Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

OK, first things first:

I must give credit to the amazing people on this forum whose ideas I shamelessly plagiarised. Without their ideas, this system would not have been built.

Likewise, if it fails somewhere down the track, it is all their fault.

So, thank you so much to Juergen for pointing me in the direction of Low Energy Aquaponics and also to Jimbo Rollins, who put all the hard work in. And also to all the excellent people on that particular thread who bother to answer my questions. Hurray for you all!

OK, to the system...

We live off-grid in rural Tasmania. We have 525W system- that's right, less than 1 KW- but a good battery bank. Our biggest consideration has been to use as little power as possible.

Thanks to Jimbo Rollins' and others' ideas on airlifts to move water, my husband and I have just built a constantly flooded, 1000L FT, 2 x 500LGB system powered by a 5 watt air pump, which our experiments showed could move up to 1200litres per hour using the airlifts we made.

I have photos to upload, but the message board tells me they needs resizing and I don't have the software, so hopefully tomorrow.

It is Day 10 since the system started running, I think. No fish yet, hoping I haven't left it too late. Water test shows:

temp- 15 degrees
pH- 7.6
ammonia- 0
Nitrites- 0
Nitrates- 0

I was a bit concerned about the pH, but it's early days yet. Water filling the system is from our creek: very clean, no farms upstream.

One bed is planted with parsley and silverbeet seedlings, the other with seeds: lettuce, kale, spinach, parsley. I added some seasol for the plants, but I would like to add fish asap unless the good people on this forum say otherwise. We have tracked down a place that sells trout fingerling...hope to get the go-ahead tomorrow.

It is all VERY EXCITING!!! We will give this one a few weeks and if all goes well we will build another one soon.

I'll give more details with the photos.

I'll be watching this with great interest, looking forward to the photos.

Also to resize them i just right click on them, open with, microsoft office 2010 (or photo editor in previous versions) and then when the image opens up i go to 'picture' then 'resize' and then select 800x600 on the right hand size, then save as and add 'e' for edited at the end so i still have my original

You'll need to add some fish to achieve ammonia above zero and get the nitrification ball rolling. Small number of fish to start with with low feed rates will keep ammonia low until bacterial populations are achieved. At such a low temperature I'd guess at least 6 weeks before the process properly kicks in......good luck.

Is this a solar driven system? If so I'd like to see details.

Cheers
Mark

I use Irfanview to resize photos, it's free to download and no adware
http://www.irfanview.com/

keen to see your setup

OK, photo time!!!
Because we are doing constantly flooded, the level of the GB to the FT is really important. We didn't want too much GB lip, but we also obviously didn't want water to overflow from either tank! We worked out that for a comfortable working height in the GB, we needed to sit the IBC FT lower than ground level. Here we are excavating (my husband did more of the work, but he is also the photo man, so it looks like I did, ha ha!

GB stands seem to be a huge cost in AP set-ups; part of our challenge was to do this low cost! Luckily for us, we have a lot of trees on our bush property, some of which had to come down for our solar set-up. Our stands are pretty rustic, but then, rustic is our style!!

I'm not sure if my size is a good thing or not; I was the perfect size for getting inside the fishtank to clean it out after all our sawing and fitting...

Levelling everything off...sorry, this photo should have gone sooner!

Washing gravel was extremely UN-FUN. And we didn't even do it well. We live by a creek, so we kept the gravel in the trailer and used our pump to spray it in situ next to the creek. Despite that, it was still dirty, really needed to be done in much smaller amounts. Same with the river pebbles, which we have used as a top layer. So, our water is a bit unclear...hopefully it won't matter...
Growbeds ready for planting

wow, looking great !!

Grow beds planted out, maybe day 8 or 9?

I have a video, too, of our airlift working, but that is a whole other technological ballgame to work out how to upload it, guess it has to be uploaded to youtube first.

Hey, Gorotsuki, Iceman, and theNEWT, thanks so much for the uploading tips and the interest. Mark, the aquaponics is not on its own stand-alone solar system. We already have an inverter and battery bank, so it would have been just another expense to buy the AP system its own battery...I am positive it could be done, though. 5 watts is nothing. We will look into that for future systems.
As I mentioned, we have 3 175watt panels for our household use. We have an inverter and a good battery bank. The inverter doesn't kick in until there is enough power being used (more than it takes just to run itself). That has been funny. When we first tried our airlift experiments, we plugged the air pump in and NOTHING HAPPENED!!! I was so disappointed! Could it be a faulty air pump? Then I realised that our inverter might not be kicking in; we didn't have anything else running. Lo and behold, switching on a light as well solved that problem and water started to flow. We now have a 7 watt lightbulb on permanently in our battery shed so that the AP system will work 24/7.

No backup system yet. I am going to order another airpump, and we might investigate a stand-alone solar set-up...we have a generator, but if it stopped working while we were out, I'm not sure what the best option would be...

Dissolved oxygen also concerns me. The airlift takes water from the bottom of the tank, and our return pipe is as close to the surface as we could go without causing a change in water levels, if that makes sense, so the theory is that all water meets the surface and is re-oxygenated before it is pulled to the bottom. I wonder, is oxygenated water denser? Will it sink? Hmm...

I must confess, I am not at all brainy that way. I just want to grow plants with a minimum of water, no weeds, and do things as efficiently as I know how. We drink a lot of green smoothies, so we need a lot of fresh greens, but we also don't have a fridge (525watt system= no fridge), only an esky where the bought greens regularly go slimy. Hopefully, this system will change our lives for the better that way!

Now, bring on the fish!!!!!!

Oh, and here is the link for Jimbo Rollins' excellent airlift experiments and the progress of his system.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=11703
Bullwinkle, velacreations, Jimbo, Juergen, RupertofOz (and everyone else contributing to these threads), thank goodness for thinkers like you.
Loving this exciting journey!!

Hey Blythe,

It looks great.

Is being off the grid a choice. I wonder how I would cope being off the grid (especially after seeing last power bill). If it is a choice do you mind me asking what other ones you have made and why.

Looks good Blythe. I was just wondering how long your hot house would last where I live due to it being a very windy area, we experience some pretty severe weather. Your area looks well forested and I assume doesn't experience high winds. I am toying of building something similar to increase available heat during winter, but it has to be storm proof.

I have an off-grid property that uses a 1280 Watt solar array, 48V storage with about 8kW of *available* stored energy in batteries (to be upgraded in the future 2x). Inverter handles about 2800 watts continuously. We dont live there permanently as yet, but when we are there our average consumption is about 3-4kW per day, normally my batteries are fully charged by about midday. I have owned the property 3.5 yrs and about 1500 kW has thus far gone through the system and the batteries behave as new. I have an old tucker box freezer running continuously, one bar fridge and one small standard fridge, which can all run simultaneously if needed. I'd say even with your smallish system you could run a small bar fridge on a low setting, especially in a cool environment such as where you are. It wouldnt draw much more than say 40W max and only runs long enough to bring the temp back down, so it wont use much over 24 hours. If possible increase your battery storage and/or solar panels, especially in Tassie.

I dont know how the air lift system works - bit of a head banger, but if you can run a system this size on 5 watts you are genius IMO... ....LOL, even the inverter was laughing. 5W!....what! WATT! You want me to send you 5W? Ya gotta be kidding, you could run a mouse on a treadmill and get that. Downright genius if this works, its a reasonable size setup you have....will be interested to see how it pans out. Good luck

Cheers
Mark

Hey, Hooked. Yes, it was a choice, reconfirmed by the quote to bring a power pole over the creek to our property (in the 10s of thousands of $). We came here to be off the grid and I absolutely LOVE it, not a single regret. We are city folk, and we thought we were energy conscious before going off-grid, but it's hard to really be energy-conscious when the power supply seems endless. Now, we know exactly how much we use and how drained the batteries are becoming, and it is FABULOUS. I think I can speak for all four of us when I say that we don't feel at all that we miss out, just that we are very aware.
Other choices? Hmm...lots and all really cool! (except for things like slimy greens ha ha). My husband and I built our cabin all by ourselves to see if we could; we plumbed the cabin ourselves and all water to the house is gravity-fed, woo hoo! Most cooking is done on a woodstove which also heats our water and house. Toilet is a sawdust-style one (won't go into details there, but happy to give more details if you like.) Heaps and heaps of things, which probably aren't so special by themselves; they are special because we are city folk who haven't got a clue, but we're still doing it! Yay!
Mark, thanks for all the encouragement! And now I'm going to have to find out more details on our solar system and see what we are using, etc...
We have actually ordered a solar powered freezer (it will be stand-alone) which is due to come in the next few days. That will change life hugely. I have quite liked the time without it, though; we will all REALLY, REALLY appreciate it when it comes because of the time without it. First order of business: an ice cream party!!!!

My husband spoke to a local supplier of trout; the man was not at all impressed with aquaponics, said that IBCs are the wrong shape for trout, not enough surface area for oxygen exchange (he recommended a shallow water tank, but then my airlift wouldn't work!!), and he also thinks the polytunnel will get too hot for trout (which was a concern of mine, too. We originally planned to put the FT outside the polytunnel, plants in, but cutting the polytunnel plastic for pipes would mean the polytunnel would degrade a lot faster with wind pulling at it, etc...). BTW, we get CRAZY winds up here. The polytunnel has been there for over a year, so far so good. Another low cost venture.
We will definitely be adding to our solar system, both batteries and panels. This was our original get-us-going set-up, and now we are pushing it to see how much we can do with it!!
The genius is not mine at all! I am a good copier. Check out Jimbo Rollins thread link above.

Nice system..

A question..
What voltage is your Battery system..
- How far is it from the Battery's to the Green house..? The reason I ask if it not to far.. see of you can get a DC Air pump and not have the need to run the 7w lamp..

If say the battery set-up is 12volt get a 12v DC Air-pump and use that directly..
The Reason I asked about distance from Battery's to Greenhouse is that you have to take into account voltage loses in DC set-ups.. the lower the voltage the more effect it has..[This is for Cable sizing to reduce the amount of lose..]

Other than that Grat'z on being the first Low energy system..
- If your not on medication.. A bit of Peeponic's goes far... especially in starting the system up..

Juergen..

Looking great Blythe! I hope to be just a couple of weeks behind you on startup. Still hashing things out with the banker(wife-she actually works for a bank)to get a few more things.

I agree entirely about off-grid. Even though we, 'wife and myself' don't as yet live at our 10 acre property full time, its used about 1/3 of the year and I HEAR YOU! Off-Grid is great! It's simple matter of being a little frugal with usage and as you say, knowing what is consuming and how much power is coming in etc....after a while you just know. Now days I go into my power shed and guess the incoming amperage before checking just to see how clever I am...LOL...I have become so familiar with how it works, second nature stuff, dont even really need to think about it. One really interesting thing I have found is that the system works best during autumn and spring months, ie, when temps are down and light intensity is quite high. Even on overcast days the input can be up to 80%. But, in hot summer weather its the worst as the panels heat up, the ambient temp in the shed is 40+ and the systems recharge and supply ability really drop. Thankfully this problem is alleviated by the long light hours. Winter is also quite good, much better than hot summer periods and the fridges use little energy, so consumption drops. And when power goes out in town (about 3ks away) I dont even know. Last really bad storm we had where we actually experienced a tornado of sorts, massive trees were ripped out of the ground etc...2 days later I went into town to get fuel, sorry mate been out ever since the storm....crikey, it hit me just how isolated I was off-grid. All those people with power issues and here I was isolated from it all just 3k's up the road...its a great feeling being on solar.

Cheers
Mark

I havent exactly decided on my aquaponics setup yet, but I do know I'll be burying a large plastic rainwater tank into the ground, cooling here is very important with days around 50C.