Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It got cold here the other night.
This is what I saw hanging out around my system the next morning.

Chilly Chilli?

Florida can have such odd weather. Hot and humid most of the time, then out of the blue, freezing cold. When I was a kid I was playing in my grandma's barn in Jacksonville, FL. It was dark with rain, lightning, and wind out one door of the barn and sunny with birds chirping and insects buzzing out of the other door. Stayed like that for a good part of the day. Felt like some kind of cartoon.

I've never seen ice like that in my part of california, though one time it did snow.

Wow... didn't realise you got that cold in Florida TCL...

Well that night was what they call a hard freeze where it gets down into the 20's F for a solid 4-6 hours.

Now where the ice formed happens to be where there was splashing going on out of one of my towers and at the inlet to one of the grow beds.

Florida usually only rarely gets freezing weather but the last three winters have all had some extreme cold weather.

*brrrr*

Nice photo opportunity though, great pics

With that much splashing, do you loose much AP water on a regular basis?

I have a float valve set to top up a little at a time when the level in the sump drops low so I tend not to know exactly how much is being added.

I had been lax about making sure the flow in the towers wasn't splashing about and that led to the photo opportunity. I've since re-planted and fixed the flow in the towers.

The splashing into the two beds that get constant inflow I do need to improve as it's hard on all but the water plants growing in there. Haven't yet decided how I'm going to adjust that though.

you talkin' to me ?

Just an FYI, I finally decided that the Raft tank liner must be at least marginally fish safe as the two test pilots (two catfish) that I placed in there back when I filled it up are still swimming around and the one that was scraped up and stressed seems to have recovered so that liner can't be too overly toxic or the catfish would probably not have recovered in it.

So, I tied the raft tank into the main system and will add more plants into it (or more like over it since I don't intend to get a blower to run lots of air so I'll suspend the plants over the water rather than covering the surface with foam) in the next few weeks.

Good to hear those catfish made it, looks like you have a nice big new FT to augment your system

I must say I'm not counting the raft bed as a fish tank since it is nearly impossible to check on fish in a raft bed. Will be catching those fish before I put more plants in there. I only plan to leave a few minnows in the raft bed to make sure I don't breed mosquitoes in there.

Ok, finally removed the two test pilot fish from the raft tank yesterday. They were 1lb and 1lb 4 oz and seemed to survive just fine in there so now the raft bed is hooked into the main system.

Right now there are not many plants in it. One 4' section has a wire support with shade cloth and the plants suspended above the water with wicks. This seems like it will allow for natural aeration of the water. I've got a couple foam boards on the water with wicking mat and seed trays sitting on top to start trays of lettuce instead of submerging them in the water. I'll perhaps get some more wire supports going sometime but with the cooler weather there probably isn't as much need to remove nutrients as there is in summer.

I should probably run some water tests today, it's been a while.

I still have 84 catfish in the big system.

TCLynx,

I have a question about your main fish tank. What material did you use to lash together the two cattle panels? (I found in your posts about the tarp, the insulation, and the pond liner - just didn't see how you actually tied the metal bits together)

Thanks,
Snazzy

Since I know you are probably still asleep on your side of the planet and haven't looked at the posts yet...

Also, why did you use two panels (or are your panels not the standard 16 feet but only 8 feet?) (Heck, for all I know 16 feet isn't the standard anyway)

Thanks!