Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

i should probably wait for joels book to have these questions answered but sometimes my brain won't stop...
we are getting close to level 4 water restrictions and i hate shower water going to waste....I know I can't just bucket the water into the system because of temp jump but what about a drip feed system? will the soap be detrimental to the fish at those levels?

Some Soap has high levels of phosphates in it and can be acidic too, and then there is the question of it containing all the stuff which you have scrubbed off of yourself too....
If ran it through a biofilter system of sorts this could take care of a lot of this stuff... I will see if I can find the page which had a simple system for treating houshold grey water....

Beeso, this is just personal preference and there will likely be a variety of views on the topic, but personally if i was going to use shower water i'd like to be using natural soap, verses the SLS based off the shelf soap. I prefer the feel of the natural soap and i dare say it will be easier to intergrate into a system as the only components that went into it were fats oils and caustic soda. Ph of this type of soap is usually neutral to slightly alkaline. I think that garry donaldson would have some sage advice for you.......just wait for him to log on and weigh in

Thre wasan article in the Advertiser yesterday that quoted a international water expert as saying that South Australians would be better off drinking recycled sewerage than what we currently drag out of the murray, which, he says, is waste water from the NSW cotton farmers right down the river to our own state's farmers polluting our river. Scary stuff.
In south Aust, it is not legal to recycle grey water, which I think is absolutely stupid. I wanted to install a grey water recycling system to my house for my gardens etc, and was told a big "no, sorry" beacuse the health department can't get their heads around it.

So let me get this straight Stu,

If you save water from your washing machine and shower, and use it to water your front lawn so it nice and lush over the summer, you're breaking the law? incredible!

All things considered, i'd be happy using grey water for lawn and ornamental garden plants, i'd only feed comfortable using water from the bath room and possibly kitchen if i knew i was using "safe" alternatives to detergents and regular personal care products.

They would have to be environmental;ly friendly products - dont want nasties building up in the vegies or fish you will eventually be eating

Exactly, and environmntally friendly is a very vauge term. most of the stuff available i wouldn't put on my skin let alone use to water plants i was going to eat. I have no doubt that nature can process much, but as i don't have access to a lab nor money to have my produce tested i like to err on the side of caution

Steve

I think the KISS commandment is important, fully functioning "traditional" systems have soooo much to offer by them selves. I'm not saying don't think outside the square, but think about these isses as a future possibility, son't let them bog down your system progress.

Steve

G'day Beeso, good to see you here.

I would be thinking twice about using bath water in a system, as the soaps and shampoos aren't good as Steve said, though I can see that it would be feesable to have some filtration, like reed beds before the water gets to the fish...

Perhaps if you convert to 'natural instict' or 'envirocare' then things might be easier. As much as I have selling things and dropping names, these products are way better than standard commercial crap. My GF and I switched over to all these products months ago, and haven't looked back, it's cheap too when you buy in bulk...

http://www.envirocare.biz/Envirocare_aus/products.htm

http://naturalinstinct.com.au/

and Eb's stck shares in 'natural instict' and 'envirocare' went up one point last night

Could not resist....
Its the way we are going too, but just so as to reduce the strain on the environment - if we all do something small for the environment, collectively it is something huge!

EB, was sceptical, but have had a browse and they have my support! (for what its worth )

Have seen many prducts marketed as "Safe" not all are.
seems like more and more companies are waking up

Good to see that i'm not the only freak here!

Thats exactly what i was suggesting. ifyou use products like these then not only are you saving yourself and the the environment, but you make the re0use of grey water much more "do-able"


safe shopper bible by samuel epstein is a good start

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/002082 ... 63?ie=UTF8

He also published a book a few years ago that listed basicall every chemical used in personal care products and his findings on it. Surprising not all chemicals with names as long as your arm are bad, but many of them are.

[align=justify]Hi,

I would be very cautious about using recycled greywater in an aquaponics system....not because of the nitrogen or phosphates that it contains (or even the bits that you scrape off your body as Steve remarked).....but rather for the chemicals that that are contained in the detergents and other products that go down the shower and kitchen drains.

The very least I would do would be to put the greywater through a mini-wetlands and then get a sample tested.

While some chemicals will kill fish, others won't.....and the question becomes one of 'would you like to eat them anyway?' Some large sharks can have so much mercury in their flesh that they almost glow..... and the meat becomes unfit to eat. We periodically hear news reports about warnings not to eat contaminated fish stocks......like Georges River oysters, Sydney Harbour fish, etc.

Take what appears on detergent packaging with a grain of salt.....make that a mountain of salt.[/align]

looking at what we had for dinner today, if the water that I used to wash the dishes went into an aquaponic system it would be full of oil... and we give off oils too, so add oi,s to the equation... would have to a skimmer type setup somewhere too!

Even where local councils are relatively enlightened about greywater re-use, they will still generally prohibit the use of the stuff that goes down the kitchen sink (or through a dishwasher) because of the food scraps and the cooking oils.

A properly designed mini-wetlands will feature a sediment trap filled with lime enriched sand. The sand not only traps cooking oil and food scraps but it also absorbs the phosphates from the kitchen detergents.

The sedimentation bed can be covered to exclude pests and the lime enriched sand is replaced at periodic intervals which has the effect of harvesting the phosphates from the system.

Ok, i'm going to look really dumb here when i ask this, but here goes.................

I understand that phosphates are a problem in our waste water as it is one of the three fertilizer elements (N P K) and that it stimulates algae growth in our water ways.

BUT would it not be beneficial for use as garden water? i mean people will fertilize with N P K. If there is large amaounts of P from the grey water, and change out water from the aquaponics system will be high in N then thats two of the three fertilizer element requirements taken care of.

I'm only talking about the phosphate removal issue here (not contaminamts), and only for water that is going of terrestrial plants, not into waterways.

confused

Steve