Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ooops. I keep losing posts!

Steve, sorry, thoguth you were Stevie Wevie. You are not. You are Steve. Nice to meet you.

Rupert and Jaymie, I shall endeavour to keep my little emoticon buddies in heel at all times, but you have seen how they behave! Just say the word: aquap... um, A.... P... and they pop right out like fungus after a rain. No need for chainsaws and flamethrowers. They don't mean to harm anyone...

Doug, I look forward to hearing more about what you are doing. That's exciting! You do have some challenges, especially the cold weather, that we do not have. What you are proposing, tho, you and I, we speak the same language. I really look forward to watching your system evolve, and not merely so that I may learn from any problems you encounter.

JT, thats the one! Water motor, made in Finca something in either Blivia or Peru (or paraguay, was a while back I read about it). It may be useful for you, maybe not, but when i read about it, I took a sad look around and realized that we did not have the flow where we had the fall, nor the fall where we had the flow, and tears sprung up in my eyes. perhaps I can live viocariously through you in trying this technology... and, yes, we can pole dorey here, so ther is not enough fall for much of anything.

Dr J, didn't Stevie Wevie make an aqua.... AP system? He vanished over ther, and when i saw Stev here, i thought, well, of course! where else would he go?

Anyway, very exciting stuff here!

Christopher,
the emoticons don't bother me, but I thought Steve might have needed some more tools

Jaymie,

there used to be an axe wielding masked emoticon over at PRI, which the lovely Queen would yield... I searched for him here, but alas, he is not... He could straighten out these rowdy emoticons!

you should see some of the birthday messages that are committed here wow!

a company I used to work for had its tugboat registered in Belize, but that is completely beside the point.

It looks to be a lovely place

Belize has its charms, sometimes....

Lots of boats registered here that have never been here. Bit of a national scandal....

I don't think the tug would have MADE it to Belize at all!

Hi Cris
Stumbled across joels and your posts on the permi forum also. as a long time Permi nut im just excited as you are about the marriage of permaculture and AP , as Bill Mollison says pond or aquaculture systems can be far more productive than land based systems. As youll see theres lots of very clever people on this forum doing great things in lots of varied ways , a lot concentrating on closing the "cycle" so to speak, so we have a lot of people examining natural non commercial feeds that fill niches withing the system and others looking at reducing the energy consumption of the system(solar pumping, different layouts etc)

Ive only just started putting my own system together in the hope of kicking off after our wet season, but like just about everybody in the forum couldnt resist a little mini system to try out a pet theory my excuse to get a good starter culture of bacteria going .

Going back to your original post about solar powered systems it seems to me that the best designs would be those that used the least energy ie pumping in the first place . Using the intergrated permaculture approach ive been looking at fullfilling all the functions of the pump in the system by getting it done by some one or something for free(ie chook tractor).

The pump serves two basic functions in the system areation and circulation of nutrients(yes there are other functions but im just looking at these for now). Now if your surface area to volume ratio is high (big shallow ponds) you dont have to have to areate as much or at all(energy saved) second being shallow your pumping head is low(again energy saved). The othr thing is shallow ponds are cheaper and easier to build than deep ones.. ive worked out a system of building long shallow ponds approx 1mtr wide 300mm deep and as long as you can get rolls of suitable plastic . allyou need is a flat area some star pickets , roll of plastic sheet, fence wire, and shade cloth. Currently ive got a trial pond going 700mm wide and 7mtr long the big thing with some thing like this is picking your species and nothing suits shallow ponds better than cray fish and (probably theres some fish species that wouldnt mind either) Im running 150mm water depth and a couple of layers of shade cloth in the bottom for the bacteria. a light proof layer over the shade cloth with a gap for water circulation( in my case old tiles placed on top of poly pipe offcuts "the crayfish housing")

Thirty odd crayfish and a hand full of rainbow fish to controll mosquitos compleates the picture. The plants go in gravel filled pots directly on top of the tiles the fish and the crays cruise around between the pots. I have a tiny pump(1000 lph) but Natural diffusion and convection seem to distribute the oxgen and nutrients pretty well as it only runs for a coulpe of hours every day .

My intention is to build a system to Joels specs but i just wanted to see what i could do in the way of a system using little embodied energy and cheap materials that had a very small energy requirement with solar pumping in mind.
Cheers and welcome

Hahahaha, Jaymie! See! The scandal of it all!

Tim,

How far along are you?

I like the ide of minimizing power use. Batteries being the weak link, keeping the system from being stressed is the best way to maintain the phtovoltaic/power part of the system, while meeting the needs of the AP side.

I would love to see photos! FNQ? Far North Queensland?

C

FNQ yep, Weipa is on the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, right up near the top. Bauxite mining town.

Gotta love the tangets LOL

Will try and organize photos . As somebody in the forum has already said , a dollar saved is worth more than a dollar earned (in other words far better to use less energy than need to generate more).The system is about a month old so is just coming on line im amazed the crays havent died from stress with me peering in at the every few hours.I think it was you on the permi forum talking about spirulina azolla and duckweed and it occured to me it would fit in with this system very well, and fullfill multiple roles , food for the crays and a solar cover being just two.

I think a lot of power can be saved by intergrating functions within the pond as in this system but you being in Belize and me here in FNQ(far noth queensland ) We dont generally (and i am generalizing not being familiar with your neck of the woods) have to deal with issues like heating so much . That being said its far easier to heat with solar (greenhouse etc) than it is to generate electricitywith it cheaper too.Have you thought about kinetic storage like pumping water to a header when the sun is shining and using the flow in no sun times to drive lowtec water distribution devices water wheels etc?

Hey Steve all live is a tangent!!

love 'em

well the boat goes to Weipa all the time too (which angle to take today?)