Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

For those interested here is my attempt with feed oats in one of my growbeds. This picture was taken after a heavy rain which made a lot of them fall flat.

I was told to expect about 30% germination from feed oats. I think it was much higher.

W0W! I'm jealous!

Bob unless you missed it by only reading the second page,search above.

I like how you are able to get air thru the beans!

Hmmm, we are feeding a prepared balanced 12% protein grain ration. When I put the horse manure thru our worm bid I noticed some sprouting. So the horses are not processing all of the grain. I remember an old saying: manure from x amount of cows will support x amount of pigs. The pig manure will support x amount of chickens.

Hmmm , maybe sprout the horse grain ration first before feeding them? The resulting "waste water" could go right back into their water tanks. But I'm concerned that the necessary fine minerals will leach out of the sprouts.

How often did you "shower the beans" and how many days?

The bins worked really well,i only got mould if i tried to germinate to many,in the small dustbin 1 kilo of seeds would give me 3 kilos of bean sprouts.The water pump was running constantly this would serve two purposes,firstly it kept the heat down in the germinating seeds which is important to stop mould forming secondly with the blue sieve in the bottom the seeds are spread quite thinly,the falling water actually displaces air and pulls air in to the bin,i installed a double elbow arrangement in the lid to improve air flow as well.I ran three large dustbins at one point as i was selling the sprouts to a restaurant in our local town. Pre soaking the seeds overnight allowed me to discard the floaters as these wouldn’t germinate ,then they would take three days in the bin before they were ready,changing the water in the reservoir daily.
One more thing it was very important to keep everything clean,between crops everything was cleaned in a mild bleach solution, would also fill the reservoir and run the pump with the bleach solution as occasional i would get a mould,it only needed to be the size of a small coin,then next crop with out sterilising the equipment would have mould throughout,bleaching stopped this.

If you don't want to run your pump constantly burlap is great for holding the seed in place and stays moist between waterings.

+1 on using a diluted bleach between harvests, its a must to keep mold away.

I think that citric acid is also sold for steralizing before sprouting. Personally, I would rather have citric acid residue that bleach residue.

I will defiantly look into that. Something about injesting bleach is not very appealing.