Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey freoboy:

Right now I only have a single small black goldfish in a 20 gallon aquarium haha. I also have a 500 gallon in-ground pond with about 250 gallons of gravel beds that run on a pump every 1 1/2 hours with no fish and a few alyssum plants woohoo. By January that will all be frozen. I will post pictures of the aquarium setup but I hesitate because it is not pretty. I may instead post a diagram of it so you get the idea but the aesthetics are cleaner.


Hey scotty435:

The planters are SIPs, but not merely SIPs. They perform the function of filtering solids from the AP system and removing nitrates. The planters are not only for serving the plants' needs. They also serve the fishes' needs for filtered water as well.

Note that a bucket could be made that works to settle solids out of the flowing water, then that could be carried over to fixed plants for hand watering. That might work better for things like vacations, etc.

Dave, For filtration, with the self watering planter you could just remove part of the system water into a separate pot that the planter would slide down into when it isn't hooked to the tank. If you put an airstone in through the self watering planter down to the lower pot you could continue breaking down the ammonia ... and solids aerobically while the pots were no longer connected to the tank. What the video didn't show is that many do it yourselfers use a two pot system. Since the lower pot has no holes - the holes in the sides of you planters would not matter. Long ago I did something like this with some free buckets I got from local bakeries.

http://underthechokotree.com/index.php? ... &Itemid=37

This next one has possibilities if you can run a pipe from your tank to a reservoir where the planters are (no more back and forth - all automatic) using in reservoir and bucket float valves.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

http://forums2.gardenweb.com/forums/loa ... 14882.html

Hey again scotty435:

Thanks for the info and links.

I had considered that the planters could sit in a lagoon of some sort, rather than sitting dry. I think if I were to make a shallow pond for them to sit in I would consider just making that into a bed. One of the advantages is to put these on a shelf and forget them for days, with no umbilical to the AP system necessary.

The airstones in the poo water in the bottom of the bucket is an interesting thought. EB's raft system uses aerated barrels for the initial biofiltering that way from what I understand. I was thinking that the solids would be mixed in the media and since the planter were moist not submerged that there would be enough air to break them down within the planter.

I think you're right about the air breakdown but it all depends on how moist you want to keep the planters and how often you want to have to carry them back to the system. Having a base pot just gives you flexibility with your watering schedule and allows you to have more pots and water less often.

Using the tank water in the base pot reduces the need to process as much at the tank. Like what happens when you use autopots.

Cheers.

Right on thanks for the ideas.

I have sprouts!

I planted some herb seeds last week and two of the planters are sprouting. I was thinking the charcoal medium was a dud because once the planters are out of the water they seem pretty dry, but now I think there is still moisture lower down in them.

I have refined the planters to version 3.0:

Mark I: Food containers from Walmart. The plastic in these is very thin and fractures way too easily. And they look kind of dumb. I drilled a row of holes in them to leave a layer of water in the bottom. Medium was gravel on the bottom and charcoal on the top. The charcoal was pretty chunky.

Mark II: Real plastic pots from Lowes. Nice round terra cotta ones, probably 8" high, with a drainage dish thing built into it. The drainage dish can be popped off. I drilled a row of holes above the dish about every 2" all the way around because the bottom holes would not be able to keep up. Charcoal finer but still too chunky.

Mark II.5: I bought a thin sheet of polyester quilt batting from the craft store today. Two reasons, one is to be sure to filter the solids and keep them in the planter rather than flowing out. The other is because I think the charcoal might not be very wick-y. Row of holes around the bottom above the dish.

Mark III: Same planters, but I popped off the drain dish and drilled as many more holes in the bottom as I could. I also put a felt disc in between the dish and the planter so that the gap doesn't close up too much. This is one of those felt discs you put on the legs of chairs so they slide well on the floor. Polyester batting as well, although I could use less because I just need to cover the bottom now and have a strip or so for wicking.

I have a kind of small batch method for breaking the charcoal up finer. I'm using a nice slotted colander and several buckets some with water in them. I put about a handful of charcoal lumps on a pizza box, and smash it up using a concrete block held up on end so I don't have to stoop as much. I am trying to get it about the consistency between coarse sand and maybe 1/4" gravel. I am getting it much finer than before but it is going to be a pain for larger amounts like buckets full (which could be chunkier anyway).

I bought a rolling pin to try to smash it up but that didn't work at all. I also tried using the food processor (wife is at work ATM) but that didn't work worth a darn either. I imagine if you wanted to you could make a thing to roll it through rollers to crush it up in larger batches.

The main thing I think is that the charcoal is hard, not soft. The sizes do not have to be large, so anything that would make hard charcoal would work no matter if the chunks were small or not. I think small wood chips would work pretty well.

Good Luck cleaning up the mess before she gets back

Love hearing about the ideas you test out.

LOL The food processor's already rinsed off, the stuff makes a mess when dry but if it's moist its not really a problem.

Also for science I put a lighter to the dust in the driveway to see if it was a hazard but all I got were a few tiny sparks off it here and there.

Why am I so obsessed with using charcoal you ask?

1. Can be homemade with any source of wood chips or woody stuff (I'd like a pyrolitic BBQ for Xmas Santa!)
2. Cheap ($7.50 a bag at Lowe's if you don't make your own)
3. Lightweight
4. Inert
5. High surface area (although this may only be true if you do it like activated charcoal by burning in oxygen and quenching?)
6. Sequesters carbon from the atmosphere indefinitely (this is a good talking point if nothing else)
7. Can be tilled into a dirt garden as a soil amendment when you're done with it in the AP system. To me this is the neatest thing about it is that you could use it and it would have good microbes in it and maybe some nutrients left over, that would be good to add to a dirt garden. You can't do that with gravel or hydroton.

Hi Dave, I like the charcoal idea. I think it makes pretty good sense. Worth noting that number six on your list got me thinking that burning wood to make charcoal would release sequestered carbon. Only other thing I can think of at the moment that might be an issue, how long does it take to break down since you might have to clean out the bed for this reason.

Hey again scotty435:

To make charcoal wood is heated in the absence of oxygen, the volatile gases etc are what keep the heat going. The only thing left from it is the carbon in the wood so although some carbon may come out in the gases most is left behind in solid form. You can burn it twice - once to make the charcoal and again as charcoal if you want to. If the charcoal is buried it can keep the carbon in the ground and out of the atmosphere for thousands of years.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-yo ... rra-Preta/

Hi Dave, interesting link, reading the comments was pretty informative as well. I was thinking about the CO and CO2 released but will have to give this more consideration since the majority stays in the charcoal and remains unreleased when done properly. Thanks for the information.

have you found that the charcoal sequesters much of the nutrients from the AP. I've seen people warn about using too much charcoal in AP cause it could absorb the nutrients kinda the way zeolite does but I never really looked into this much.

Now if the charcoal absorbs too much of the nutrients for direct aquaponics then this would probably make it even better for simply filtering over winter and then taking out to the dirt garden for mixing into the soil for the slow release nutrients for the summer dirt crops.

Did you ever grow anything in the burrito? If so how did it work out?

Too soon to tell how the charcoal works with respect to nutrient removal. We will see with this experiment. Where did you see it being discussed before? I would think any microbes in the charcoal could liberate the nutrients, unless they really get bound into some form that is not available at all to them??

The burrito was not plumbed, although I plan to use it for warm weather. The air is too cold to use something like this right now, but I want to use it for next Summer.

geez rupe what're you still doin up!!

I always thought aquariums ised carbon filters to remove ammonia . . .oh well