Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

had to reward myself for a week of vacation well spent. my nephew (24yo) move in with us, so this week i moved my pc's/office area from the spare room to the laundry room after moving some other stuff around..
even cleaned a couple floors (a couple more to go)
so, my reward was a new camera.. that was an adventure in itself.. i drove to the store, first i set my budget at 50, but by the time i got there, i was up to 75..
i left with a 49 digital, got home and realized it didn't come with a memory card
so i got a 16gb card, and batteries, and took pics!
here's what's left in the 110gal rubbermaid stock tank after i rinsed 3 gb's worth of "rinsed river rock" (that's that they called it!)


had to pry a shovel full off the bottom


here's a shot of my gravel cleaning area - the milk crates were inside the tote, kitty litter buckets with holes drilled in the bottom were used to rinse the gravel.. you can see how high the "mud" came up on the bottom crate;

here are the growbeds, i still need to lower the lights, but i have everything i need to do that..


besides seeds planted in all three gb's, i planted a few strawberries in this one;


the 3rd gb got seeds, a couple compact bush tomato plants, an ichiban eggplant seedling, and a regular eggplant seedling - here's looking down to the corner;

i'll post more tomorrow

Gotta love that gravel cleaning...

One suggestion for the camera Keith, turn off the date/time stamp function on the photos. This information is always in the properties of the photo so you can see them if you need to, but it can detract from the image quite often..

Maybe this is just my work side, I've had to put images in the mag in the past with date stamps and it doesn't look good.

Did they specify what they rinsed the rock with? Mud?

thanks eb.. i shut that feature off.. and yeah, i said the same thing, they washed it with either mud or sand!
still figuring out the camera but a few shots turned out ok..
trying to get a shot of glass shrimp was not easy;


another glass shrimp shot;


a scud (gammaurs);

the scubby pads under the outlets on the gb's are "scud traps"... after the scrubby sits under the outlet for a while i put it in my scud tanks, the three glass tanks are scud cultures, the daphnia were in those as well, but the last batch died out after using them a little to heavy.. the kitty litter buckets are green water cultures;


a scrubby with some scuds;


scrubbies in a gb;

the water in the small system has a ph of 7.2.. that's where the yp and bg are.. the pool has a ph of 7.8.. so i'll be slowly adjusting the water of the small system up to match the pool over the next couple weeks before i put the yp in the pool..
here's the pool... you can see a 1.5" water bridge, and the 4" drain.. there's another 1.5" drain that you can't see...

here's a better shot of the 3 lines to the ft;

the lines going to the sump/coming from the gb's;

one of the 55's, this is the one that the marmokreb escaped from, now it just has glass shrimp and scuds;

the marm is now in this 55 tank with scuds and glass shrimp (couldn't get a good shot of this tank!;

someone gave me this tank (gotta find room for it!);

and some shots of the gb's (i lowered the lights)
these shots are from right to left;

continued;

Keith:
Sketchup question: Are there built in shapes for use in drawing up an AP system?

Search for "aquaponics" in the models warehouse -- there's heaps of stuff!

Keith:

Thanks. Ok, I download a couple of models. Now I am struggling to use the thing. I will just take some trial and error. Looked at the tutorial. They make it look simple. Not for me so far.

I still prefer a pencil and paper... then simple two dimensional pics in mspaint.

Sketchup has me baffled sometimes (mainly because it wants to draw on one axis when I think I am drawing on another axis!)

Dido!