Aquaponics second posting

Got the greenhouse up with some assistance from my cousins

.....ok lots of assistance

...... ok they did most of the work and I stood by and tried not to look useless. It's a nice little greenhouse, Dale and Aimee both commented on it. I think I paid about $150 for it.

 The frame is made out of tubular galvanized steel, Dale seems to think it will be sturdy. It could be made out of aluminum foil for all I know. That's why it's good to have family who understand the "real world application" of things. Kiersten and Dale attaching the supporting braces. Luckily my backyard is fairly flat, so we didnt have to do any digging. There is a couple of low spots but a few well placed homemade shims should do just fine.

The measurements are 6' by 12' I think and the top is 6 feet, just about right so I don't have to stoop over to get inside. My one concern is it being high enough for tomato plants, that's the main thing I want to grow and if things go well, I can foresee tomato plants growing straight up to the ceiling fairly quickly. Oh well, let's see if I can get the system working first, over growth of plants is a good problem to have.

Aimee silently volunteered to serve as foreman, she has a good eye for detail and caught a few mistakes we were making early on.  

Aimee, as foreman, is always tactful, seeing as how her husband is packing. 

 The fabric is clear with interwoven green strands, seems very durable. It is curved and slips right over the top of the frame. Some of the cool things about it are double zippers on either side as you can, as well as little holder straps to roll up the doors if you want more fresh air. Also there are little "windows" on the side you can roll up as well, also with holder straps.

  Here's the finished product. Looks neat, not an eyesore at all. Inside we used tent stakes to anchor it but I am, not fully convinced a strong storm wouldn't loosen it enough to fly off, it's very light weight. When I get the 300 gallon fish tank inside I will strap it to the frame and that should prevent it from going anywhere.

My tote just got delivered. It's a 330 gallon tote that has had only food grade product in it. The owner said it had had some type of citrus based product but was non toxic. These things are $475 new, but companies are only allowed to use them once then they have to be discarded. I paid $75 for this one plus $10 delivery, very fair deal I thought. Also on a side note, the guy I bought it from was somewhat of an expert on fish and aquaculture, he had some good input on fish and fish health. He actually raises Koi, I may get a few from him as he said they could live alongside the catfish, I plan on harvesting the catfish at some point so it might be a good idea to have fish that stay in the system to keep producing waste after I harvest the catfish and while a new batch grows to size. From what I read, stability and not upsetting things once they get set is a good idea.

 Below, not sure if you can see, but there are gallon and liter markings on the side of the tank, awesome, as I will know exactly how much water is in there, might be kinda hard to estimate with having some type of measuring device. 

Also, not that I will use it, but this tote has a pressure release cap on it, may not use it for this setup but in the future that could be helpful if I decide to setup one of these tanks as a solar heat collector.

Lastly on the tote, it has a very sturdy looking ball valve on the bottom. The tote looks extremely rugged and I am well pleased with the purchase. Thanks Mickey! (tote-guy)

I have purchased 2 pumps on ebay, and yes I went with a cheap model to get started but I did buy 2 just in case one fails. It is a sump pump that pushes 400 GPH with an 8 foot head. Should be plenty of volume as you are supposed to move at least the volume of the fish tank once per hour. I toyed with the idea of a more powerful sump pump but I wasn't sure how I was going to regulate the flow and didn't know if I could use a timer or a float switch. It seems to me that just leaving one on constantly may be the simplest thing, at least to get started.

Next up will be getting the tote cut across the top, hope I can find my wireless saw. Also I need to go ahead and find where I'm going to get my pea gravel from. I think a half ton will be enough to get me started and my Ford Ranger should handle that. I am expecting to pay about $50 a ton for the pea gravel. So for those  keeping count, my estimated cost so far:

Greenhouse                                             $150

Tote                                                      $  75

Pumps (2 @ $30 each)                               $60

Pea gravel (est @$55 /ton)                        $55

Barrels (@$12 each)                                  $36

Sump tank                                               $60

_____________________________________________

Total to date                                          $430

Yeah I know, with the money I spent I could probably buy organic vegetables for 2 years but hey, it's a hobby and I'm learning all about ecology and stuff. Besides, there is a very satisfying feeling from eating something you raised yourself.

Aquaponics

Aquaponic install - First attempt

I have been gardening for a couple years now, mostly container gardening, where you build containers, add soil and plant something every square foot. I usually built the framework of a box and sat it on the ground. I would put down some weed guard underneath before I added the dirt to keep weeds out. It works pretty well, but because I built them on the ground, you still had to bend over to work on them, not a big deal but still not optimal for a lazy person such as myself. In any event, in my reading of gardening ideas, I came across the idea of aquaponics. Basically it works out like this. You have a large fish tank, the fish excrete waste and ammonia into the water. Now if left alone this water will eventually become toxic to the fish, the waste would kill them, so we have to have some way to clean the water, in comes the plants. See, when you set up a plant bed in aquaponics you use growing media, not dirt. You can use pea gravel or lava rocks or any of a number of media. In any event these beds will develop bacteria, this is good for a couple of reasons, the bacteria will work on the fish waste and turn it into fertilizer for the plants to use as food and by removing the toxic fish waste, it purifies the water so it can go back into the fish tank. 


That's the basic concept, in reality it mimics an ecosystem, all things in  balance, just like nature. It's interesting to me that as we become more advanced we find ourselves looking more and more towards to nature for a template of how to do things. The fish waste acts as fertilizer for the plants and the plants in turn purify the water, via the bacteria that transfers the waste into nitrates. This system uses 1/10th the amount of water of standard gardening as all of the water is kept in a closed loop for the most part. You will have some lost to evaporation but on the whole it is far superior in terms of water usage as compared to standard farming. As a side note, the latest revolution in solar energy actually mimics the actions of leaves on a tree. One day we'll be able to cover windows and glass doors with a translucent photoelectrochemical film and generate electricity as well as still see through the film.


So back to aquaponics, I am going to try to document my successes (failures as I see fit, haha) so you can see how easy it is.... or how much fun it is to laugh at someone who has no clue what they're doing. I'm still in the design phases but here's what I got so far:


Fish tank- Found one of those 330 gallon totes on craigslist for $75.00. Here's a pic of what they look like.

I am going to cut the very top off and I should have about 300 gallons of water space. I had planned on trying a smaller tank at first but someone off an aquaponics forum advised making the fish tank as big as possible because a bigger tank makes the system more tolerant of mistakes. Apparently the smaller the system the more a small mistake can have catastrophic results. On a side note here, it is important you know what was IN these totes. You want to make sure it was something safe

Grow Beds- I found a guy down the road who has food grade plastic barrels for $12 each, that's a really good deal as most of the other places I found them were a) out of town and b) $20. Plus the guy has hundreds more. I will be cutting these in half and filling them with pea gravel as my grow media.

I may cut them in half horizontally, I have been told that works better if I use the type of drainage method I want to use.

Fish choice- I think I'm going to go with catfish. Tilapia are the standard choice since they are very tolerant supposedly of mistakes in water quality. But I know I like to eat catfish and I always like to be a little different anyway. Heck, I might even through in a few freshwater shrimp if I can find some the catfish don't eat.