

flowers definately a possibility and something worth looking more cosely at. crops still uncertain about - ie grow crops for fertilisers, edible crops, herbs for essential oil extraction (rosemary, mint etc) or horticultural crops like flowers.

yup sure, the bacteria is needed for breaking down ammonia into usable nitrates.

c

Charlie, my vote is a poly tunnels with DWC planted with a suitable crop.

Are the sludge storage containers part of the "system" or "off-line" ?

Cool to see you making money out of it as an input into another system (agri)

hi yes the sludge sontainers are end of the line, once in its stays out of the system, as for the cost, well not sure, its currently sold to cover its running costs and spread onto farmers field (which then has potential to leach back into stream. so thinking better to use the hydroponic potential to suck them up, and hopfully store nothing although possible just the excess that the proposed system cant mop up.

michael_Ferrini - agreed on the polytunnels and a suitable crop, but just interested as to why you say DWC rather than NFT, and also do you mean large DWC tanks with rafts or smaller water butt/container type arrangment.

thanks for you thourghts

charlie

DWC operates higher water volume than NFT (unless you have a huge NFT layout). Looking at your facility capacity you will need to process large amounts of water so I immediately thought DWC. In reality it would likely be a combination as different crops require different techniques.

ok yes agreed see you reasoning completely. possible to operate them in conjunction to NFT and compare crops.

charlie

Also, if you can salvage solid waste it would be useable for fertilizer, but now we arrive at the simplified principle of channeling all effluent to a flood and drain system that utilizes the solids directly. Obvious is the cost difference between DWC/NFT system and Flood and Drain system. DWC is the cheapest. NFT requires lots of plumbing, channeling. Flood and Drain requires the most labor (dealing with substrate) and also requires intiricate plumbing (especially with those autosiphons )

Morning all i think i worked out dwc is deep water culture but nft i can only think of something with a swear word in it ! what is it please

Nutrient Film Technique - here's some info:
NFT

Thanks so my lettice channels are nft

yes...correct