Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

ok...... so getting back on track....

I forgot to post here that we're doing a free give-away contest for a few cool things. You just have to enter your email address (once!) at http://www.BigelowBrook.com/contest and you're entered.

Sorry to all my friends outside of the US, I can't afford to mail the prizes around the globe so if you win, you'll have to pay a few bucks to ship...or forfeit.

Good luck to everyone!

I don't know about toxic levels really, as I don't live in an area with that problem in the winter I haven't personally spent too much time researching it. However I do know I've seen discussions blasting people who are trying to grow lettuce commercially in some of the low winter lighting regions where the person doing the blasting is going on about how they have to get their hydroponic lettuce tissue tested for nitrate levels before they can sell their harvests in Europe. Was a while back but it must have been over on linked in. I don't have any specific links, I'm in sunny Florida and I definitely notice a change in my lettuce growth if I get several cloudy days. I feel for those growing under multiple layers of plastic at higher latitude where they can get weeks on end of short cloudy days through winter (I grew up in Michigan, I remember real winter.)

And I'm always confused when references start talking about "toxic" levels of nitrates. I have seen one list that basically said about 95% of what greens I feed my chickens could have toxic levels of nitrates for them including things like cabbage leaves so I have to figure that when they talk like that, they mean that if it is the only thing you are feeding or eating. So, eat a balanced diet and even if you do eat something that has too much nitrate it probably won't be such a big deal because it is only a small % of your total diet. Of course if you are one who ONLY eats the meats with the high levels of nitrates and then you only eat salads grown on high nitrate nutrient and low lighting conditions, and then wash it down with some High Nitrate AP (or mid-western tap water) cool-aid, perhaps that would be dangerous. (Yes there are actually some towns in the Mid-west of the united states that there is so much high nitrate run off from industrial agriculture into the drinking water supply that it isn't even safe to use to bathe a baby under 6 months of age.

All the more reason we need to conserve water with Aquaponics!!!

Im sick of winning these things, Rob, can I be counted out this year please?

I'm not a chemist...or a professional farmer...so I'm not sure about excess nitrate uptake in the plants. I just know that we've feeding all these greens to our (actual) guinea pig for severals years and she's still doing great...probably has lasted longer than our other guinea pigs.

I still rather eat our produce than anything that's coming out of the grocery store...even the "organic" stuff.

Maybe the guinea pig will be pre brined to make a nice jerky.

I agree with eating ones own home grown produce as being far better than anything store bought. Local food eaten soon after harvest provides far better nutrition value as well as taste and sense of well being for providing for your own needs.

And with what this country has done to "organic" standards, and the fact that there are so many unscrupulous business people out there who will call something organic even if it blatantly is NOT just to try to get more money and of course the "authorities" don't have time to check on everything all the time so I do think it is better to know the farmer and where your food comes from rather than simply trusting that some one who paid the fee and did the paperwork is sticking to the organic standards long term based on a logo added to some produce packaging.

We're still growing in the middle of winter! It's a bit slow since it's all natural light, but it's a great head-start for the spring.

Nice tour!

If you used logs instead of pellets about how many cords of wood would you stock up on if we had a Winter like this one next year, to keep it at 55 or higher?

Roughly, I burned 4 tons of pellets last year. Seasoned wood weights between 2000-3000 pounds per cord so I'm guessing it would be over 4 cords.

Thanks for the tour Rob

How do you get your siphon to start with such a slow fill time?

you can watch this http://youtu.be/4hHRe3KJfoY and this http://youtu.be/s_brue6URFg

I think its the volume of your grow beds that makes the difference. Adding a trap to mine didn't work at all.

For your next project (like you aren't busy enough ) I think you should consider a solar thermal air heater hooked up to the underground heat storage network (I'm not sure what the distribution network can handle heat wise though). Might save you a few bucks. Mine heats the air above 139 F which is the max the thermometer I have reads. Thats with about a 6ft by 7ft collector. Right now it's heating the air into the 90's and making a 20 X 30 uninsulated garage go up about 10 degrees F during a sunny day (a month from now it'll be more like 20 degrees).

It's been nearly a year since I've done any updates for our heater. I've done some fine tuning this winter and really have it running great! Almost too hot now.. .