Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks SuperVeg. It is also possible to take advantage of these process' and make more and then harvest the MAP/Struvite crystals (NH4MgPO4-6H20) for later use in the garden or hydro/bio-ponic systems. There is a very fortunate by-product left over from this crystal harvesting which is a potassium rich liquid effluent containing about half the ammonia content of the original humonia. Dosing a pee-ponic system with this effluent becomes useful for fruiting K hogs...while the struvite/MAP can be used for flowering...

You can use the MAP crystals to dose when flowering (NPK 6-29-0.5 Mg10) instead of straight humonia, and some of the K rich effluent NPK 5-0.5-30...or so...for some help with fruiting. It's great because of the lowered ammonia content as well (too much N can mess with fruiting cycles in a bunch of ways). So this was the solution I came up with while still keeping it pee-ponics...

All you need to make this stuff is a magnesium source. I use a little epsom salt (about 5 grams per litre of humonia in the reactor) and am trying out MgCl, but it seems like any Mg source will do.

I'm guessing that at least in my location, there is so much calcium in the source water that one would want to avoid adding any more calcium.

But I'm not doing any pee ponics at this time since I am doing commercial aquaponics and I wouldn't want anyone to get confused and freek out. All pee and animal manure is now reserved for making really good hot compost.

TC, I don't think your going to be adding any less calcium into your system by using (at least a somewhat decent) fish feed, than you would be with humonia.
The average healthy female, over a 24 hour period excretes between 20 - 275mg of Ca. Now, depending on your diet and how much you urinate that works out to about around 5 to 75ppm Ca in your humonia. (0.0005% to 0.0075%)

A middle of the road fish feed like Carr-gill's 24% protein feed is by weight 1.74% +/- 0.226% Ca
A middle of the road generic fish like red tilapia will recover through bio-mass, on average depending on it's stage of growth between about 22% and 34% of that Ca.
So after just 3 weeks of feeding, that can be as high as 27ppm in the water stream itself. And the amount of calcium that makes up the fishs' solid effluent NOT yet in the water stream and NOT counted in that 27ppm number.... is 4.10%...Those solids will be further mineralized, broken down...and release even more Ca into the water stream...
That's a very significant amount of Ca (comparatively)...as much or more than humonia. Or, possibly a bit less depending on, once again on your diet...

Interesting behavioral effects of human drugs on fish, even ibuprofen can affect their behavior:

http://www.nature.com/news/anti-anxiety ... ve-1.12434

"... Non-medicated perch are timid, preferring to stick to familiar territory and occasionally peeking out into the wider tank. The medicated fish, however, embraced the unknown, readily swimming into uncharted territory.

And whereas non-medicated perch swim towards other fish of the same species, the medicated perch turned away from their compatriots. Fish exposed to oxazepam were also quicker to feast on zooplankton introduced into the tanks..."

So, they get the munchies, exhibit slightly anti-social behavior, and gain a propensity for embracing the unknown...hmm...Sounds like some of the teenagers around here...

TC
I wanted to know if you had a formula for pee/media all I could find was 200ml/250L in one of your posts, this = 0.8ml/1L.

So if I wanted to use a grow bed of 5L Should dose at the rate of 4ml/day rounded up to 5. but then would 5ml of pee satisfy a plant such as tomato or cucumber.

I am a firm believer in peeponics after I killed my goldfish. I have never had any test equipment and never measured how much pee I throw in, and still my plants grow very well.
James

It is hard to give any hard fast numbers about peeponics seeing as everyone's pee may be a little different, Heck, it will be different depending on time of day and how much fluids you drink and what your diet is like.

Might be worth having a test kit just to see if you have much Nitrates in the system but if it seems to be working really well, then there is probably little need to fix it. My experience was that I still needed to supplement Iron and potassium about the same as I did for regular aquaponics so it seems the nutrient make up of at least my pee is not that dis-similar to the nutrient output of fish.

do you know if urine that has been aged 1 week at 70-80F sufficient to extract atleast 30%+ struvite out of the humonia?

Bump for last question

Might as well extend to:

WHAT is considered to be the proper/best way to age urine into Humonia?

cheers,
thjakits

Someone probably needs to get Vlad over here to answer that one since I've never done the struvite thing with hummonia.
I haven't done any pee ponics since I took down the pee ponic system at the old house which was probably 4 or 5 years ago.
Since I'm selling produce now I want to keep it very clear that there is no Human pee ponics going on at the farm. (While I don't personally think there is anything wrong with pee ponics, provided your hummonia donors are healthy and you age it appropriately, I know the majority of people would probably object to buying produce grown that way.)

As to the aging of hummonia, I always sealed it in a plastic bottle (labeled it!) and let it age several weeks before using it. You want to age it till the pH gets up to 9 since at that alkalinity it will kill e. coli which is present from even healthy donors (since it is on our skin).

Ooookay!

Now - keep the bottles in the shadow/dark/sun - temp??


thjakits

anyone know if the urine hydrolysis is linear? he indicates 100% hydrolysis in 30 days, so 25% hydrolysis in 7.5 days is correct? http://community.theaquaponicsource.com ... t%3A481624
im guessing he read this pubmed study and misinterpreted it?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16889267

I usually left the urine in bottles in the closet at room temperature. But then some got moved to the garden shed which could get down pretty cold but we are in a sub tropical climate so it was normally pretty warm to hot. I generally kept them mostly out of the light.

As to the more scientific stuff, I would suggest sending a message to Vlad Jovanovic since he is the most educated on manipulation of urine for use in hydroponics that I know of.

Hi saopk, thanks for tugging the chain with the PM...I forget to check this thread

Urea hydrolysis rates (when graphed out) seem to behave like compressed curves, so no, not really linear. The characteristics of this compressed curve (hydrolysis rates over time) is largely determined by pH during the process itself.

In order to speed up "the whole 4 to 6 weeks of urea having to sit in a bottle in order to hydrolize to ammonia"-thing, you can pour some already aged humonia into your container of fresh not-yet-hydrolized urea...when adding one part aged humonia to five parts fresh urea the hydrolysis is complete within a weeks time (more like 3-5 days).