Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The bottom of the bin is channeled. This will work nicely to drain the fluids.


I drilled small holes for the drainage at one end. I will make sure this will be the lower end for gravity draining.


The harvesting jar.

I put some more of the filter material at the bottom of the harvester jar.


Tiny hole in the bottom of the jar for drainage. (Just in case. We get a lot of rain in Florida in the summer months.)


Also added tiny air holes at the top, under the rim.

Looks pretty neat, if you can get your hands on a bag of plastic practice golf balls throw them in the battom to even the mat out a bit, you might have concern for the gap between the ramp and the wall where the wall profiles outwards, maybe seal it it up??? And I know the commercial model allows the grubs to climb on ramp from beneath, you might want to consider this also.

Here is the harvesting jar. (I bought this bin at Lowes. It was less than $15 and included the lid. (Sometimes they sell them separately and you get surprised at the checkout counter.)



The bin has these channels in the bottom. Perfect for channeling the fluids to one end if I sit it on a slight incline.


I drilled tiny holes in the bottom at one end for drainage.

I have a couple of these containers I'm not using at the moment so I'm interested in how this turns out. The clear collection jar appears to be a weak point since it will overheat (my guess is you're not leaving this in the sun). Depending on how yours does I'll probably make one with a small cooler at the collection end.

Keep up the good work

The BSF larvae arrived today very active and ready to eat! Here is the new home I made for them.

I was actually thinking about that today. I plan to cover the whole thing with some type of shade. I will come up with some type of covering for the jar as well.

Good idea about the golf balls. I may have some around the house somewhere.

I actually used the gaps in the sides to hold cardboard for egg laying. The bin has about 1,000 grubs in it now and many of them are dark in color. Hopefully, there is enough moisture in the bin to encourage them to migrate out.

We shall see what tomorrow brings.

excuse the newby question, this seems pretty interesting.

- What do they eat in there?
- do you use the 'maggots' to feed fish and is that what this is all about?
- do they migrate into the clear plastic in an attempt to get to the light and become and fly?

thanks.

They can be part of what is fed to the fish but not the only food, you still need a good comercial feed.


Regarding the other questions - they seem to eat pretty much anything including things you could never get a worm to eat. I haven't seen anyone state that they go toward light but they head upward at a certain stage so they can be self harvesting which is what the jar is about. There's lots of information on BSFL both on this forum and other locations online.

DTP - I like the bungee cords but seems like they might be a pain to repeatedly unhook. What about just weighting the lid with a brick?

My main concern with securing the lid was to keep raccoons out of the bin. I have read that bungee cords "confuse" them. They are pretty adept at getting into things so a weight on top might not be enough. No really sure.

As far as being a pain, it is really easy. I used plastic staples, the kind used to secure electrical wire and cable, to secure the bungees to the base. (You can see the white plastic in the pics.) I can very quickly unhook and drop. The staples keep them in place to quickly reattach.

So this was interesting and unexpected. The first thing I saw when I went to check out the bin yesterday morning was an adult BSF on the wall of my house next to the bin. I went back in to get the camera but it was gone when I got back. Then I noticed this:



I found 7 grubs on top of the bin trapped in some rain water from the night before. How the heck did they get on top of the bin you ask? The only explanation I can offer is that they climbed to the lid of the bin and up and out of the pvc pipe. I don't know how many actually got out but I was shocked and impressed. I put all of those grubs in the dirt under the bin and they quickly burrowed into the ground. I figured they deserved the chance to turn into flies and breed. LOL



I opened the bin and it was dripping wet with condensation. I had put a small bowl of water in the bin to keep the humidity up. I think that was too much so I took it out. You can see some of the condensation in the next picture. This was after I wiped most of it out with a clean rag.

To keep them from climbing the walls again, I added a strip of the "hook" side of velcro all the way around the perimeter. I watched a video on YouTube where someone used velcro and the grubs would fall back into the bin once they hit the velcro. I also closed the gaps between the ramps and the bin walls with corrugated plastic. Regular cardboard got too wet so the plastic is perfect. It also can serve as a place for egg laying.



I really liked the look of this bin but I would not use it again. The indentations in the sidewalls, is a bit of a pain.

A little while later, I found an adult BSF inside the bin. (Again without camera in hand.) That was very encouraging. I added more corrugated plastic to the inside lid for more egg laying options.



I do have a problem with houseflies. I have not seen any maggots but the adult flies are ridiculous in number. They pissed me off so I threw this little contraption together to trap them. It works so, so.

The bin on the bottom has some water and dish detergent in it to keep ants out and mosquitoes from laying eggs. Geez you have to do a lot to keep bugs away when you are trying to breed other bugs.






It's just a quick throw together. I plan to refine it. I hope I don't catch an BSF's in there.

I found some good info online today from the maker of the BioPod. It seems that I have too much food waste in the bin. According to his advice, you are only supposed to put an amount the grubs will consume in 2 to 3 days at a time. That may be part of the reason for my fly problem.

Also, you can cover the food scraps with strips of paper. That helps with flies as well. Houseflies and fruit flies lay their eggs directly in the food so if they can't get to it easily, they are less likely to lay eggs. It should also cut down on the amount of flies around.

I have a couple of other ideas I am tossing around. More to come on that.

The saga continues.

The proof in the pudding. The crawl offs are finding their way into the collection jar. Stupid house flies too. Uggh.




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