Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looking good Don

hoop houses are awesome - great work Don!

Nice setup Don.......

Are you puting the shade cloth inside under the plastic. It looks like that would be to hot, maybe somebody has tried this if lets know. I would like to put mine inside also. All the local setups I have seen are on the out side. Also are you going to use dubble plastic with an air blower to help insulate in winter. Jerry

I'd put the shadecloth inside... and roll the plastic up over it in summer... dropping it over the shade cloth in winter...

Not sure I'd like to leave the shadecloth there all winter as this is the time of year plants want the extra light, due to shorter daylight hours.

I wouldn't shade cloth the lot... unless you can remove it totally during winter... just the sides... with something like a 30% cloth...

Boy I got a response to that one didn't I.

Yes I plan to pull some 1/8" cable from end to end and suspend the shade cloth on the cable with loops of wire like shower curtain hooks. The idea being to be able to slide the shade cloth back and forth. In the summer I need lots of shade from the blazing sun and in the spring and fall not so much. In winter no shade. The idea is to pull it over the FT for storage, so it will shade the FT all the time. I had a special cloth made that has three shark fins in it length wise with eyelets in the fins to support the cloth. One in the center of the cloth and the other two above the vine hangers. Hope this idea works as it is planned. My plants look much better after the 4 days of cloudy weather. Two days we got some rain and it raised the level in the Big Pond over 6 inches. Any way I think the shade will help the plants a lot. My rain guage was upset from wind and plants knocked over on top of the sensor so no measurement.

Jerry, No I don't plan to double the cover plastic so far. Maybe in the future but not now. I completed the vertical hoops today. Now for the exciting part putting in the perlings, the lengthwise bracing. One in the middle and one on each side about a 1/3 of the way to the ground. Then the corner braces will have to go in.
After that the shade cloth.

I forgot to mention that the shade cloth is 24 x 36 feet. The ground space for the hoops is 24 x 45 feet. The sides will not reach the ground but should shade from the summer sun. I had planned to cover the FT end better than with clear plastic to keep the light down on that end.

I read a thread from 2008 or 9 about algae blooms and maybe learned some more about the Algae Blooms and the resulting water technology. The thread was kinda dead but hope to revive it somewhat. There is another Bio thing going on with the algae like the Nitrogen cycle but with different bugs Hecto something. It is supposed to go like this. Clean water gets an algae bloom which is small plants and after a while you get a build up of Hectobactor which kills the algae and lets the cells disentagrate and get filtered out. The dead stuff emits a residue which kills more algae and inoculates the water to kill more algae. The residue is the brown stuff in your filters you remove. If this is correct you would stop filtering to remove the solids. End result would be clear water and no tank cover for algae problems, just fish jumpers. Residue stays in water like salt till it is reduced by water change of about 75% then the water could do another bloom and cycle again. It would usually be only at the change of water temps like change of season. I am hoping for more info from the other thread. I don't like my FT covered up. If that is true and it works I will remove my shade cover from the FT and look at the fish. The article mentioned was about Koi ponds but should hold true to AP as well. Have to wait and see what develops.

Don the article is essentially correct.... the initial "pea soup" algae releases an "antibiotic" enyme producrd by hectotrophic bacteria... which essentially suppresses any further algae growth, other than the "bio-film" which coats the tank walls...

And, as the article notes... when an AP system is balanced...it will exhibit an amber "tea" or "honey" coloured tint in the tank water....



In aquaponics this balance is essentially maintained... primarily IMO... because, unlike most Koi systems, we remove nitrates with plant growth in our grow beds.. and don't exchange significant amounts of water through water changes that the Koi boys do in order to lower nitrate levels...

I wrote an article about the nitrogen cycle, and some of this stuff in Issue 4?? or 5?? of the BYAP mag...

Here is some more pics of the hoop house getting built. I think the pics show the hoops all up and the shade cloth under the hoops. The plants are starting to really take off again. We have had rain and cloudy weather for the last 5 days and it is helping my dirt garden also.

Things are looking pretty good there Don....

112 is sweet basil. I do not know how big it is suppose to get but it needs to go. It was accidentally planted in the AP garden and just left Now what to do with it?
111 is ornamental sweet potatoe vine really taking over. That is one plant on each side of the run.
110 these are tomatoes that are recovering from the heat, the green worms, and the caterpillars. A week ago they looked like stems that were turning brown.

Sample was taken of the water yesterday
Ph 8.2
Am 0+
rites 0+
rates 40+
temp 90+

Things are looking remarkedly good considering your pH Don...

Are you supplementing with chelated iron and/or Maxicrop??

Great looking garden mate and I love hooped garden shade's, cheap and easy to make i recon. Well done