Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

That's a lot of sploshing! Sure there wasn't a splish or splash in their as well ahaha


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I was trying to change a setting on my camera and stumbled across a super slow motion video setting. So I had to take some footage of my fishies feeding today . The technophobe managed to load this onto youtube all by herself... Now, if only I can figure out how to edit out the boring bits...

http://youtu.be/B41gP0KDni8

Its one of those engineering terms that sits somewhere between a smidge and a shitload. Actually, a splish may be a bit less than a splosh

Added a few more sploshes of suspended dolomite today as the pH has started to drift down again, and some was still left in the bucket from the other day...

Time for an update and some pictures. Planted out all but 3 towers and done a bit of landscaping to keep my feet clean and pretty it up some more. Dealt with a few nitrite spikes as feeding rate has increased to optimum, but the bacteria have caught up. Still waiting on the new pump to plumb into the new PVC pipes. The old pump with the poly pipe will be removed as a backup. All 25 trout are still alive (well no dead ones, the buggers are too fast to count properly ), and I have ~5 of the original 10 yabbies - some were eaten (not by me ) and some may have done a runner when the ST overtopped with heaps of rain last week.

Now for the pics



Planted out all but 3 of the towers the other day - strawberries in 10 towers and a range of stuff in the others including chives, lettuce, rocket, curly parsley, hyacinth bulbs, snow or sugarsnap peas (mixed up the seeds). Have conducted a few tours for interested passersby who are curious about the goings on in the front garden. A neighbour is sending her husband around so he can set up one on their large block - heck I might even be a local 'expert' soon . Better get the gates on soon and put up a 'No fishing' sign

The bird netting in the towers is working really well. The water is distributing well through the netting and its getting a good biofilm forming. This should provide some additional biofiltration - hopefully enough to for the 9 additional trout beyond the 16 that my growbeds should be able to cope with . Will commission the other 3 towers when I get the new pump and more flow.

The watercress is finally kicking on in the CF 1/2 barrel GB. I wanted to keep it separate from the main GB.

Water quality is doing okay. Have been adding dolomite to increase the pH as it was heading south past 6.0 and off the WQ pH colour chart. I am feeding at the rate determined by the trout calculator based on length and my guess at water temperature. The trout are growing with them now 20-25cm long up from ~15-20cm a few weeks ago. They smash the food all in one go - is there any benefit from splitting the feeds over the day

Hi Joc,

It's all looking good and you're kicking goals there.

Is there any benefit from splitting the feeds over the day?

There is and Paul Van Der Werf explains it here.
http://www.earthanedge.com/feeding-fish ... rations-1/

You had me worried for a bit Joe - great article from Paul btw
I do my WQ in the morning before I feed, so NH3 and NO2 would be at their lowest. Just went out and tested now ~3 hours after feeding, and was relieved that the results were the same as before feeding. Splitting the feeds to reduce the ammonia hit and spread it across the day is a good idea though, especially when stocking and feeding rates are high. My reason for feeding all at once is that the slower fish miss out if only a bit goes in, but if I throw it all in at once it gives them all a chance

LSL is a wonderful thing, but I spend far too much time fluffing around my AP system and chooks and garden rather than the things I should be doing like sorting out paperwork, fixing up the plasterboard and painting my son's old room (bloody bluetack ), housework (spiders are good biodiversity and they catch flies, right ), and getting on to writing the book I have been researching on my grandfather's WW1 diaries and letters . But this autumnal weather is too nice to be inside

Yeah if it doesn't swing the ammonia too high you're not doing any real harm, Paul explains it very well and you know why it's best if you can spread the load, when your fish grow a bit the smaller guys wont miss out on too much.

@joc - Sorry if i had missed it, but do you plant directly into the bird netting in your grow tower or do you have a separate net cup?

Regards

Yes, all of the above
Mostly, I have planted directly into the netting - I wash the potting mix or soil off in a weak seaweed solution, trim the roots if they are a bit long and then make a gap in the netting with my finger and poke the roots in, then tuck them up so they don't blow out in the wind. I did start my snow peas and coriander (oops, forgot I had planted coriander seeds) in peat jiffy pots in net cups, then put them in the towers. Most of the strawberry runners were rooted, so they went straight in, but there were some runners that I had rooted into jiffy pots in plastic snap lock bags, so they went in with the jiffy pot once roots were coming out the bottom - saw that method on the interweb thingy somewhere. One of the offline towers has no netting (ran out), so I was thinking of just putting in some plants in netcups and letting the water trickle over their roots.

It is all an experiment at the moment - really not sure what will happen as the plants and roots grow, and whether they will start to block up the towers. I have to keep a close eye on them as the water can randomly start to wick out of a corner of the openings and run down the tower and be lost, although often as not it is caught by one of the lower openings . I also do the finger test to check that water is still running in each tower as I only have a trickle for each until my new pump arrives. I am a bit concerned about how much heat exchange there is with towers, and how much it will swing the FT water temp around seasonally and diurnally - will be able to monitor that once my O/H procures the temperature probes and gets them hooked up to the Raspberry Pi .

take a photo then count them

@joc - You might run into trouble if you do mint or any other invasive species directly into the netting, I have a DWC/NFT hybrid where i do mints and will have to do periodical maintenance to prevent clogging. I find that even in the dark they try to put out runners which usually end up going into my pipping. With netting i have a feeling it will tangle and you will never get rid of them.

Regards

My thoughts exactly Curious. The mint is relegated to the dirt garden catching the drips from the AP system. I was a bit horrified when someone planted lemon balm in their system - it is far worse than mint in my garden. When I have to replant, I will probably need hack out the netting and roots anyway. I might be able to recover the netting or just recycle some more and start again - there's lots of old bird net and hay net around here given our large resident parrot population and irrigated dairy industry.

My new Laguna 5000L/hr pump arrived late yesterday, so today I got to play with it...

I really didn't need this much flow, but the next size down did not have sufficient head for the towers. So I have split the flow 3 ways: up to the towers; across to the FT where I will add a venturi to provide additional aeration and some circulation flow; with excess flow short circuiting in the ST.

I already had the pipework in place for the new pump, but not glued. So in it went, and I called out to my O/H in the bedroom (power cable currently runs through brm window) to turn off the old pump and start the new one. It worked beautifully until I started to close off the ST valve and all the joins blew out pissing water everywhere . "Turn it off, quick" I cried, and he did . "Okay, you better turn the other pump back on", nothing happened..."Have you turned the old pump back on?" Still nothing... A quick test of the powerpoint (aha! that's why the desk lamp is missing) showed it was working. The 2 month old pump has died or slipped into a coma .

It was late afternoon, and the only option was to start gluing the new pipework so I could run the new pump... I have 25 lovely rainbow trout that are now 20-25cm long depending on me to get the water circulating quickly (no back up air as yet ).

The parts under pressure were glued and the other pipework cable tied and ockky strapped into place, and the new pump restarted. Got enough flow up to the towers and was fiddling around upping the flow rate to each and bringing the 3 empty ones on line. Glanced down at the FT - it was seconds from overflowing . The 50mm SLO obviously can't cope with the increased flow. Readjusted the valves to short circuit more to the ST, then found that not enough was going up to the towers and some were running dry . Fart arsed around tweaking the valves, checking that the tower header pipe was full and that the FT was stable - its getting dark .

Got that all stabilised and realised the GB siphon was not breaking - too much flow! Opened up the valve to the CF GB to full to divert some flow - still not breaking . In desperation, I pulled out the 32-25mm bush from the elbow at the siphon drain, and it worked Timed it for a bit and its now stable, cycling at 4 minutes to fill & 2 minutes to empty.

The yabbies will just have to deal with living in a washing machine at the moment with so much water swirling around in the ST.

Tomorrow I will have to glue the rest of the pipework and check that the flow is still balanced and stable. I had already covered the power cable with split 13mm inline dripper polypipe that the Labrador had excavated and chewed up from the dirt garden - this should keep it safe from the yabbies and protect it from the edge of the ST and cladding. Looks like I will be getting a replacement back up pump on Monday as it has 2 years warranty and its only been running for less than 2 months.

The water test hit 160 ppm nitrates today for the first time - all those plants better start growing and taking it up. At least the cucumber is flowering - probably too late for fruit, but at least it will soak up some N.
Just another day in the life of a new AP Tragic

Too wet with rain, sleet and hail today to glue more of the new pipework - it seems to be holding up okay so will do it later in the week. The extra flow in the FT is certainly swirling the solids out of the corners, up the SLO and into the GBs. Had to dismantle the main GB manifold as the holes were blocking and the elbows were gunked up - probably don't need it anyway. It has been reused as a spraybar in the ST which will reduce the mixing down of the duckweed which has been migrating to the FT via the pump and tower header pipe overflow. Spent a cold rainy afternoon reading through member system threads getting ideas ...

Glued the rest of the new pipework between the pump and the valves so that it can't pop out or leak. Had to readjust the flows again as I knocked the valves when fiddling. Must have a little bit more going to the FT and to the GB, so had to remove the elbow from the bottom of the siphon so it would break. I really need to add a couple of skinny GBs under the towers to catch errant streams of water randomly wicking out the corners of the planting holes, and to take on extra flow from a 2nd SLO. My 50mm SLO is just not big enough and there is not enough headspace in the FT to allow the water level to rise much. Probably also need to put an overflow in the FT to the ST just in case.

The rainbows are eating and growing. There are a couple of small ones that hang out near the bottom and don't manage to get to the food before the other piggies eat it. They are only 20cm long (if they pointed their tails) and half the width of the biggest ones that are a generous 25cm long and quite plump. Maybe I can try dropping some food down a pipe close to the bottom for the little'uns while distracting the others with pellets at the surface...