Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

+1 - I agree with TCL on this.

Yeah, I started those two plants a few months ago when the temperature was higher. Correction, the temperature in the basement is 40 not 50. I have some mint and spinach in the beds as well. I think I will try starting the seeds up stairs and move them when they are big enough. I am debating about switching the lighting so the LED is over the healthier looking plant.

Even the healthier looking plant is still rather tiny so I don't know that you really want to cause it to start blooming at this stage.

Update:

Well I did it. I bit the bullet and got another LED. My reasoning was that the T5's were about 8 months old and were ready to be replaced. After pricing them out per bulb and then adding up the combined wattage of 4 bulbs, I made the decision to get a 180W GL60 LED as it would be more economical in the long run. Plus, with the holidays, I was able to get a good deal on the LED. I wish I would have gone this route in the very beginning. Even with the crappy growing conditions in the basement the LED has shown more positive results.

So now I have two LED's. A 135w and a 180w over two grow beds made out of one 55 gallon blue barrel drum. Which is about 12 sq.ft of grow space. I have the UFO LED's hovering 2ft above the bed. I may raise them but need to find some more documentation on that matter. I still have the mylar reflective sheeting boxed around the grow beds to reflect some of that light back towards the plants.



We'll see what happens.

I would be placing the lights as close to the plants as I could. I know with the Florescent you need to have the tubes within about 3 inches or less from the leaves to be very effective. I believe with the LEDs it is actually supposed to be a very similar distance for the plant available radiation PAR to be effective.

Placing the fixtures further from the plants is for the super HOT point source or high intensity discharge (HID) type lights like Metal Halide (MH) or High Pressure Sodium (HPS) or Plasma lights. Those need to be further from the plants to keep from burning the plants but that is fine because their light is powerful enough to penetrate through even larger plant canopies. Many people don't like to mess with the HID lighting because they feel it will use more electricity or get too hot but in your basement some extra heat might not be such a bad thing and the sad truth with the Florescent and LED lighting is you really need a fixture footprint that matches your growing space footprint and by that time, you may be using nearly as much electricity as you would for a single or pair of HID lighting.

It may be possible to grow some plants under the lesser amount of light but they will probably grow much slower and yield far less than you probably expect.

That's excellent advice. I maybe should have gone the HID lighting route as now with this polar vortex spinning over the North East the temperature in the basement has dropped to the low 30's. I have a space heater down there now, one of those heater adapters that sit on top of a 20 gallon propane tank. I can heat up the space to the 40's but I'm afraid to leave it on too long so it really isn't worth the hassle.

So now I'm debating whether to shut down my entire aquaponics system. It's safe to say nothing really is going to grow with these cold temps. I don't want to get rid of my fish as it was a pain in the butt to go get them and I would like to have them for when we move into a new house in the next few months with hopefully a more ideal growing space. But the thought of paying the cost of electricity to heat the tanks and then the nightmare of moving the system/fish to a new location makes me wonder if it would be best to take a step back.

Well I would say you could probably shut down the lighting. Wrap/cover everything with insulation as best you can. Get some Tank heaters into the fish tank that you can set the thermostat to like 55-60 F. Fish won't be eating in that range and if everything is fairly well insulated it shouldn't cost a huge amount of power to keep the water in that safe level for basically hibernating tilapia. Leave the pump running to provide some filtration and keep your bacteria colony alive.

Keep your fish is my vote too (wish I didn't get rid of all my tilapia, if you only have a few you can easily rebuild your stock because they breed so easily).

Might consider moving the fish upstairs and collecting their solids and carrying that to the basement for processing on the plant level.

I don't think this cold spell will last but a couple more days then it will be normal temps again.

Thanks guys, that's all excellent advice. The cold spell did break and today we saw temps in the 50's. I went to lowes to use up an x-mas gift card and got some new supplies. I got some insulating expanding foam to help with the drafts in the basement. Wish I would have gotten that a while ago as it made a huge difference compared to what I had done before. I also got some 'Reflective Insulation' to wrap my sump tank and flood tanks. I also made some lids to both those containers to help keep the water temps from dropping. I am definitely rethinking my decision to go with a CHOP / Barrelponics system. I got some 2x4's to rebuild/redesign for when I move to a new house in the next few months. I'm thinking of building a chift pist system. I built two bell siphons today and will try them out tomorrow to see how it all works out. I'm trying to decide whether I want to go with bell vs loop siphon for my rebuild.

Update: Sadly I decided to deactivate my other system (55 Gallon NFT). It wasn't performing very well with the temps. I moved the fish upstairs into my office with a 30 gallon aquarium. The small fish haven't really gotten any bigger from when I got them a few months ago. Definitely growth was stunted and I hope I can fatten them up. The water temp is 70 upstairs. The other fish in the CHOP system are doing well. A few of them are getting very big. So by turning this other system off I should save some money with not having to run another 2 300 watt heaters and 8 T5 HO lights. I may put one of the 300 watt heaters in the sump of the current system to try and help out there.

I bought a diamond hole saw to drill some new bulkheads on the 55 gallon tank of the deactivated system. I have a cracked 5 gallon tank I got at a yard sale to try the drilling out. If things go well I will add the bulkhead to the 55 gallon tank. I have been watching several youtube videos on how to drill this hole successfully and I think I can handle it. My plan is to build two identical systems for the new house. I'm going to have two 55 gallon tanks with bulkheads that spill over into the grow beds then drain into sump tanks. Going for CHIFT PIST and also trying to remember the KISS methodology. The barrelponics is really cool and I love the engineering behind the flood tank concept but I really want to have a successful easy to use system.

In other news I discovered another member on this forum that lives up the road from me. How cool. Was able to point him to my tilapia guy and it ended up saving him a ton of money from not having to order tilapia online and deal with the shipping.

Cool, keep us updated on the tank drilling, I've wanted to try that from time to time.

I've done it with one glass tank. It is scary to do if it is a big nice tank.
Make sure you have the glass well supported and use the ring and coolant like they recommend.

yeah, I'm nervous because it's a nice tank and it's pretty big. everyone shows examples of smaller tanks and having them propped up on and end. however I don't think standing the tank up on one end will be smart as it's super heavy and I'm sure that will crack it. so I have to come up with some kind of water damn to drill it vertically on the side. I might just have a hose running constantly over both sides of the glass and see how that goes. first I have to test that it's 100% non tempered glass.

Update:

Well I drilled my tank successfully. It wasn't too bad if you take your time. I will upload some pics later with the new design concept. I have all the wood cut and ready for assembly but not the space for it. I put an offer in for a new house, so if that goes through I'll be ready to move my system. It's going to blow moving everything in this bitter cold central pa winter.

I have moved some of the fish around. I took 5 of the smallest ones and placed them in a 30 gallon tank upstairs in the office. I hope I can fatten them up. The biggest ones chase everyone. I haven't noticed any fin damage on anyone so I hope they are just playing around.



I also was curious to see how the other fish were doing so I took off one of the insulating walls on the tank. I was surprised to see two nice sized Tilapia.





The mint, parsley and spinach are doing well. I'll also take an update photo of the grow beds tonight.

Here is an updated image of the grow beds. For 35 degrees, I'm happy with what is growing and that some nitrates are being used. The goal has been this winter to keep the fish alive until spring and redo everything. So far no casualties.



And here is an example of the new grow beds. I plan on making four of these. I going to add some more bracing once I'm move into the new house. At the moment I can't get this thing up the stairs so I have to take it apart. I have this one set up to test out the bell siphons etc.

Yep definitely need more bracing and some support under the barrel (those screws through the plastic into the wood are not really good enough to support gravel and water for any real length of time.) But at least you have something to practice, play and learn on until you get to move and set up for real.
Moving anytime sucks/blows or whatever the most unpleasant verb is at the time. I don't ever want to have to do it again, last time I did, it was summer in FL, luckily I didn't have to do it all at once, we were able to take a Month to finish moving.