Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Tilapia can generally handle high Nitrate levels. If the reading is off the chart you can do something like dilute your sample say one part system water to 9 parts distilled water and test that then do the math to figure out about how high your Nitrate level really is. I wouldn't worry with tilapia till you are seeing Nitrate levels above 400. Just get lots of greens in that will suck up nitrates while not minding the cooler temperatures so much (Broccoli, kale, collards etc.)
If your pH is down in a good range and you manage to ward off iron and potassium deficiency you may find that the nutrients get sucked up quicker.

If you still feel your nitrates are staying too high, you might just need to let the water temperature drop down a little bit and feed a little less till the plants catch up. The cool weather crops will prefer their roots not be in the 80's. However, lighting may still manage to be your limiting factor.

So this issue was a good sign that I now have solids getting into the grow beds. I believe the next step I will have to take is getting some composting worms into the beds to break down the solids further. I'm on the fence if I should add a small solids filter before the beds. I tried to add a small bio filter in the sump tank to help with the fish stocking density issues I was having. I recently removed it as it was becoming more of a solids filter and after taking it apart, it was pretty disgusting. With the type of system I built, I assumed the grow beds would act as the solids & mechanical filter.

I have recently added a solids/swirl filter to my system and i would recommend this addition to anyones system,the amount of poo it takes out is surprising,have a look at the pics on my thread as to what it removes,it can only be good for the system in general.

I can only agree with this statement under certain circumstances. If a system has ample media (twice as much media bed volume as fish tank volume) and is not over stocked, then removing solids is only going to be removing nutrients from the system. So the question then becomes, are the nutrients building up in the system and the plants unable to use them up. If that is the case then removing solids makes sense. However, if you collect solids in the system some where to be removed, you actually have to take the time regularly to remove them or clean the filters because collected solids that are not being heavily aerated can actually be far worse for the system than a build up of nutrients.

Solids that are breaking down in a flood and drain media bed are not going to deplete the system of oxygen or give off toxic anaerobic break down chemicals. Solids that collect in a settling tank and create an anaerobic zone need to be removed regularly or they can create a Biological Oxygen Demand spike problem depleting water of dissolved oxygen and the anaerobic decomposition can give off toxic stuff as well as converting high nitrates back into nitrites so if there is no "degassing" happening after such an anaerobic zone, it can be really bad for the system.
If a filter design makes you gag when you clean it, then re-design it since that stink is a BAD sign. If you are not cleaning out the swirl filter or settling tank or radial filter often enough to keep that stink from happening in the stuff you clean out, then you might want to re-think your design or filter cleaning schedule and you probably need to add a tank with very heavy aeration right after said filter to make sure that you degas any hydrogen sulfide, nitrite, methane etc before the water gets back to your fish.

I mention some of this not because I think the basement system is being overloaded with solids but more because collecting solids and then having to haul a wet bucket of stinking muck out of a basement might not be very conductive to doing it often enough to make sure it doesn't become a problem. Think up ways to make the operation very easy (where would the muck get used?) and less likely to cause a spill on the way through the house with the bucket. Is there a space for a barrel or tank you could heavily aerate to put the mucky water from the filter? Then you could stabilize the muck right there in the basement and let it settle and siphon off the nutrient rich clear water for use on other plants or out in the garden and then you might only need to deal with cleaning out the sludge (which shouldn't stink once stabilized by heavy aeration for a period of time) just a few times a year (when the weather is nice enough to haul it outdoors to use in the dirt garden or compost or worm bins.)

Thank you all for the responses.

I went ahead and redid my solids filter. It sits between the fish tank and the sump/holding tank. I have 2 grow beds that are two halves of a 55 gallon barrel. So I don't think I have double the grow space as fish tank volume. They should be about the same. The filter is doing a much better job than the previous version. Forgot to take picture last night.

There really isn't any room for another barrel to hold the solids and then aerate it. I don't have an outside garden at the moment (would like too). I cleaned out the RFF Filter from my second system yesterday and it did have a strong odor. It was 3 weeks of not draining so I might need to increase that to once a week.

It has been a crazy week. I lost power for 20+ hours due to the winter storm we had over Thanksgiving. The power went out at 10pm and I had no back up plan. So I woke up every 30 minutes to go aerate the tanks manually via pouring water from a few feet above the tanks. The water temperature in the tanks dropped about a degree every hour. By 10am the temperature was reaching 58 degrees and the fish were starting to look at me funny. With no other alternatives I took some water bottles and placed them in my grill to warm them up. I bought some hand warmers and placed them in some zip lock bags into the tanks. Finally add blankets to cover the tanks. Miraculously the water temperature stabilized. I then remembered I had bought a power inverter after the last time we lost power. I stupidly didn't have a battery to use it. So I pulled my car up beside the house and ran a 50ft power cable from it to the basement and ran the air pump via the car cigarette outlet -> inverter -> cable -> air pump. That worked but made me nervous about running my vehicle for hours unattended. Power eventually came back later that night and after getting everything back online I finally was able to get some sleep. I'm happy to say all my fish survived, thank goodness. Needless to say I am now going shopping this week for a 100ah battery to avoid another catastrophe as I'm sure it will happen again. In the mean time, I took my computers UPC and installed it in the basement to keep the air pump running as long as possible. My worst fear is losing power while I'm not at the house to get the inverter/battery hooked up in time. I also noticed that when the pump turns off, it turns into a siphon and drains the flood tank back into the sump tank causing the sump to flood. I added a air check valve to the top of the pvc pipe to stop this from happening.

In other news, on black friday I went shopping for some supplies to improve the system. I bought a propane tank heater thing. If the power goes out again, my plan is to take the propane tank from the grill and hook up the heater to it and place it in the basement to keep the temperature up. I also bought some insulation panels that I framed around my tanks. It looks/feels better than the packaging material/cardboard I was using before. I ordered some reflective mylar online to enhance my lighting situation. It arrived over the weekend and I wasted no time in getting it installed. I hung some cardboard around the grow beds from the ceiling and taped some cut out mylar strips to them. Who knows if it will do any good but no harm in trying.

Besides all of that good stuff, I spent the weekend researching Solar options to get the entire system off grid. It's ridiculous how much it would cost. If it wasn't for the heaters it may be feasible however the 'boss' shot that down. The wedding fund again outweighs the aquaponics fund. Darn

Here are some updated images from the past week.


Here are the pvc tube caves that I suspended from the top of the tank. This prevents the solids from building up around them when they were submerged on the bottom.


System 2 - New insulation added


System 1 - New insulation added

More images


Mylar reflective sheeting added to both grow beds.


Grow Bed 1 mylar reflective sheeting


Grow Bed 2 mylar reflective sheeting

Great job on showing your systems progress Jeezy. My wife and I are in the middle of setting up an Aussie style IBC system. It helps to see what other people are doing.
If you need long time power for your inverter system I have had good results using an Interstate deep cycle battery. They are a little more expensive but I have found they last a lot longer than the cheaper brands, both in discharge time and battery life.

Looking Good Hows That Led?

@woollybubbles - I hope you post a progress of your build as well. I would love to check it out. I'm pretty happy with the deep cycle battery I purchased. I was pricing them out online and saw them for $200+ and was pretty close to pulling the trigger. I tried checking out sears auto and they didn't have anything but they did point me to a place called the battery warehouse. The guy there was pretty knowledgeable. I went with a wet cell 100ah battery and the cost was half of what I found online. Eventually I would like to run the entire system 100% solr so at least I now know where I can get some good batteries.

@lax4ivan - I wish I could give a good report regarding the LED but I honestly can't. I can say it's probably doing the equivalent of the 4 T5 light. I believe the critical flaw with my aquaponics system is the temperature so the lighting really isn't doing much. I can say after adding the mylar reflective sheets all around the grow bed, I can see some new growth.

Hi TCLncx.
My Solids filter was added to help prevent solids build up in my tubes,i have since added a mineralisation filter to this as well,most of my information was gleaned from The UVI and others PDFS,Ryan from chaterrsons farm and char lies threads to name a few but If any one was to leave a system long enough to stink they need to rethink what they are doing
Removing solids,then aerate them to release the nutrients is a very simple and well documented process here and through the internet,to do this before the beds is a more hands on approach that is up to the builder of his system.But just my opinion,i feel it is a better approach than just than just blindly pumping water through what ever manifold configuration into whatever media,at least the owner of his system can see what is going through his bed.
Solids removed from a solids filter shouldn’t smell as opposed to the remains left in the grow bed after mineralisation,at least by removing those solids then aerating to remove the good bits the remaining gloop can be disposed of.
TCLncx iam not disagreeing with you but i feel having more control is better than just letting nature and fate take its course,many small failed backyard systems can testify to that.

dasboot,
I don't think we actually disagree with each other. I think it may simply be more a way of thinking about things. (Most backyard systems that suffer and fail from an overabundance of solids, really didn't have enough grow bed in the first place and probably had way to many fish as well, but that aside.)
I agree that IF one IS going to tend to the solids removal filter often enough and take the steps needed to do the mineralization and re-introduction of nutrients and appropriate disposal of the solid goop then yes, having that added control is a good thing. However, many of those same backyard systems that would fail because they don't have enough grow beds for their stocking might also be in the same situation even if there were a solids filter attached if the operator of the system is not going to do the maintenance of cleaning out the solids often enough to keep the "stink" from happening. It just becomes a place where the solids build up to the point of extreme BOD that will crash the system even faster since those solids don't get aerated in a solids collection/removal tank the way they do in a flood and drain grow bed.
My point here is really just that the extra control is only good if that extra maintenance step DOES get taken often enough. To simply install the filter because some one else says it is a good idea but not do the added steps of cleaning it as often as is needed actually turns the good control point into a major drawback. If one KNOWS that they are NOT going to preform that step and they have no good way to deal with or handle the removed stinking wet solids (short of carrying a heavy stinking wet bucket through the house to dump down the toilet at risk of tripping and spilling it the whole way and getting in big trouble with other occupants of the house.........) well perhaps better design advice is less fish, more grow bed since if the filter doesn't get cleaned regularly it becomes just as bad as leaving the solids in the grow beds.

I like the idea of having the option of that extra control point but if you add it, you have to use it when the system dictates you need to and NOT just when you remember or feel like it.
It all comes down to the goals for the system and the time/effort/responsibility the operator can afford to put into it.

Back to the Basement system and backups.
As for the battery backup. You should also make sure you have a battery charger (and one that can not only re-charge the battery after an event but also be able to keep the battery maintained on a float charge since a battery left sitting around not getting charged regularly will become useless) and learn about proper maintenance of the battery (checking the water levels etc.) Handy bit with the UPS is they already have the charger/relays built in to switch from mains to battery power and back and re-charge/keep the batteries topped up. When using a separate battery (hopefully you got a deep cycle battery) you have to do more of that yourself or know about wiring up relays.

As to heaters for emergency. Keep in mind that if you let the water get cooler, then less aeration is needed to keep the fish safe but you want to keep the water from getting so cold that you risk killing the fish. Hooking up a propane tank in the basement should be done with extreme caution and care to make sure there is no leaking, especially when you might also be causing sparks while you are hooking up the battery to the inverter.

Please work carefully with these things, as you have seen you can go for a time without power and the fish survive so don't rush and wind up getting hurt or blowing something up as that wouldn't serve the fish well either.

My point here is really just that the extra control is only good if that extra maintenance step DOES get taken often enough. To simply install the filter because some one else says it is a good idea but not do the added steps of cleaning it as often as is needed actually turns the good control point into a major drawback. If one KNOWS that they are NOT going to preform that step and they have no good way to deal with or handle the removed stinking wet solids (short of carrying a heavy stinking wet bucket through the house to dump down the toilet at risk of tripping and spilling it the whole way and getting in big trouble with other occupants of the house.........) well perhaps better design advice is less fish, more grow bed since if the filter doesn't get cleaned regularly it becomes just as bad as leaving the solids in the grow beds.

But if you are going to run NFT indoors do you not have to filter the solids out ??? Do you not have to make sure the roots are surrounded with nutrient laden water not particle laden water ??

You do have to filter the solids so they don't go to the NFT pipes, but settling tanks and solids removal are not the ONLY way to deal with solids. If there are media beds, those can be used to provide the solids filtration.

Update:

I ordered a battery charger/maintainer combo off Amazon and it should be arriving this week.

I have noticed some solids getting in the NFT tubes but not a whole lot. I'm going to add a pot scrubber before the outlet of the RFF to help with that. I did some more reading about mineralization and I think that's what I should be doing with my excess solids. I would be in big trouble with the boss if I spilled a 5 gallon bucket of goop walking up the stairs and into the kitchen. However, my lease runs out in April and not sure if I want to go through all the effort to get something in place. I'll just have to be really careful walking up those steps.

I finally have some photos to show the comparison of the LED vs T5 grow bed lighting. The grow bed media appears to be wet, that's because it is. I just sprayed a water/maxicrop over the beds.


4 T5 HO


135w UFO LED

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems the LED light is providing enough 'light/energy' for the plant to begin flowering. However the 4 T5 lighting is just keeping the plant in a vegetative stage. I'm debating about getting another LED light and moving the 4 T5 light to the NFT system. The plants are both Zucchini which I planted about 3 months ago. I also can see my mint is starting to come up in the LED bed but not in the T5. I assume the reasons I'm having issues with my plants is still the temperature. The average temperature in the basement is right around 50 degrees.

At this point I think it's safe to say I'm now in maintenance mode with the system and just trying to get to April with no catastrophes. In April our lease expires and we will hopefully be moving to another house. I hope the next place has a better basement but I'm also on the fence about setting up a polytunnel outside. However setting up the system outside has it's limitations with renting and the PA weather. I don't think it would be worth it.

Some of the solids you see in the NFT tubes might be biofilm, which may be expected since AP isn't sterile.

The Florescents usually come in either the cool or more blue color temperature which is better or vegitative growth or a more red color that will help with blooming.

Now it looks to me as though the plant under the T5 is healthier looking and bigger while the one under the LED seems to have prematurely jumped to blooming. Of course if the temperature is 50 F, then I would not expect a warm weather crop like squash/zucchini to do well. Look for some cool/cold weather plants to start (might need to start the seeds upstairs where it is warmer and then transplant to the beds once they are big enough.) Salad crops, Kale, broccoli, collars etc are likely to do better when it is cold than things like squash or tomato.