Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all,

So, first, i have some rabbits, they produce about 20 gal of dung/day. they also pee alot. I have heard you dont want urine in the anerobic system, hence the aerobic one.
I have completed the aerobic system and currently cycleing it up, the anerobic is in the final construction stages.

so my first questions are:
anerobic:
3x 100gal totes should be enough 20 gal + 40gal water = 60gal/day * 30 day = 180gal?
is the water at output clean, specifically not stinkey?
what comes out in terms of solids/liquids, i understand there is waste, has anyone found a diy method to remove the solid waste at the output and be able to recycle the waste water(best i can find is a "aquaponic swirl filter")?

aerobic:
As mentioned i am trying to cycle this system up right now, but I have bad feelings about its success.
rabbit urine shows a ph of 9 or so, so i have dropped down to 7 with hydroponic-ph-down, is there a target ph i should keep?
also PPM is high i am showing a TDS > 2000ppm. can i drown aerobic bacteria with their food, they have huge o2 supply?
When i do ammonia /nh3/nh2 tests i cant find any trace of any of them, my test kit is 4 yrs old, but stored good, maybe its bunk? or maybe ammonia evaporated out? It still smells bad, like urine, and is brown like urine, will the color lighten up as processing is complete?
Also i read that even aerobic system gets air shut off to create anerobic condition to burn off the nite's, will water clarify when this happens? will ppm drop? how often shoud i set off time and for how long (cycleing up and regularily)?

any advise helps!
thanks!

To begin with, check your math. Won't take long and 1800 gal of rabbit exhaust is going to overwhelm any backyard setup. I would be looking pretty hard at worms for the main treatment and try to figure things from there. There should be a small market for worm castings, worms, and worm tea.

Unfortunately dirt is out of the question, i need this contained. Also I made a mistake where totes are 200gal. but i will get 10 totes if i need too.

Didn't say anything about dirt. Plenty of ways to contain a worm ranch, but that's for another day.
You need to provide more information. What is the goal of mineralizing the slurry? How long does it take to convert one gal of RE slurry to useable plant food (if that is your end goal,), and what is the optimum RE/ water ratio for the mineralization process? Plenty of questions come to mind when considering turning 21,900 gal of slurry into something useful annually.

mineralizing ? optimum RE/ water ratio ?


Not too sure what you mean about those.
I thought the conversion rate was 30 days, ie the time that the material had to be in there.
And the ratio was 1:2 waste to water, that was i figure i pulled from tech specs on this design:
https://www.homebiogas.com/product/homebiogas-7/
..... but maybe is less with rabbits since there is less methane in there.


Rabbit manure is garden ready straight from the bunns butt.
The thing i like the most about digesting is that it is air tight to keep the smell contained. And reduces the volume of waste i need to haul away.
gas prod is cool, but i wont get much since rabbits have the lowest methane values.

Actually I am trying to start a rabbit-ponics system, I got my hydro system eating chem ferts right now, I also have a scrubber system to clean my hutch. The scrubber system takes in about 50gal of water and outputs waste and urine.
It then removes the solid waste and diverts the pee-water to a bio-filter. I am hoping that the biofilter will, first eliminate odur and nitrify plant food, then i will use that water to feed the scrubber a few times so that when i have enough ppm i can transfer to hydro system stink free. I am also trying to close the loops on system so that that 50 gal is not coming straight from the tap.
Hopefully that will deal with the urine side of things, but now I got all this manure. It is ok on dry days, but as soon as a bit of humidity sets in it smells quite a bit. My goal for the manure is simply to eliminate smell and volume so that when i dump it in the yard it doesnt stink and takes up less space, and hopefully then i dont need to haul it away.