Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The snow missed me by about 20 miles. But it was friking cold. It never got above freezing during the day and the night temps went down to -17 with wind up to 40 miles and hour.
Feeding live stock with the wind chill was not what I call fun.

Nasty, at least.

Haha yes this year indeed. I believe we set a temperature record with zero degrees for November 13

I don't know whether this is an almanac for this weather station or what though.It may only be a few years recording.
P.S. Dinner salad last night was five out of six vegetables from our AP.
Belle Pepper
Kale
Tomatoes
Chili Pepper
Basil
Pretty good for zero outside.

Damn that is freakin' cold. Well at least we're not coping with the terrifying conditions our friends in California are dealing with. I did a newsletter about our fresh powder and Calif's drought if you or anyone would like to see it shoot me your email address to brodgers(@)desertgate.com I won't post it here so I don't get raise the ire of the MAGA guys, lol.
Brian

I think the fires we had this year will be the new normal. For me that means, improving fire safety, underbrush and fire breaks and disconnecting my forest from the NF.


Last Tuesday the new El Nino forecast came out. It looks very promissing. It went from 70% up to 80% for the winter.



https://www.weather.gov/gjt/WinterOutlook_2018-2019.

Every second Tuesday of the month they refresh the forecast.

So lets hope we can bitch this winter about a lot of snow.

Good morning
I guess it's been a few weeks since I updated you all on our aquaponics system, as a couple things have happened here. Both my wife Nell and I have had surgeries, her's much more serious than mine, so I've been her care giver full time.
The aquaponics system is in it's forth year of service producing trout and vegetables year round with little service needed to keep it running. The last four years of my life I've been ill with what was thought to be an autoimmune disease. Along with this debilitating physical symptoms of random swelling of joints came a emotional roller-coaster of horrors. Sometimes I couldn't walk, other times I was fine, with the latter condition usually taking place while I was at the doctor's office, grr. The good news is this is the longest I'm gone without a major joint swelling, so it appears the holistic healer knows what is happening to me better than twenty western medicine specialists.

During 2018 I tried to accommodate the ridiculous quantities of trout I added to this system by building a new cone bottomed radial flow filter and dual air-lift pump system to handle the gargantuan quantities of fish waste. This was my first catastrophic plumbing fail in the life of our aquaponics system.
We have been trying to reduce the amount of trout in the system to get it back to normal. We started with 100 Brook trout 18 month old fingerlings about this time in 2017. All was good with our filtration until they grew to adult size fish, than they overwhelmed the system. We've been harvesting fish since early Summer 2018.

I believed we got it down to 50 fish by the end of Summer, but it is difficult to tell in this 2600 gallon natural shape fish tank.
Since I last posted we harvested another nine one pound trout and ran out of fish food again, doh!
Yesterday I harvested another five trout.

Another-six-Brook-trout-out-of-Aquaponics-Nov-16th-2018
We smoked these and ate two for dinner last night.

Another-six-Brook-trout-out-of-AP-Nov-16th-2018.jpg
Two days ago I noticed something different happening in the aquaponics system; the feed to the RFF (first sediment settling filter) was bubbling instead of flowing dirty water off the bottom of the fish tank. I wasn't sure what would cause this as I hadn't seen this happening before. I thought about overnight and decided I would figure it out yesterday. I pulled the dual SLO (solids lift outflow) system and see if it was plugged up causing bubbles from the air-lift pump to go into the RFF. It was dirty, but I don't know about plugged. I cleaned it with a hose and put it back in the water. All seems well now so I guess that was the issue. It still seems a bit weird to me.
Speaking of weird, as I mentioned we ran out of fish food and I already bout five pounds off Ebay for what a fifty pound bag would cost, grr. Fish food goes stale and it wouldn't be good by the time the next round of fish grow out, so I didn't want a full size bag right now.
I figure there were still at least five fish in there. Left with no recourse other than starving the fish I looked at the ingredients of our grain free cat food. I know, please don't hate on me. It turns out the trout loved it, but weird right?
Cat food for fish, then feed the fish to cats???
Alrighty then!
So I went in this morning to check on the filter which has been having way more floating fish waste in it... because cat food floats?? Anywho, there was trout number six I guess, dead on the floor all the way around the fish tank by the filters. How the heck did it get over there? I've never seen any of our trout manage to jump up and over the sides of their pond. It must have jumped out of the bucket as I was netting fish yesterday. I can't believe I missed it flopping around, whoops.
Ohcrap I just got very lucky.
While adding some photos and a video I locked up this Linux PC, lo and behold this story was still here. Yowsa!

Filters-area-Nov-17th-2018
I don't know why the video locked up my computer, but I'll take that as a sign and not post it. What I saw while making that video is at least another five adult Brook trout that need harvesting before I can clean the fish tank from having 100 trout in there.

Side-of-2600-gallon-fish-tank-Nov-17th-2018

SE-dirt-bed-peppers-Gerainiums-Nov-17th-2018

Media-bed-with-LED-grow-light-Nov-17th-2018
This is the bed under the fancy LED aquarium grow light. I'm not seeing a lot of growth, but it looks like the red stemmed plant which may be beets is doing a little better.

Largest-dirt-bed-peppers-Egg-plants-Nov-17th-2018
The egg plants appear to be getting too cold near the big picture window, but the varied pepper plants are still producing flowers and fruit.

DWC-Basil-Kale-Nov-17th-2018
The kale in the DWC are pale and probably need so foliar nutrients sprayed on, so I'll get after that ASAP.
All in all I'm quite happy with the how the aquaponics greenhouse is doing while the temperatures outside have slid down to zero.
Best wishes,
Brian

Looking good Brian the only time my system mucked up was when I had to many large fish (2kg) and a mixture of Jade and Silver Perch. Cheers Bear

Thanks Bear. Although it was really nice to have so many more fish to harvest, I wonder if it was worth all the extra hassle cleaning the FT and filters every few days? This next time I think I'll go to the hatchery with $100 and see what they'll sell me for that. 100 18 month old fingerlings were $150. I may try one of the hybrids they now stock I do like the results of a seasonal turnover with the trout. I still need to rebuild the filtration area to hold a larger MBBR and a better sediment filter, I'm still uncertain how I'll do that without knocking down a masonry wall
My father used to kid, "I don't understand all I know about that." Maybe I should make that my tag line as the GIGO (garbage in garbage out) ratio isn't what it once was

Had the same problem with the 2 x IBC fish farm during spring and summer. 50 x 1 kilo fish in each tank and filter being cleaned every second day. Just had to keep eating the buggers which was hard to take (not)

Hope you are both feeling better after your operations. Cheers

Thanks ccBear.
Yes a bit of a pain to keep up with that many fish, hehe almost as troublesome as those damn tomatoes. This Spring or Summer depending on if when we get the our rental house re-leased for 2019. That income stream is up for maintenance while we're between tenants. Hopefully with some minor improvements it'll rent for a few more dollars this go-around.
The plan is to continue the greenhouse across the same side of the house. With time I should be able to double and re-double the media bed volume. Also want more room for filtration. I'd like to have a 250 gallon (946 liters) tote as a MBBF and make room for that dual air-lifted SLO cone-bottom RFF I recently made.
Yes we're getting better every day. I got to get away and in the forest last week a couple times. Once I marked 150 New Mexico dwarf Mistletoe http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/infestation-of-dwarf-mistletoe-in-jemez-mountains-underestimated/article_895fd4ae-2a7c-59b0-9171-c60a65d05ea9.html
I can't remember if the area has gotten larger since I first noticed the infestation, but it is on most of the Ponderosa Pine trees in a 1/4 acre area now.
It feels really liberating going from a prognosis of some as yet unknown form of autoimmune disease to an allergy to eggs
Doctors often aren't what we hoped they were; healers.
I just received the results of broad spectrum urine analysis:
Wow super enlightening, not only is the allergy to eggs and dairy confirmed I believe it accurately diagnoses many of my aliments, from frequent kidney stone creation, acne as well as autoimmune like responses to any type of yeast. The good gut bacteria has been knocked back to a point where it is in minority to bad bacteria.
Bad bacteria occurs when food we eat is un-digestible and it basically rots instead of being consumed by our cells.
This makes so much sense to me I think the placebo effect will work in my favor.
Brian

I was looking for images I have stored of rocks and found a bunch of the creation of our indoor masonry 2600 gallon fish tank.
These used to be on my web site and when I shut it down the images I had here in the early pages lost those links.




Nature had the right idea about what I was planning.


At this stage my wife was like,"what the hell are you building, again?"

That looks awesome..I intend to do something similar as I have more than plenty of frikkin rocks!

Thanks. Yeah I love rocks, and they are everywhere!

Good morning!
I had a nice little hike to the Sapello River Saturday and thought I'd share some of it with you.Let you know I'm still kicking



Above, I am on a short walk down the hill to the Sapello River. It appears the beavers are back at work dropping and moving small willow shoots to the river. They are also in the process of felling large trees upstream by the bridge.

Our trees are protected with wire mesh. I can see the results of the beavers trying to chew between the wires. That may merit another layer of protection. As you can see in the images there are many small willows for them to eat.
They have raised the river a couple feet it looks like to me.

I don't know how they would do, but with all this water stored by the beavers I wonder if the remaining 9 Brook trout from our aquaponics system would fare well in here. What do you think?
Nell is healing up nicely after surgery on her foot. Monday they'll remove the pins from two toes. That'll be a huge relief as she has to protect those pins all the time. The pins have little plastic balls attached to the ends which stick out the ends of the toes, I guess so they can get a hold of them to pull them out, he says with a shiver.
She is up in Kenton Oklahoma working with her sister Susan on Social Security cases for clients. She'll be back Sunday go to that doctor appointment and head back to Kenton. I'll head up later in the month and spend XMas up there with the Cogars.

Me? How am I doing? Pretty good, although I hurt my back working in the forest and on the driveway these last few weeks. Yes, I finally worked on the damn driveway. Now I don't need to gripe every time we go up and down the gravel road, saying, "I need to work on this damn road!" Yeah it still needs more, but it looks better each time. I've been breaking small loads of rocks and placing down in the ruts made by the the heavy rains we received over the last two Summers.
Oh shoot, I just remembered I shot a lot of pictures of the work in the driveway...
I'm certain you can not wait to see those, lol!

I'm also going to a doctor appointment this coming week. I'm hopeful my PC found this test informative. Dr. Lilly asked that he refill a prescription for Fluconazole I had shared the latest organic acids test prescribed by Doctor Lilly at Taos Whole Health as we narrow down what is happening to my body. I don't recall if I shared what that test is all about or not? Basically it shows what is happening in the gut and how the body processes food. This test confirmed that I have trouble digesting sugars as part of the Krebs cycle. Also the test showed an abnormally high yeast count and along with household mold tests and other homeopathic remedies, and the fungicidal flucanazole we're dealing with that issue as the main cause of the four year struggle I have had with my health.

As it was explained to us, "Instead of sugars being broken down and sent to my cells as fuel, it is being discarded. This goes a long way to explain to me why I lost 35 pounds during the peak of my illness as well as why now I am gaining that weight back now that my gut flora is being repaired thanks to Doctor Blecher's many remedies.
That is my story in one very big nutshell.

Bee Nuts

That's interesting. I took a look online and noticed some of the fungicides are affected by the presence of sugar. Not sure about Fluconazole. Basically makes it easier for the fungus to resist the effects of the anti-fungal and I could see where you might not be able to digest the sugar as well if it's somehow bound to the anti-fungal agent. Don't know if this means anything in your case, just thought it was interesting.

Cheers

Hey thanks Scotty
I am interested in seeing more research on this topic. Can you tell me where you were reading? Just like with the biology of aquaponics I am sorely lacking in my grasp of these things. Luckily, I do wish to learn more.
First searches I did came up with some interesting information on honey bees gut microbiome research.
Brian