Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well, yeah, enough bio-material to react with, and enough time, it will become usable water.
That's why they keep adding poison to it
I have just added 100-150 gallons twice, a day apart, and let the pond percolate yesterday without adding any more yet. I may add another 100 gallons today is I get out there, nobody's died that I can see.

I have socks on my sump return, my growbed inlet, and the pipe into the settling tank. I mucked out most of the floor of sumptank/fishtank, gonna get it clean if it kills me.
Then I'll get the sequencer going.
Then I'll install the master-siphon and fill the 2nd 300-gallon GB.

It might be a good idea to get an extra tank to store water in. You can adjust the PH of the extra water to the PH of your system (should be 6.0-7.0, 6.5 ideal) and then set it sit with some air stones in it. That will help it off gas and you will have AP water any time you need to top off.

I only have chlorine in my water to worry about, but I have high PH of 8.2. My water must have a ton of buffers in it. I have to use a lot of acid to bring the PH down. If I add even 10% to my system my PH will go from 6.4 to 7.8 instantly. PH swings like that stress the fish and I have had many die for that reason.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add in to the To Do list:
Set concrete bases for 2 x 275gallon water tanks
Connect to roof, install rain gutters, plumb outlet to pond...

I have the tanks already. Have had for over a year. I'm horrible.

Hey Look Over There! Ginormous okra!!


Rick

Two tomatoes survived my extreme summer challenge (no shade), this is (part of) the Mama Mia Roma.

It appears to be getting ready for a fall crop.

Vying for space with okras and eggplants.

I transplanted in some squashes to try for some fall/winter action. As a trellis for them, I stuck a tomato cage in the middle of this 1.5 meter diam. round growbed. Coated the galvanized wire legs with tree-sealer before jamming them into the media. May make a nice centerpiece if they climb up it!
I do get irritated at having to shake off all the peat and perlite clinging to the roots of nursery transplants. I know squashes don't appreciate root handling. Prefer seeds but this was a spur of the moment thing, some of those 99-cent seedlings again...

On to the Okra Show

They go higher than I can reach.

Even if I didn't love the vegetable, I'd still grow okra for the flowers!

Pods in progress, pods, future flowers...

Gotta love fish with whiskers.

Growing. Happy. I like the new clear water.

Still have two dozen Comets in there.

wow those plants are huge. Your system looks like it is doing great. Can I get a zoomed out picture of those okra for perspective? I love the catfish. They are a really cute fish. Have you tried growing any of the blue catfish?

My okra haven't done so well this year. Still have kinks to work out in the system. Actually I already bought the parts to fix a few things, but they are just sitting there waiting for me to have the time to put it together. =)

Here's a couple of perspective-ish shots.

The grid size on the trellis is 6 inches (15cm).
The surface of the GB starts at 3 feet (.9m) off the ground.

The fence behind the GB is 5 feet (1.5m) tall.

And an artistic shot, if you ignore the red mesh crate...

Blue cats are available, but I will probably repeat/stagger batches of Ictalurus Punctatus as a great all-season fish and still be thinking about adding Pacu in warm seasons. Maybe.

Hey Rick...how did things look down your way this morning?

Did Rick get eaten by his Catfish ? I wanted to see how your system is going and find out about what a good time for planting stuff in Houston is.

Maybe he is in an Okra induced hibernation ?

Curious to see what you and DejaVudu are doing this time of year with the freezes we've had.

Merk, here's a link to an article on Houston area gardening with a guide to crop rotation. It tells you what to plant in what season here. Urbanharvest has a lot of good basic gardening information.

http://www.urbanharvest.org/advice/basi ... ation.html

Planting guide: www.gardenate.com

bump

Rick - you still around?

Ohhh yeah.
In a nutshell, working on expansion beyond the original 300-gallon RMST. Fiddling with level on a master-siphon, because that level will determine the height of all the growbeds to come.

The original 300-gallon is a teeming mass of life:
25 Silver Queen corn stalks, tasseling and 5 or 6 with baby bumps
2 Eggplant with leaves getting huge and blossoms popping
Some tomatoes, growing, mini-flowers for now
Many many carrots, roots are 3" up to 5"
Many many lettuce
Tall flowering Cilantro
A beautiful grape vine
Basil starting its season
Sprouts of zucchini
One-offs of rosemary, Galanga, Meyer Lemon.
This is exciting: I have an active police force of Assassin bugs and a smaller squadron of Ladybugs. A few weeks of aphid infestation on various leafy crops was allowed to run its course, and attracted some hungry hungry hunters. The cilantro keeps them around. It's like a do-nut shop for the beneficials! The assassin bugs remind me of cats in how they roam, seek, target & strike.

I am brainstorming this expansion because I have 75 strawberry transplants in the fridge, plus seeds to plant of:
Melon two types, cantaloupe two types, basil (at least 5 types), more corn, cukes, a second grape vine, OKRA!, and I'm sure some more seeds I bought and can't recall at the moment.

In the fish pond: 25 comets, 25 Channel Cats of 10 to 14 inches, 40 fingerling cats at 5 to 8 inches, all with good appetites.

A drippy leak out the side of the 300G RMST, repaired once but releaked (I think the tub is flexing as the clay beneath settles/squishes) and is being directed to a thirsty Blackberry Patch in soil.

Raw Materials Still Un-Utilized:
300G RMST, 2 x 100G RMST, 2 x 270G rainwater tanks, a 4-way 25mm Spider, a 6-way 25mm Spider, and a small plumbing shops-worth of fittings, pipes, funny pipe, valves... and a pile of Expanded Shale sufficient to fill 200-300 gallons of GB.

And I finally opened a YouTube account.

The big cats don't mess with the small cats? They also play well with the comets?

Thought they were predatory...

I tried putting a big goldfish in with my small trout. The small trout killed him..