Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Suggestion.. if you can break the ice.. try to do so and drop an air-stone in to help out-gas any CO2 and other gas's..

Drop a small tank heater set on it's lowest setting.. just to keep the water a little warm.. You don't need to have supper warm just above freezing..

Best of Luck and hopefully you have not killed the fish..

Juergen

Maybe you can get away with a few more degrees by adding salt to the water, I think it lowers the freezing point of the water. Seeing as the plants are already dead..
Not sure if it's O.K or not though....

there is an airstone below the surface but temps are just too low. It froze over completely

I don't want to break up the ice because i read the shockwaves could hurt the fish.

I could try salt but at -20°C I doubt it will help much

Thanks for the tips

I do actually feel for you..

Hopefully the fish survive the deep freeze..
Try some hot water down the side of the tank and maybe you can create a small gap.. I don't think the Air-stone will work to well if their is no release of pressure..

juergen

Deep freeze temperatures are over.
My system has turned back to normal and all the fish survived

I will post a short video.

First segment shows the ice melting on februari 17.
You can see the syphon is still frozen so I can't turn the pump on yet

Second segment shows how the warmer temperatures are affecting my home.
Groundwater is so high it just comes up through my basement floor.
I have to pump a few hours every day for a week now.
Luckily the part where I do all of my carpentry is about 10cm higher and is still dry

Third segment shows difference in medium quality.
The darker clay pebbles are falling apart (maybe due to the frost I don't know)
Thank god I only bought one 50L bag of the cheaper stuff.




I have put in the first seeds for this year.
An assormtment of 'spring-lettuce'
These are different kinds of lettuce, they can be planted in februari and will provide me with nice lettuce in april.

Struisje,

Please up-date, I am very curious about how your system is operating.

how is it running

Currently the system is running fine.
I'm experiencing some cold-related problems, same as last year. Temperatures aren't high enough to heat the water to a good temperature.
Plants do grow, but I think if the water temperature was a bit higher, the plants would do a lot better. I'm struggling to get to 20°C water temperature. It's summer here.
I think insulating the fishtank, or building a greenhouse would help me a lot.


Lettuce in the foreground, Leaks and Cellery in the back.


Lettuce in the foreground, corn and leaks in the back.


Bad quality, but about 30 goldfish, 10 koi.
Fish are doing great. eating well and no deaths for months.

A greenhouse over your system would help very much.

Thanks for the up-date!

Temps must be getting a little bit higher now, a bit further in the season? May be painting the growbeds black as well would assist(a little bit). I am trying to keep my water temp in control these days. Keeping the trout happy at 24 degrees watertemp makes me a bit nervous.

First real harvest of the season.
It's not much, but the reward is knowing all of this is organic, healthy and has much more flavour then store-bought lettuce.



Today, I have built a swirl-filter.
My current system is one FT, and two GB. I have no sump yet.
I'm having some trouble with solids. The pump is now in the FT. The inlet is about 15 cm above the bottom of the FT (I didn't think it through when I bought the pump). So a lot of solids remain in the FT

Plan is to take out the pump, put in a SLO, let the water move through the swirl filter, and into a sump I'm building, the pump will be moved to the sump and pump from there.
Updates to follow

Today I installed a sump tank and a swirl filter.
The reason I did this is because a lot of solids were remaining in the Fish Tank. The pump I had purchased, sucks the water through a hole about 15 cm from the bottom of the FT, so there isn't enough suction to get the solids out. One solution would be to purchase a new pump, but mine is still working fine, and I had a lot of the materials to create a SLO and swirl filter laying around the shed.

First thing I had to do was to drain about half the water from the fishtank so I had room to work.
I was going to install all this with all the fish still in the fishtank so I had to be careful not to drop any glue into the fish tank.


The swirl filter, before it was installed


The sump tank before it is installed


Just cut a hole in the side of the fishtank

The SLO will move through this hole, in to the swirl filter, and then pass to the sump, the pump will be located in the sump and pump directly to the growbeds, before returning to the fishtank.


The fish are happy, even in half the amount of water.


The SLO is in place inside the fish tank


The hole in the side of the FT, made waterproof (I hope)


An image of the SLO exiting the FT


The end result: Swirl filter and Sump tank in place

Now everything is left to dry for about 24 hours, tomorrow I will fill up the fishtank again and test everything for leaks.
I hope I will have my solids problem under control now.

Update 30/07/2012

First some pictures to show how the plants are doing:


Lettuce is looking healthy and juicy


Lettuce in front, Leaks behind, and cellery in the back


A look at one of the growbeds


First corncobs are forming


Fish are doing awesome, growing well, eating good an the SLO I put in is doing a great job at removing the solids

Another thing I want to show you is what I'm doing with the fish waste I get out of my swirl filter, I add it to a bucket of water and I give it to a blackberry bush I planted.
Results:


Hundreds of blackberry's from one bush


Climbing and climbing


New blackberry's forming every day. We've been picking between 5 and 20 berry's everyday for 1 and a half month now


We can't really keep up, some have gone to bugs and birds, still enough for us

The last thing I want to show you:
When I added the SLO and swirl filter, I also added a sump. It turned out it was a bit too small.
I added an extra sump and connected it with a bit of hose I had lying around. It is a bridge siphon.
Because it is a narrow hose I use the second sump as an additive tank. I threw some seaweed extract and some iron in there (not too much, don't worry). Every time the water level in sump tank 1 is going down, it "pulls" some of the additive water from sump tank 2 into the system.


Sump tank 1 on the right, sump tank 2 on the left. Notice how the water in ST2 is darker because of the seaweed extract. Last time it took almost a week to get the water in ST2 as clear as the water in ST1. It works like a charm.

Hee Struis,

We had to stop our system because it was, and still is, freezing too much and we were expecting system failure. Yours still up and running?

I had to pull the plug on the pumps as well, too much freezing temperatures.
My system currently has no veggies in it.
Still about 40 fish
Have lost two or three.

When spring arrives I will destroy the entire system.
I have two large pine trees that block the sun too much.
I will cut them down.

Then I'm going to build a 5m x 3m concrete floor and start building a greenhouse for...

...wait for it...

Backyard aquaponics system V 2.0

Woohoot! Looking forward to the pics already