Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm just getting started in this AP thing but the bug is biting me pretty hard. I decided to get into it as a way to grow green stuff over the winter, to maybe provide a few fresh fish, and because it looks like an awesome way to do some tinkering and learn something new. My wife thinks I'm doing it just to drive her a bit more over the edge

This site and others like it have provided a lot of knowledge and I've also taken a 1 day course in AP at a local community college. I've been actively working on my first system for a little over 2 weeks and I'm already a whole lot smarter than before I started. I have a couple of challenges to overcome so any advice on that would be welcome.

The first is that I'm not exactly in a temperate climate - as I write this, the wind chill temp is -4F and it's snowing lightly. Summers here are hot and humid and we usually have highs in the 90s (F) for quite a few weeks. Thankfully, I have a nice shop building where I can set this up. It's heated, but I usually only heat it to 45-50F unless I'm out there working so I need to provide supplemental heat to the system. The shop is not air conditioned so that will be a challenge in the summer.

The second challenge is that there is little natural light in the shop. I have this system set up in front of the only window available but the sunlight is still filtered by some trees. I'm providing supplemental lighting right now but may try to move the grow bed, or even the whole system, outside when the weather is better.

I'll catch things up with a few pictures and then add to this thread as things progress. Any helpful insights will be most welcome.

The cornerstone - an IBC I bought for $50US. It was used one time for sodium benzoate.


I cut off the top 12" for the grow bed.


Trimmed it out with some cedar.


To be continued.....

Moved into it's home spot and plumbed up. I tried a loop siphon drain for it's simplicity but could not get it to work correctly. The distribution to the grow bed is a loop of 3/4" PVC with 1/4" holes drilled 6" on center. I have 2 feeds to this with the idea of running 2 pumps for redundancy. There's a valve in the middle of the loop to separate the 2 sides. Currently I'm running one pump.


Switched to a bell siphon drain. I made a stainless fitting to screw into the 2" pipe thread in the IBC cap. There's a 1-1/4" pipe coupler welded in the middle to function like a bulkhead and allow threading in fittings from both directions. The drain functions very well.


I wrapped the FT and GB with 1/4" insulation material to block light and to insulate. The GB is filled with lava pebbles. I pulled a few spinach plants and a red cabbage from the outdoor garden before the really cold weather and snow hit. You can also see an emergency drain elbow in the front of the GB. Hopefully if there's a drain issue the water will just return to the FT.


To be continued....

Here's the system shortly after I started it up. The water is a bit cloudy from the rock but it settled out in a day.


These are the parts that are currently being used:
Water Pump: Harbor Freight #68395, 264 GPH fountain pump, $12US
Air Pump: Hydrofarm AAPA15L with 2 large air stones hooked up, $29US
Water Heater: Catalina Aquarium 500 watt titanium, $40US
Lights: Old fluorescent shop lights I had, (8) 40 watt 48" bulbs, timed to run 6AM to midnight

I also have a Hydrofarm AAPW800 (800 GPH) pump that I haven't installed yet ($41US). The thought was to install it and bypass a lot of the water back to the FT for aeration. The 264 GPH pump seems to be nicely sized for the system though so I may just leave it. It fills the GB in about 8 minutes and the bed drains in about 7 minutes. The 264 pump is rated at 16 watts and the 800 is rated at 45 watts. Since the air pump is rated at 6 watts I'm thinking it may just be cheaper to provide the aeration with it instead of running the big pump.

Speaking of electrical usage, I checked things out with a watt meter so see what the draws are:
Heater (when turned on by the thermostat): 490 watts
264 GPH pump: 15 watts
Air pump: 5 watts
Lights: 236 watts
Total: 718 watts

I have the heater set at 71F and it really doesn't kick on that often. It is the largest draw but I figure that the heat I'm loosing is just going into the shop. Since I'm heating it anyways, there really isn't a cost.

To be continued...

Here's another photo of the system. I need to do some tidying up of the cords once I figure out what I'm doing. I fired it up on 14DEC (without fish).


I'm working on a fishless cycling. I used 10% ammonia and have been at 8.0 for a week. I also added a bottle of Tetra Safe Start on day 4 to try and get things going a little. Yesterday (day 7) was the first that I saw any nitrite reading so hopefully we're moving in the right direction. I'm not very good at this whole patience thing.

The spinach seems to be doing ok - a lot better than it'd be doing out in the garden right now. I did notice that the leaves were yellowing a bit after a few days so I went in search of Maxicrop, or something similar. Couldn't find anything around here but I did find API Leaf Zone aquarium plant food at the pet store. I added some of that to see if it would help. I'll let you know about that later.

To be continued...

Here's some more to get us up to date.

Shot of the FT - pump on the left, large air stones right and left. There are a few lake stones in there as well. Didn't know if they'd help get the cycle going but in any case the fish might like a little decoration to their home. I washed the lava rock pretty well but still have some sediment.


A shot of the siphon. I used a piece of lexan instead of a pipe cap for the bell. It's kind of fun to watch the siphon work.


To be continued...

And more.
This is a shot of the yellowing spinach leaves. Does it look like I did the right thing in adding the API Leaf Zone? Should I try to get some Maxicrop with iron to add?


I couldn't wait, so I planted some more stuff on day 3 (18DEC). I pulled the rock back until I was about 1/2" below max water level. On the left are Swiss chard seeds. The square towel has lettuce seeds. The round disc is a parsley disc from Johnnys Seeds - these are really handy. Upper right hand corner (already covered) is radish seeds. I laid paper towels down, sprinkled on the seeds, covered with another towel, and covered with rock. Is that a legit way of doing it?


4 days later, lettuce and radish sprouts are showing.


Day 9 data:
Air temp: 50F
FT & GB temp: 71F
pH: 8.2
Ammonia: 8.0
Nitrite: .25
Nitrate: 0

Any comments or suggestions?

Day 11 update:
I have more lettuce, radish, and parsley sprouts coming up. Spinach is looking about the same as before.
Ammonia: 8.0
Nitrite: 5.0+
Nitrate: 10
Seems as though the bacteria is starting to do its work.

Looking good

It is a bit hard to tell on my phone about your spinach but it might be lack of suitable light. I have never had much luck growing with just a plain fluro. It think there might be different types for growing. I am not sure.

Also don't put in any more ammonia. Wait for it and the nitrites to fall to zero before adding any more. I would keep looking for maxi crop too. I found it very beneficial in a new system.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk 2

You may be correct on the light issue. I have some growing in the house, in dirt, under fluorescent grow lights, and it's looking better than the AP. I also wonder if it's possibly because the leaves are touching the media since it seems like all the yellowing leaves are touching.

I'd have to look back at my records to know for sure but as I remember it, I only added ammonia for the first 2 or 3 days. Maybe I missed something, but it seemed as though it went from 0 to 8 almost overnight. I should just leave it until the bacteria get it under control - correct?

Thanks for the help!

Day 13 update.

Water temp: 71F
pH: 8.0
Ammonia: 2.0 (big drop)
Nitrites: 2.0 (nice drop)
Nitrates: 5.0 (small drop)

I have some more lettuce and radishes coming up and there is one Swiss Chard (silver beet to you Aussies?) coming up.

I added about 30 gallons of well water (bore water to you Aussies?) to bring the level up. The well water pH was 7.6.

Based on some other research I've been doing on this site, including the BYAP trials, I switched the GB over to a timed flood and drain. I pulled the bell and replaced with a piece of open pipe with slots cut into the bottom 2". I also fine tuned the 1" stand pipe height to set the water level about 1.5" below the top of the media and drilled (2) 1/4" holes near the bottom. With the pump off it takes 25 minutes to completely drain the GB. It takes 10 minutes to fill the GB to the top of the stand pipe with the 264 GPH pump so I'm guessing it will never drain below the 1/2 way point before the pump kicks back on. I have it timed for 45 minutes on and 15 minutes off.

Does this all sound on track? Should I add more ammonia again and if so, how much of the 10%? Should I add any more plant fertilizer?

I also picked up a 12 volt, 1000 GPH bilge pump from Harbor Freight to use as an emergency back-up pump. I'll run it off of my deep cycle boat battery and a charger for now. I'll probably start off with a 120 volt relay to turn it on if the power fails but I'd like to find a pressure or flow switch to turn it on if the power's on but the pump fails.

Thanks for the help.

EDIT:
Dohhh! I think I might have messed up with the timer settings since I have 45 minutes pump on, and 15 minutes pump off. Looks like it's generally the other way around. Not sure that it matters a lot though since constant flood also seems to be a preferred method. Maybe we'll just say that I'm combining the 2 With the pump size I have running though, 45 minutes on is probably getting me pretty close to the one FT volume per hour changeover recommendation (need to volume check that). I'll probably just leave it like that for now and adjust things when I do a GB expansion in the next week or so.

You mention you're using old shop lights. Have you tried new bulbs? Because of cathode decay your plants might not be getting enough light. It is recommended that fluorescent tubes are replaced every six months of this exponential light decay.


- John

John,
The bulbs are some old ones I had laying around so you may be correct. They also get some natural sunlight through the window but there's not much of that these days. A couple of days ago I ordered a T5 grow light fixture so maybe that will help a little.
Thanks

Time for a little update since there have been some changes going on. I've been working on adding an old bathtub as an additional grow bed and it's now part of the system. This should double my GB space. I've had this in place for over a week but have been waiting on a Uniseal from TCLynx to finish out the drain. It was shipped very quickly but for some reason the USPS figured the best way to get it from Florida to Iowa was to send it to Honolulu and keep it there for a few days It came in today finally and now everything is assembled. Here's a photo of the overall system at this point:


The tub is mostly filled with river rock and I added about a 3" layer of smaller pea gravel on top. I think that will be a little easier on the hands, and possibly the plant roots. I've changed over to a constant flood system with both beds fed off of a common 264 GPH pump. The IBC GB drains through a standpipe and the bathtub drains through a SLO type arrangement, shown here:


I also added a 12 volt back-up pump in case the power goes out. I'm using a 1000 GPH bilge pump, divert some of the water back over the FT for aeration and split the rest off to the 2 GBs. I trigger this off of a 120 volt coil relay which is plugged into the same outlet as the main system pump. When there's AC power the relay cuts off the 12 volt power. When the AC cuts out the relay releases sending power from the marine battery to the bilge pump. This pump pulls 5 amps so theoretically it should run for about 16 hours on a fully charged battery. There are a couple of weak points to this back-up;
1) If the power stays on but the main pump fails the back-up wont start. I may try to add a level switch that would turn the pump on if the FT level got too high (meaning the main pump had failed and the IBC GB was draining into the FT.
2) 16 hours won't be enough if I'm gone for a few days and the power goes out. I could add batteries or go to a smaller, lower draw pump to help this.
Here are a couple of photos of the back-up parts. First, the bilge pump next to the main pump and the fitting directing water back to the FT (white threaded plug with holes in a tee towards the top of the FT):


Back-up system running:


Control box showing relay and circuit breaker:


The IBC GB is fully planted or seeded and what's there is looking pretty good. The tub GB will be seeded later this week. I have one supply tube down the side of it with 1/4" holes on 6" centers. Will this provide enough flow through the GB?


It looks like I may be able to pick up some Tilapia later this week. I have to travel out of state for work and will be going right by a hatchery so I'm trying to arrange for a pick-up. Hopefully that works out since it will save quite a bit on shipping costs.

Anyone see any fatal flaws I'm making? I'd rather find out now than later.