I'm American by birth, Southern by the grace of God (from Acworth, Georgia - 30 miles NW of Atlanta) and continually blessed by Him to be living in southeast China's Zhejiang province. I'm living in a small city called, Wenzhou (pronounced "Wen-Joe"). I'm married to a local and we have three kids (one child policy applies to my wife but not to me, had to work around that - PM me if you have questions about that).
How'd our addiction get started? A friend showed me some photos of a local junior middle school's garden on the roof top and said he'd started his own hydroponics garden at home. I visited the school via a fellow expat English teacher there and was really amazed. I went home and started researching. A week later I took my wife to meet the science teacher in charge. A local hydroponics store had come and set everything up for him. When I asked detailed questions it turned out the teacher didn't know much about how it all worked.
Sadly, Youtube is blocked in China. I know I can use a VPN or proxy server to bypass "The Great Firewall" but if I do, then it opens myself up to a lot of other stuff. My temptation in life is lust, and the great firewall blocks all porn, so if I get a proxy to access Youtube, then I'm opening the door to this temptation that I've struggled to resist for much of my life. I truly want to honor my wife, so I choose not to have a proxy. I have enjoyed viewing your photos on here, but sorry I can't see all of your amazing videos!
This lack of a resource makes learning hydroponics really tough but not impossible. I found your website when a friend sent me the Aquaponics IBC ebook. WOW! Double Wow!
My wife and I were amazed and started day dreaming... we skipped studying and preparing and just built our system without knowledge. Crash! Boom! Bam! It failed through numerous mistakes.Now with that initial rush of shall I call it "puppy love" we're ready to slow down and start making wiser decisions. The lessons learned weren't too costly, mostly a loss of time, but they're valuable. And I realized I can't do this on our own, it's time to post here and ask for some wisdom.
Your community of gardeners and fishermen are a jewel. I've read a huge number of posts and I'm still learning the acronyms. Is there a post about all of the various acronyms? I tried searching and didn't find a complete list.
This next part is for fellow addicts like us that can't get enough and happen to be doing their shopping in China:
(I've bought a number of items from Taobao stores, and been very happy with every purchase. The links below are just to help you shop, not referrals to a particular seller.)* Complete Hydroponic Systems&
* Complete Hydroponic Systems 2* Home Raft System* Netted Cups* Lava StonesNow, please let me introduce what we've been up to.
I'm unsure if the images will link to here, so all images hosted on this Chinese site.
All PhotosInitial plan was to build shelving from some leftover lumber from a previous DIY project. I've got only basic handyman skills; helped my father restore some old Hot Rod's, build a few decks of varying sizes and designs, helped an uncle for a summer installing PVC for lawn sprinkler systems, but beyond these my only skills related to aquaponics would be my having a fish tank as a teen twenty years ago.
Initial Concept, Not Implemented A bit too ambitious
I purchased two 200L tubs to use for FT (fish tanks). I knew not to buy white or light colored to avoid algae, so I went with these red ones. I couldn't find a single large tub to fit in the space and had read about people having multiple FTs to separate sizes of fish.
I purchased the twelve white trays (against better judgement above) for the GT (garden trays).
And I purchased a 1.5 meter high, 11cm wide PVC pipe to try making a rain tower. I ambitiously thought I could work out two FT, twelve GT (too shallow perhaps) and a rain tower on each side all in my first go. Finally I discovered I had no clue how to properly attach the various trays together, how to pressurize the pipes or lines to get the water to the top and very belatedly, I realized all this water is going to some how get on my wood (with no treatment protection) and rot it out, and the whole thing is going to collapse on my fish killing them!
I had wanted to go with an Flood and Ebb system but it was looking doubtful. We decided to revisit the school and see their layout again.
The science teacher and my wife discussing the school's setup.
Looking at their PVC layout I wondered if this was the way I should go? My wife was more interested in soil gardening after talking to the teacher.
That night we prayed about what to do next...
And the Lord answered us unusually swiftly! At 7:30 the next morning our friend called, "Please come to my home quick! There is a bulldozer here about to dig up our garden and we need help harvesting our crops!" It took us about 30 minutes to cross to the city to her home. The land next to their home is being developed for a new highrise neighborhood and they had been gardening on it knowing the day would come for it to be taken over. Well the day had been slated for 20 days later, but the bulldozer and workmen showed up that morning and said they had to get it done. The supervisor and his men helped picking vegetables. It was such a rush when we arrived I failed to take a single photo.
Before leaving our home I knew this was an answered prayer and recalled 2nd Kings, chapter 4; When the widow and her son were told to fill all of their jars with oil, so I grabbed every container we had and we filled them with soil. We also packed some green beans, radishes and pumpkin plants. There are a few more mixed in that I fail to recognize, we'll have some mystery veggies in a few more weeks.
So now with my twelve white garden trays are full of soil, my wife is thrilled and I'm freed up from my previous purchases to do something new. We also filled one of the 200L FT with soil and left it behind for the family, so they could do some home gardening as well. I decided on a new design that didn't incorporate the rain tower or the garden trays, I decided to go with PVC piping just like the school.
I found a friend who had already purchased some 3 meter long pipes and drilled 7cm holes (that is about 2.75 inches). I traded a timer I had purchased online in China for his pipes. I had them shortened to a length for my balcony and bought a few more pipes. I drilled those with 5cm holes (2 inches) and bought netted potting cups online to match.
The city where I live is larger than Atlanta but is small by Chinese standards. We don't have a huge hardware supply store, just numerous small mom and pop places with varying qualities of equipment. I went downstairs and the store owner's grandfather was very curious what I was building. He has apparently made a large variety of things over the decades from PVC.
I paid them 150 RMB (less than US $25) to make the numerous cuts, drill the holes, and glue everything together. In their excitement I didn't supervise them as much as I should have.
I'm pretty tall and felt I could reach plants in the back even with five rows. Doing all of the reading about X number of plants per CM/Foot I was proud and tried to go for the gold with five deep rows!
I had already decided I didn't want to give up floor space by building shelving, but how was I going to get my PVC up in the air? Back home in Georgia our homes are made of wood, but now I'm living in a seven story tall concrete building, the ceiling looks strong, so I decided to suspend the new garden! My father-in-law helped supervise while I was away teaching classes.
I found a few of the converters from the 11cm to 7.5cm pipe weren't knocked all of the way in. I tried to tap them home with a hammer and discovered they are not strong! I knocked a hole in the converter!
I had to seal it with concrete on the outside, but it still drips a lot.
Even from these photos you can see that things weren't leveled properly. Worse still was that the pipes were glued together with slight angles, and it couldn't be properly leveled! The first time I filled it up, what a mess! The glue isn't a sealant? I didn't know that! water poured from most of the connections. Some of them overflowed through the 5 and 7cm planting holes,
it was a huge mess. I tried using silicon caulking
but discovered that won't bond to the PVC so well because of the surface. I gave up and started using concrete!
But that was a failure as well... not to mention the risk of additional added weight...
So, as of today I've been taking down the PVC, I've cut off the 7.5cm converters and the 90 degree turns. I'm starting over, and only four rows deep, the fifth row was way to hard to reach, especially up high on a ladder.
I did decide to go ahead and build a standalone rain tower. It went pretty well, and I plan to give it to the family that gave us the soil as a gift. I have plans for an improved design on that as well for the next generation.
I was having a really hard time keeping enough water at the top to drain down all of the holes. I tried adding a second layer of holes, tried smaller holes, but it just drained too fast and not all of the netted cups were getting water. Finally, I changed the size of the pipe coming up to the top. This was a real moment of revelation to me. I never had a physics class, I might have learned about this in there, but frankly having more water going up to the top was so simple, I just didn't think about it for weeks. Improved...
The Williams Family, (ages corresponding to dice)
Chuck, Angel, Helen, Daniel and James
Backyard Aquaponics
I'm still here, I'm on good terms with the local authorities. Some even come to church. 
