Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Plants are picking back up. Especially my peppers. Had lots of wind lately and its been wreaking havoc with the toms and fairly well destroyed the cucumber plant.
The goldfish are growing but I keep finding myself on tilapia websites....I don't know that I can eat goldfish.

Jimbo,
Have you spoken to Travis Hughey? Barrelponics author. Last I heard he had Tilapia, reasonable and he is in the carolinas...dont know how far away from you though...
Just a thought.
Brian

No, I haven't talked to him yet. And I really should being he's only about a 1/2 hour up the road from me.

Out with the battered cucmber, in with a serrano chile pepper plant. It will fill the gap between my jalapenos and cayennes. Also added 20 more goldfish today (1 1/2"ish).
Also looked at pond fish foods at 2 stores. One had a store brand along side the Tetra offerings that said on the bag "not for fish to be consumed by humans". So, I glanced at the ingredients and there were too many big words to hold my attention. The Tetra ingredients also had lots of big words in the ingredients. Both started out with fish meal, corn meal, soy meal like you would expect. I saw no warnings about human consumption on tetra or Wardley products. Since this is going to ornamental fish, I'm not to worried about it (I bought the Wardleys not the Top Fin), but when I introduce eating fish down the road, I'll have to come up with another source of feed it looks like.
Any suggestions out there?

Go to the Aquamax web site and search for dealers near you. Possible that your local feed store may be a purina dealer and they could get a bag of Fish feed put on the next truck for you. Of course you only want to get a 50 lb bag of feed if you will use it up quickly enough for it not to go bad. If you need to get smaller quantities, you may want to mail order something.

My local Tractor Supply carries Purina. Do you know if Aquamax is...if not organic...hormone free? Any downside to it that you know of. I googled around and turned up nothing either way.

Fiddled around in the yard today with some pipes and such. I'm trying to setup an airlift on top of an airlift to see if air can be "re-used". BW and I were pondering this once and I want to try it out. I have my doubts, but it has to be proved wrong before I give up.
The idea goes a little like: make an airlift, but instead of the air just venting to the atmosphere at the top, cap the airlift and see if the air can then be plumbed into the bottom of another airlift. Probably, it will act like doubling the submergence and therefore the pressure and will overcome or reduce the airpump's effectiveness. But, maybe not.

So, that right there (laying on its side) is a 1/2" airlift inside a 1 1/4" pipe with about a foot of lift and check valves at both ends so that water doesn't go backwards through the airlines. The plan if some testing proves out, is to combine 4 of these for a total of 4 feet of lift and then another set of 4 stacked right on top of the original 4 to re-use the air and go to 8 feet of head. Which of course is more than necessary for trying to hang strawberry towers over the fish tank. So, it might get scaled down some-I'm not sure. Just experimenting for now. I'm using sets of 4 because I'll be using the same 5 watt airpump that has 4 outlets.
In the background is my new tank scrubber-just some aquarium filter material on a drywall sander. Works awesome for reaching the bottom of the tank and staying dry.


I've got 2 of these put together tonight and they're sitting up letting the silicone cure where it was necessary. The outlet sticking out the side at the top is just the right size to fit snuggish in the inlet further down on the side rotated 90 degrees. A little silicone will make it fit nicely.
Testing tomorrow-updates to follow.

We can chalk it up as a failure...probably.
Set one airlift assembly in the tank with the outlet in the other assembly's inlet and then ran the airline from the top of the first down to the bottom of the second. Turned on the air pump, listened to the bubbling and.....water! A trickle really. But it was a start. Then after a minute or two, the whole contraption started to shake and rumble and then bubbles started coming out the inlet of the first assembly. So, there was too much pressure somewhere to keep the flow going.
Oh well. I'll roll it around in the skull some more and see if anything else pops too mind.
I'd really like to come up with another low energy airlift that has a higher head understanding there will be a reduction in flow.

look up giser pumps

Hey TC. Yeah, that may be the next step. I still want to mill this around some and argue with myself if trying to put a bell at the bottom to get the venturi effect going will make enough of a difference. Or, trying to match airflow to pipe size, maybe (although working with the 1/2" and 1 1/4" pipe is handy because I picked them up super cheap.)
If I do a geyser pump, I may very well pursue BW's idea of a shishi odoshi inverted and underwater to blow big bubbles of air into an upside down funnel full of water and see if I can get an Old Faithful thing going on. Maybe.

Just went through your whole thread! Awesome stuff!

Thanks, Quachy.
I'm not getting alll the growth I hoped for. My tomato plants just aren't taking off. Some have barely shown any growth, so I pulled a couple to let the nutes work elsewhere. My peppers all seem to be doing their thing rather well. The strawberries that were doing well at first have stopped fruiting.
Maybe I'm just being impatient, but the tomato plants sitting on the clearance rack at walmart look way better than mine.

Things are still looking bleak on the tomato front, peppers are ok but not thriving. Put in the first dose of seaweed extract, both foliar and in the growbeds. Neptune's Harvest is a locally available brand.
Still have a high pH=8.2 Ugh!

A New Project!

So who doesn't want a Japanese garden? I recently removed a friend's trailer from my yard and reclaimed a corner that needs landscaping.
We have a really great nursery nearby where I got the seaweed extract. They have a big koi/duck pond, a chicken shack, pig pen and a goat yard. The kids love to go there and feed all the animals. As I wandered past the clearance section the other day, they had added a bunch of $100 plants marked down to $20-40 each. I fell in love with a Hollywood Juniper that had a bansai feel to it and stood about 6' high. Then, a free hot tub (no pump) showed up on craigslist. And, also some Pennsylvania bluestone pavers got listed and I'm fetching them tonight. Supposedly 3/4 pallet for $40-we'll see when I get there.
So we're off and running. The juniper is in the ground



I'll set the filtration up AP style with some gravel beds growing seasonal plants for decoration, but there will be water plants, too.
Perspective, surprise, traditional decorations to get the "Japanese" feel and maybe a shishi odoshi!

Hi Jimbo,
I been following your work and looks very impressive! We'll done mate.
I've just purchased two ICBs (totes) and would like to go as green as possible. I like the airlift idea and would like to implement it in my set up. I've already ordered a 1000L/Hr air pump (8.5W).
Due to space constraints, I would have to place the 300mm PB on the 600mm FT.
So there could be about >400mm of head for the airlift.

Would that definitely not work?
What is the maximum head you achieved with the airlift?

Thanks.