Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

wow, these are pretty cool... I've never heard of them before this post and I looked briefly at the post and wasn't sure what it was, but now today I saw someone on another thread mention them so I decided I needed to do more reading... this is pretty incredible! I've already got the wires ran so I'll continue hooking them up, but will have to keep this in mind and will probably buy them for the rest of the house eventually because it will be a lot nicer than having to run off our weak wifi signal. Our router is mounted behind the TV in the living room, if you go to the master bedroom at the other end of the house the wifi is blocked enough to make it pretty slow/disconnect a lot. The baby's room is across the hallway and we have a wifi camera but it's unreliable when it will have a connection so I need this in there too. And I haven't bothered to run ethernet to my smart TV downstairs in the family room yet (typically only use it for watching DVD's or playing video games otherwise if we're watching TV we use the living room TV), but this will give me easy internet access for the family room TV too. If I do end up picking them up I'll test it out in the greenhouse too and see what gives faster speeds using these or using the ethernet cable.

...from the controller thread, yes. I have reviewed your setup here some time ago. I have a perfect place available for such a greenhouse and would love such a greenhouse, but am old, retired and underfunded.

So I am starting small and will see what comes next.

We are just getting started, my wife and I have been married for just over 3 years, been together for not quite 7 years, bought our first house together a little over 2 years ago, had our first child 8 weeks ago... I'm 31, she's 29... so we've got a way to go which makes it a little easier to work on these projects I'm sure, but it looks like your system is coming along just as well so it's a pleasure to tag along with you on your adventure as well.

My greenhouse progress will be slow again for a while because my funds are pretty much depleted. My wife is on maternity leave for another 3 1/2 weeks, the first 8 weeks she had paid sick time off but this last 4 weeks before she goes back is unpaid, so have to tighten the belt a bit until she goes back to work to make sure we don't run out of money before then (fortunately we don't have to worry too much about food as I already raise my own chickens and pork as well as hunting deer I have two freezers full of food, and what we've been able to can/freeze from the garden this year we don't need to buy too many groceries)... we had banked our tax return this year for this project and then I also sold my old pickup truck and have used all of the funds from that towards this project too. I'll make little improvements now as I have the money to but it will be much slower for the rest of this year and in to next spring.

I have been working on a planting plan for how often I can plant each item that we have in the greenhouse. I put together a calendar that visually shows the time from planting until the plants reach maturity based on their mentioned growth days and going to keep track of actual performance to tweak my plans for when to replant... but I went ahead last night and replanted 5 different kinds of lettuce, kale, swiss chard, radishes, beets, cabbage, carrots, peas, and broccoli. I already have two kinds of lettuce, two kinds of tomato plants, some peppers, radishes, swiss chard, kale, onions growing in the greenhouse. This is all experimental right now because I'm not sure how long I'll be able to grow, still have a lot of insulating to do and the temperature is only going down from here... but at a minimum I should be able to learn a bit about how these plants will grow in the AP system to be able to have a little more experience next year if I'm not able to grow through this winter with the GH not being completely finished yet.

I rearranged in the greenhouse on Saturday... I decided that the 330 gallon IBC tote needed to move back so it is up against the north wall, because of it being taller than the 55 gallon drums it would always cause the barrels that sit behind it to be in the shade thus it would always cause them to have a cooling effect... not good when you want to increase the heat in the winter, it would just be fighting me. So I decided to move the IBC back which will have an impact on the total number of barrels I can have in the greenhouse, so we will have to see what it does to the heat... the IBC tote is currently wrapped in the blue plastic, so worst case I can remove the blue plastic and paint the tote black and it will act as a heat sink too to help warm the system water not just the storage water and it will be in the shade in the summer so it will also help cool in the summer. I will also move the smaller cut 275 gal IBC back so it is still against the bigger tank, but it is full of water and a few fish and has the top sitting on it full of gravel and plants, so it is going to stay where it is until I get my other growbeds started, I will just wait until after I move the smaller IBC before I build my last growbed because it will give me another 3+ ft (6+ sq ft) of growbed space.

I had the larger IBC tote full of water too so I had to drain 300+ gallons of water to be able to move it... so instead of just dumping it on the ground I used it to start filling my water barrels on the north wall. I have about 5 of them completely filled then the rest of the water I split up between other barrels because I need to be able to move them still so didn't want them completely full yet.

I had about 2 1/2 sheets of insulation left, so I started cutting them down to fit between rafters to start adding insulation to the roof. I insulated the top half of the north side of the roof and I am pretty close to being out of insulation board now... I think I will buy a few more sheets of 1" to finish the rest of the roof, then eventually might add another piece of 2" thick to each of them which will get me up to R15 in the roof (I'll have R18 in the walls, I really should go more in the roof, but I wasn't really thinking about it when I put the rafters up... should have went 2x6 for the rafters instead of 2x4 so I could get more insulation in it... I guess once I put plywood up I could always add another layer of insulation on the bottom of the plywood, but will just see how it does without it first).

I made a little more progress on the Arduino controller Sunday. I got the LCD working, my water temp sensors are working, the air temp / humidity sensors are working but I found that the humidity sensors are highly unreliable. With 3 sensors connected sitting right next to each other the temperature was within about 1 degree F total from high to low of the three sensors which is probably good enough for what I'm doing... the humidity portion of the sensor though I had one sensor measuring something like 61%, one sensor measuring 41% and one measuring 1% when all three of them were sitting on the counter next to each other... so I don't think I'll be using the humidity portion of it as I had hoped to, but it should still be accurate enough to record outdoor temp, indoor ground level temp and indoor roof level temps fairly accurately. Next I need to get the ethernet shield working to provide internet access to the arduino, which also includes a memory card slot for saving data to, but there is a few examples on here where people are porting the info directly to a webserver to automatically create charts and be able to access the data from their phone... so I might have to do that too =) then finally I need to set up the relays and buck controller for controlling 120V outlets through the arduino.

I started working on the box that the arduino will be housed in. I bought a dremel and probably should have practiced on something else before I started cutting out the holes in my box, but oh well it doesn't have to be perfect, I'll just dab some silicone caulk in to take up the extra space =) It's amazing how quickly even the sanding bits take plastic material off with a dremel, so the hole for the LCD screen to sit in got a little bigger than needed while trying to clean up the cuts...

I had a vision of a future arduino project already... I went in the bedroom closet to turn our solar heater controller on yesterday morning because my wife had turned it off a couple days ago when it was getting too hot in the house and then yesterday it got pretty cold again so I wanted the solar heat back on instead of running the furnace and the thought of having an arduino solar heat controller crossed my mind... the controller that is in there now is ancient technology and I cannot find any information on it online to try and find an owners manual or something for what the controls are supposed to be doing... it has a temperature knob that I'm not sure if it is the temperature I want the house at or the temperature that the solar panel has to reach before turning on... either way it doesn't seem very accurate, I pulled the cover off of it yesterday to look at the electronics and found a second knob that just says "DIFF" and has much smaller settings (5, 10, 15, 20) so I'm assuming this has something to do with when to turn the solar heater on / off, maybe the temp knob is the temp I want it in the house and the DIFF knob is how much warmer the panel has to be before turning on (that's my assumption anyways... it was set on 5, and often the solar heater runs and I feel the air coming out of it and it feels colder than the indoor temp but the heater hasn't kicked off yet, so I cranked it up to 10 to see if that makes a difference and maybe it will shut off sooner when the indoor temp reaches the panel temp... but it would be so much nicer to just build an arduino controller that I can tell it what to do instead of trying to guess what it is doing. Maybe once I've successfully launched the current arduino project I'll start working on that one =)

I finished wiring outlets in the greenhouse today, and already had lights working. Finished filling the trench back in that I ran the conduit in. Almost finished insulating the greenhouse, I have the south wall left and the ceiling. I bought 5 more sheets of insulation for the ceiling to see how far it will go and bought 5 more sheets of plywood to move the project a little closer to completion. I have a family get together at the in laws tomorrow. Hoping my father in law will have a few more barrels ready for me to bring home tomorrow. I also decided to go buy a 55 gallon fish tank that I'm going to cycle and use as a qt tank in the greenhouse. Bought another dozen minnows and a dozen comet goldfish that I tossed in the system because I only had I think three perch and half a dozen or so minnows survive the ammonia outbreak. I have been trying to find trout fingerlings but not having much luck so I might just keep adding comets and minnows to the system and run it with them through the winter since they are cheap, and readily available. I never really cared for goldfish but after seeing there is quite a bit of difference in their colorings and markings I decided to give them a chance in the system...

I just ordered 10 blue tilapia from Tampa Aquaculture https://tampaaquaculture.com/

$21.99 (including expedited shipping). They are small (1.5-2") but from what I've read they become sexually mature at 11 weeks old, so I figured I would try ordering a few and put them in my 240 gallon aquarium inside my house and see how they do... I'll have all winter to get them conditioned for breeding and then hopefully will be able to move them out to the greenhouse in early spring to be my summer fish. They claim that blue tilapia can tolerate down to about 50F, so hopefully being in my indoor aquarium I won't need to heat it, but I will get my controller running again to keep an eye on the temperature to make sure it doesn't get anyplace close to the 50F.

I might be a bit quick on ordering these because I just started refilling my aquarium last night, and it still had a little bit of salt water in it so I'm not sure what will happen if it will help speed up the cycle or not (I believe the bacteria in saltwater is different than the bacteria in freshwater) but I think I will stop and buy some (snakeoil) beneficial bacteria in a bottle on my way home just to try and give it a boost so the tank will be ready by the time they get here. I'm not sure if they will ship today or if they will wait to ship them on Monday, but either way I'm excited already!

my progress remains slow, but I am making a little progress every couple days or so. I finished running the electric in the greenhouse over the weekend and I finished insulating the walls, so the other night I managed to get the plastic over the insulation on the south wall and last night I got the plywood up on the south wall. I still have to put plastic over the east and west walls then get the plywood up on it and I still need to finish insulating the ceiling and get plywood up on it and paint everything...



the plants are still growing pretty good. Hopefully they keep going even better as I finish insulating the greenhouse but our temps should start dropping any day now too.

coming together very nicely. Nice to see the ratio of construction tools and materials to growing things changing

it's still mostly construction zone. Just the one grow bed, but I only have about 1 dozen comet goldfish, 1 dozen minnows (or less, as perch might have ate some of them they were really small when I added them this time) and 2 perch in the fish tank. I am leaving work early today to go pick up some rainbow trout for the system. I was going to do 50 of them but I decided I am only going to do 25 of them instead because I don't want to overdo it again and have everything die again, plus I'm not sure how much room they will need once they get bigger (eventually I'll have two IBC totes running for a total of about 500 gallons, but I still have too much construction going on in the greenhouse to get the second tote operational... I will probably build a couple grow beds to move stuff over to before I get the second tank operational at which point I'll transfer everything in to the bigger tank because I need to be able to move plants and gravel in to other grow beds then drain the current tank to be able to move it over about 4ft from it's current location (design changed to remove a couple barrels and move fish tanks back so they are out of the sun further in the summer, and long term plan has always been to not use the top of the IBC grow bed that I'm using right now, only using it temporarily until I get everything else up and running).

I picked up some rainbow trout on Friday. I paid for 25, they gave me 27. They were supposed to be 4-6", most of them are 6"+






also a new take on a self feeder... they have these over all of their trout tanks and train the trout to go hit a red piece on the end of the feeder which causes food to drop in the water, so the trout feed themselves only what they will eat, no worry about overfeeding them..


unfortunately I caused an ammonia spike again by adding these fish... I don't know what my issue is, I must not have enough gravel in the bed to house enough bacteria (doesn't make sense to me, it's basically like having an 8" gravel bed in the tank, only it's above the tank in this case). I had added 8 tabs of start zyme which claims to have beneficial bacteria in it before I added the fish. Now that I tested and saw ammonia/nitrites I dumped two bottles of start zyme in (they claim they treat up to 240 gallons each for monthly maintenance, I'm running about 200 gallons total so I'm hoping it will be enough to clean up the ammonia and nitrites quickly, but I will buy a few more bottles and some ammonia lock on my way home tomorrow just in case. I would normally start doing water changes too, but I tested my tap water out the hose and I have ammonia in it for some reason, so I can't just do a big water change to get it under control... I bumped up my pump speed to cycle the water through the grow bed a little faster too so hopefully that helps get the ammonia to the bacteria...

So when you measure your fish, are you measuring SL (standard length), TL (total length), or FL (fork length)?
I assume everyone uses SL - excluding the length of the caudal (tail) fin, right?

Wikipedia: Fish measurement



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Sam

Don't panic too much about the ammonia spike - stop feeding for a few days until the spike is gone, then up the feed gradually, testing all the way. The nitrifying bacteria only multiply enough to handle their food supply, so you have enough bacteria in your media to convert the waste from your previous load of fish. Now you've added fish, so the load is higher, and your bacteria are still converting the same amount of waste; it'll take them a little while to catch up. They were probably still catching up with the increased load from the goldfish etc you added on the 16th.

I know we usually talk about having enough media to handle X number of fish, but really that's shorthand for enough media to house enough bacteria to handle the amount of ammonia produced by X number of fish being fed a certain amount of food. If you've got enough media to handle 30 fish, but you only have 10 fish in the system, then you've only got enough bacteria to handle the waste from those 10 fish being fed the amount you're giving them. When you add more fish, it's best to keep the amount of food you're giving them the same as you were giving just the first 10 fish, and gradually increase it so the bacteria have time to respond to the increased amounts of waste.

Sam, I didn't actually measure them I just roughly eyeballed it that they were all more on the 6"+ range (only a couple smaller). They are some slippery critters, I'm not used to grabbing on to a slimey fish with no scales... the only fish I've ever dealt with that doesn't have scales to give you a little grip are catfish and we typically pick them up by the lip with a pair of pliers or wear a glove so they don't stab you with their spine. I've never caught a trout before so didn't realize they weren't a scaley fish (makes more sense why people cook them whole instead of filleting them!) But to answer your question I am talking about total length (what's the difference between "standard length" and "total length"? )

Thanks Mel, I know I shouldn't panic but I can't stand the idea that the ammonia jumped up again... coming from the aquarium trade we never see jumps like this but we're also only adding a couple of fish at a time so not really shocking the system like this... I need to figure out why I have ammonia in my tap water coming out the hose so I could just do a water change to help keep the ammonia in check. Or I'll have to fill a couple barrels full of RO water to be able to do water changes but my greenhouse is 80-100ft behind my house so it's a bit to haul enough water to really make a difference with the water change. Alternatively I could just get ready and hook up the larger fish tank to add another 300 gallons of water to the system (the solution to pollution is dilution) but I'm a little worried about adding that tank to the system until I get a chance to toss a few fish in it and make sure they are going to survive because it had "Oxcide" in it (http://chemfresh.com/) which is mostly water but some hypchlorous acid and oxy-chloro and peroxide... I believe it's safe because they use it in greenhouses regularly but I will feel better about it after I drain and refill it a couple more times (I'm going to finish filling my water barrels from it to empty it out again then refill it again and maybe it will be OK)

I've been to planetcatfish http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=33968&start=220 much this morning and was attracted to this thread because they were talking about big tank windows and attaching them to concrete:


After watching this video and a few others I have to wonder how fish feel being in heavily stocked in community tanks, even these 500 gallon tanks. As you may know, ours is a 2600 and we wanted 100 trout at first. I am glad like you we went with the advice here and bought 45 instead. Now we're at about 15, and need to harvest the rest once we get a line on a nearby hatchery capable of supplying Rainbows. Those are some beauts for sure. Nice looking feeder too. how's it working?

I had never really thought too much about it before, but I noticed in FishBase and other precise documentation, that an SL was usually added after a length reference like "Max length: 60.0 cm SL". Finally I looked it up and then wondered how folks here normally measure...

SL - From tip of snout to end of vertebrae / beginning of tail fin.
TL - From tip of snout to end of longest tail fin lobe.

So generally, I'd expect a biologist or kitchen manager would normally use SL (not counting the tail) and a fisherman would use TL (total length including tail and a bit of lip stretching.) It appears that in scientific literature, SL (Standard Length) would be used for most bony fish, TL (Total Length) would be used for sharks and rays. I'd expect most folks into aquaponics would be using SL measurements, but you never know...

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Sam