Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,

Good day. I read from article stating that re-mineralisation will take 30 to 40 days in an aerobic system (standard temperature 25 degree). Is it possible to expedite the entire process to 1 day by adding aeration pump and black strip molasses? I am doing a DWC system therefore no media bed with LECA will be available for anearobic re-meneralisation to take place.

Thank you

Do you really care if breakdown is complete on all the solids in the mineralizer within one day? I don't think you should. The only portion you want to remove from the mineralizer is the liquid portion, solids stay in to continue breaking down. There is no reason that you can't make daily removals of the liquid portion which contains what you want as long as the solids are retained to continue breaking down. Once the mineralizer has been running for awhile, you will have solids that have been in the mineralizer for varying lengths of time that represent all periods in the breakdown process.

That's interesting, I hadn't realized that.

So people use their mineralization tanks on a "top up" and "skim off" basis rather than batch by batch.

Do you find that the solid portion accumulates over time? Is their a non-organic ash portion that simply can't be broken down any further? And would this be good for supplementing the soil garden?

I'm new here, so sorry ahead of time if this is a dumb question, but could you add a few bottom feeders like crayfish or shrimp to the mineralization tanks to accelerate the process? that should help alleviate the the build up of solids and potentially add another output product from an established system.

Danny -



There's more than one way to do things but I prefer to do it this way and I know Dasboot runs his this way as well. You could do a batch method but then you probably need more than one mineralization tank because then you have to wait for the whole batch to finish.

You could also do a flow through method using netting like University of the Virgin Islands. Their netting required cleaning in order to regulate solids breakdown - as the net got more growth the process would become anaerobic and release more nutrients as gas - cleaning the netting made the process more aerobic and helped retain the nutrients. A well aerated Static Upflow Filter could do the same thing with less hassle but you still waste some solids unless you directed them to a dedicated mineralizer. If you're going to use something like this then put the filter where anything passing through it goes out to your grow beds before going back to your fish or you'll see a lot of algae growth using the nutrients. If you operate your system part of the year as a Recirculating Aquaculture System then you might have to live with more algae, cover the tank or dump the solids more often to keep better control.



Yes



Pretty sure there is



I'm not an expert on this but I think it should be good to use this way (with some caveats). I base this on the fact that if you were to put the same solids in the compost heap I doubt anyone would have an issue with this but I guess it really depends on what's going into those solids in the first place. Along with this, sludge from treatment plants gets used on agricultural production (it's probably a lot worse than anything in our AP systems). Don't throw caution to the wind, you should have a pretty good idea what's in the fish food and supplements and be OK with whatever you're adding to your AP system.

If you had lots of heavy metals and lead or pesticides in your solids I don't think you'd want them (then again I'd have doubts about eating something from a system like this)

I would avoid pasturing animals in areas where you spread the solids for two or three weeks because of potential disease issues caused by micro-organisms. Some recommendations are to wait for much longer than this.

For what it's worth I just add any solids I no longer want in the AP to vermicompost which eventually makes it into the yard.

Edit: You might also accidentally over apply some elements to your yard if you overdo this in one area. I've heard of this happening with chicken manure and bedding but haven't seen it in AP so far.

rrathmann0428

I don't think they'd survive but it might be possible. There are a lot of solids in a mineralizer and you aerate the solids to keep them from settling and to keep them breaking down aerobically. Doesn't really sound like a place I'd want to live if I were a crayfish but you never know

Someone here may be able to give you a more definite answer.

I have a picture of what I'm planning, I just don't know how to post it

You can find information on posting images on the forum in a couple of threads over in this part of the forum - http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=4

Basically you need to resize the images so they'll be accepted but you'll find more in threads off the link above. Just post it back here and I'll probably split your question out of this thread into it's own thread and send you the link so if you have other questions we can go from there.

Many people run each batch of solids in their mineralisation tanks for 7 days, with good aeration and a couple of doses of molasses. While this will be freeing up a reasonable amount of the nutrients and is definitely better than not mineralising the solids at all, Dr Nick Savidov has found in his trials that it takes 30+ days to liberate the majority of the nutrients from the solids.

In his trials, Dr Nick Savidov has taken the mineralisation process one step further, added additional oxygen from an oxygen generator, and found that in 30 days he could reduce the solids down to a nutrient rich liquid, with no solids remaining in the digester.