Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It might be a BSF, I can't tell what size yours is. The legs look different to the ones that we see here. Try this thread as there are a couple of pics one on page 10 and page 9, I think. viewtopic.php?f=26&t=6015&hilit=black+soldier+fly&start=135

cool thanks.

Was about 10mm long

Oh man! I just remembered, I know an entomologist!

She lived next door when I lived in the country in my previous life!

I'm going to ask her if she will be our tame entomologist.

She likes Bullwinkle House, and may well co-operate

It's easy to see why I neglected the fact, as all of my previous interactions with her involved goats, geese, and birds. But she has a kickarse collection of stick insects that I have never seen, but mrs Bullwinkle claims are real.

Um hang on. Disregard all of that....


Did you know, I know lots of stuff about insects... and their segments and so forth


you'll see


BullwinkleII will be able to answer all your insecty questions for a small fee


------------------------------------------------

Will entomologise for strawberries or PVC .

Man, now I'm really getting confused....

I gave up trying to understand his crazy-ness....

I love it BWII, you always put a smile on my face, and leave me scratching my head!

the hot house regularly gets to a tropical 33c in a wintery 12c day, and takes most of the day to bring the fish tank temperature up from an overnight 10c -12c to around 16c - 18c. 16c is when silver perch seem to spring back into life, and so have been feeding with their old summer time vigour. Today actually had an overnight low of 14c in the fish tank, and an afternoon high of 20.

Bndybear said there might be some stress for the fish with such large temperature swings, but I just realised that prior to the glass house, I saw 4c - 8c overnight lows, rising to 10c - 14c in the late afternoon. That's the same size swing, but starting from a perhaps stressfully low 4c, so who knows, but it does seem like it gains 6 degrees max.

It does seem like I'm dealing with a swing of around 6c no matter what the start temp is, and regardless of there being a glasshouse or not.

Can someone tell me what kind of temperature variations you might see in a larger body of water? say an IBC? Is that that much difference?

I think rather than trying to gain temperature, I might set to work on finding a solution of maintaining temperature first, then building a maintained temp second.

You'll get a 4-6 degree swing in most tanks... even through summer...

If your overnight temps are maintaining a higher temp then it sounds like your on a winner. I need to run some better temperature tests on my system soon after I install the 3rd GH cover over my GB2.
If its as simple as adding GH's to a system over winter to maintain SP feeding once a day every couple of days then they may become an option again.

I have noticed there was a rise in water temp after installing the GH covers to 2 of my beds but since all my SP were dead or moved out of the system I didn't bother to test things over a period of time.

The differences would be though, that you have your entire system enclosed in a reasonable GH structure which may maintain more heat than my makeshift Growbed covers, and also the water volume differences.

If I ever get over this chest infection I will get back out and do some temperature testing.

that 20c I had today in the fishtank was on a day of 15c or 16c max

I harvested a bit of heat from the top of the glasshouse by bypassing a trickle from my pump up to the roof and through a 20m coil of dripper poly pipe (3mm dia or so) and found a water temp at the exit of only 1 degree less than the top of the glass house air temp.

So the water dripping out was 22c when the air up the top was 23.

I did it when the air was 33c at the top, and got 24c water. Im not sure why the difference, but the fact is, there is some easy heat to gather from the top of the glass house.

My plan is to trickle the slightly heated water into a my duckweed tank that I will mount inside at ground level, and have that overflow into the fishtank.

If I can work it, I'll run a thermosiphon to the top of the hothouse because it will turn itself off at night.

But if I cant rig the thermosiphon, I'll just have to learn electronics and do it with solenoid valves.

Either way, Ill heat the duckweed tank, and have that trickle 24/7 into the fishtank. That way I should get a longer heating/cooling cycle, with a lag between when the heating and cooling might naturally start and finish. I might be able to gain a few more degrees in the FT and keep the gain overnight.

I noticed that the concrete base never warms up even when the air temp is 33c. The concrete is still cool to the touch. I'll measure it's temp tomorrow, but I get the feeling that it's costing more than its saving, so I might drop some carpet on top of it, and then plant baby tear all over the mud I drag onto the carpet.

interesting

It seems I may be heating the concrete or something, but its taken a few days.

I thought I noticed an gradual increse in temperature holding. It might just be the weather or something, but it's 3 hours or so after sunset, mid winter, and I'm seeing

10c ambient outside air temp

16c air temp in the middle of the hothouse

18c water temp.

So its only lost 2c in 3 hours.

I think I might be gaining some each day. I wish I kept some graphs. I like graphs.

I might keep some graphs

Thermal mass is your friend, once it gets to your desired temperature at least.

Bullwinkle... I found during my experiments with a solar array... that if you can keep the water above 13-15... overnight... it tends to gain a few degrees with a series of sunny days...

But get it down around 10-12 degrees.... and it takes a long time to get any gains back into the system...

It will be interesting to see what happens. The first few days after I put up the little hothouse, we had cold but sunny days, perfect glasshouse weather I suspect, but yesterday and today were overcast, but slightly warmer overnight.

I have a feeling the gains and losses might not be ... struggling for words here (stupid education system)... linear?

Do hot things radiate at the same rate as cooler things?

um...

If I have a cup of tea, let is sit for 10 minutes, then add 30ml of milk, will it be the same temperature as if I have a cup of tea, add milk, then let it sit for 10 minutes?

Anyone?
Dr. Karl?
KudaPucat?
RupertofOz?
StuartChignall?
Sue?
TCLynx?
Zanyone else?

(in alphabetical order)

well it also depends on if you have that tea sitting at room temperature or is it sitting out in the cold? I think it has more to do with the difference in temperatures so if you cool the tea first the difference will be less so continued cooling might be at a slightly slower rate but since it is starting at a lower temperature it has less distance to go before it reaches ambient so it perhaps doesn't make much difference.

Oh, and radiant heat loss will be more on clear nights than on overcast nights so perhaps you don't gain as much during the day but perhaps you won't lose as much over an overcast night either.