Building a system in Wilkes-Barre, PA

[Nick wesley]

Hey Everyone,

I'm Nick, First post, Glad to be apart of this website.

Im getting started on building a small system for a restaurant in Wilkes Barre, PA. I'm with Wilkes University and we have a $1500 Sam's Club environmental sustainability grant to improve the sustainability of a small business. We decided to choose a place called the Euro-Bistro and implement a system inside to grow their basil and subsidize some of their lettuces. 

Currently I'm planning on using a raft system, with T5 lights to supplement the natural light. I am considering using LED's as there is some sun that gets in but I am unsure on the differences between LED lights. I am also considering building one but again I am unsure on what makes for the best LED for the job.

I'm also curious on cycling, This will be my first system and besides nitrogen dosing is there anyway to speed up this initial process? are there any frozen bacteria cultures that I can introduce to begin the nitrogen cycle?

But looking forward to creating a sustainable project, any help or advice is welcome

[Todd Sowell]

Hi Nick,

I think T5 would be better than LED. I have heard that LED's can be good or bad depending on where they were made. I'm sure someone with more knowledge will jump in on your lighting questions.

As to the cycling there is a product call Cycle that is available at most pet stores. Just don't be in too big a rush. Aquaponics is an eco-system and needs to be allowed to develop. Shouldn't take more than 45 days and you can still start the plants right away.

I'm not sure if 1500 is your total budget but many times a raft system can cost more than that. Also, they are not as compact as a media based system.

How much lettuce and basil are you hoping to grow? That will help you size your system properly.

 

Todd

[TCLynx]

What will be the fish for the system and how big will it be?

How much space do you get for the system?  Where will it be?

[Vlad Jovanovic]

I have to agree with Nick about the LED's. Even if you go with a reputable company... 90 day unconditional money back grantee and all that, you would get a good light, but it may cost you the entire sum of your grant money. For lettuce this is just not a justifiable IMO. Building a decent LED panel is no simple task, and wont really be that much cheaper than buying a comparable one. And cheap ones suck egss. 

T-5's are ok, but if you put it all down on paper, you may find that HID's (Metal Halide in your case) are actually more cost effective, both in the long run as well as initial investment. For one, say 4' x 4' grow bed you would need two 4 tube 4' long T-5 fixtures (around $300 for both) You would be using around 440Watts. You also need to replace all 8 tubes every 6 months. This really adds up fast over time.

A single 400Watt MH set up runs about $140 with everything incuded, covers the same 16 sq.feet and you need to change the single bulb out after about 2 years. And don't let any sales pitch tell you that T-5's "run cool". Those things and their ballasts get friggin HOT! (Btw...if you buy a pre-made T-5 fixture you wont be able to really isolate the ballast, I mean you could, but in that case you should have gone DIY in the first place,... if your tearing apart the fixture and rewiring everything). Isolating the MH ballast is a piece of cake and is already separate from the reflector. Jon Parr a member here, actually sealed his (magnetic, not one of the new dimmable digital types) ballast in a heavy duty bag and put it in his fish tank for the added heat. Anyways...

I think the general consensus (and peoples personal experience) here is that those bacteria products that you can get at the pet stores are useless. Like Nick says, just be patient..(That said, I've used an AquaticEcoSystems product to seed some of these smaller systems I've got strewn about, and it seems to work. But it's "much" more expensive than the pet store stuff that is available here anyways)...

Do a lots and lots of research on cycling if you've never cycled say, an aquarium before. Better to get a handle on the how's and why's now, so that your not freaking out over nothing while doing it later, or not freaking out and taking corrective action when you should be :) It's not rocket science, but you definitely need to respect and follow some basic principles (helps to know why, as well).

There is a search field for topics and such in the upper right corner of the page...make it your friend :)

You will in all likelihood need some sort of solids filtration before your DWC rafts. This can be many things...A properly sized media bed to me seems like a smart choice for many reasons (more space to grow food, worms for added mineralization, free added oxygenation, low maintenance, and of course, solids filtration).

Now before anyone jumps on me for pointing a newbie into 'experimental' territory...there ARE people doing this successfully, I fully believe that if done correctly this can and does work. So much so, that I've placed 8 IBC beds in front of the 546 sq.feet of DWC rafts. I am not up and running yet and am still in building the rafts portion. There are ongoing discussions and a thread on this topic with people who have been at this a good long while. Using a proper stocking density (it seems most people grossly overstock their systems with fish) and incorporating worms in the media bed(s) seem to be at the forefront of these discussions...

You could always put in a settling tank or swirl filter or whatever instead, (wasted space and high maintenance IMO). The reality is you will probably need pre-filtering of some kind though....Hopefully there will be some concrete numbers coming out of these 'hybrid' systems (and the people analyzing them) soon. I know I will be posting mine...

Yeah, and how much stuff are you hoping to grow? How big of a foot-print do you have to work with?

[Nick wesley]

I think T5 is the way to go for now. although MH is appealing, i think it does put out alot more radiant heat than t5's do thus heating the plants more. but the cost benefit for bulbs may make it worth it. also i think you can put floresents closer to the product than MH. but to say t5's run "cool" is a bit of an overstatement lol.

I think you guys are right about the LED's for now, unless i could build one for around $600 it really wouldn't be worth it.

I will definitely be reading more on cycling. I have a 90G Fish tank that i was considering using instead of an IBC tote. would that water be cycled and good to incorporate into the system right away? I do not know the fish nor the chemicals used as it is not mine.

I will have a solids filter on my pump. some maintenance but simple and reliable enough.

I have 2 rooms for grow beds, separated by a door. each space is 4-6' across, and one is 11' the other is 7'

Vlad Jovanovic said:

I have to agree with Nick about the LED's. Even if you go with a reputable company... 90 day unconditional money back grantee and all that, you would get a good light, but it may cost you the entire sum of your grant money. For lettuce this is just not a justifiable IMO. Building a decent LED panel is no simple task, and wont really be that much cheaper than buying a comparable one. And cheap ones suck egss. 

T-5's are ok, but if you put it all down on paper, you may find that HID's (Metal Halide in your case) are actually more cost effective, both in the long run as well as initial investment. For one, say 4' x 4' grow bed you would need two 4 tube 4' long T-5 fixtures (around $300 for both) You would be using around 440Watts. You also need to replace all 8 tubes every 6 months. This really adds up fast over time.

A single 400Watt MH set up runs about $140 with everything incuded, covers the same 16 sq.feet and you need to change the single bulb out after about 2 years. And don't let any sales pitch tell you that T-5's "run cool". Those things and their ballasts get friggin HOT! (Btw...if you buy a pre-made T-5 fixture you wont be able to really isolate the ballast, I mean you could, but in that case you should have gone DIY in the first place,... if your tearing apart the fixture and rewiring everything). Isolating the MH ballast is a piece of cake and is already separate from the reflector. Jon Parr a member here, actually sealed his (magnetic, not one of the new dimmable digital types) ballast in a heavy duty bag and put it in his fish tank for the added heat. Anyways...

I think the general consensus (and peoples personal experience) here is that those bacteria products that you can get at the pet stores are useless. Like Nick says, just be patient..(That said, I've used an AquaticEcoSystems product to seed some of these smaller systems I've got strewn about, and it seems to work. But it's "much" more expensive than the pet store stuff that is available here anyways)...

Do a lots and lots of research on cycling if you've never cycled say, an aquarium before. Better to get a handle on the how's and why's now, so that your not freaking out over nothing while doing it later, or not freaking out and taking corrective action when you should be It's not rocket science, but you definitely need to respect and follow some basic principles (helps to know why, as well).

There is a search field for topics and such in the upper right corner of the page...make it your friend

You will in all likelihood need some sort of solids filtration before your DWC rafts. This can be many things...A properly sized media bed to me seems like a smart choice for many reasons (more space to grow food, worms for added mineralization, free added oxygenation, low maintenance, and of course, solids filtration).

Now before anyone jumps on me for pointing a newbie into 'experimental' territory...there ARE people doing this successfully, I fully believe that if done correctly this can and does work. So much so, that I've placed 8 IBC beds in front of the 546 sq.feet of DWC rafts. I am not up and running yet and am still in building the rafts portion. There are ongoing discussions and a thread on this topic with people who have been at this a good long while. Using a proper stocking density (it seems most people grossly overstock their systems with fish) and incorporating worms in the media bed(s) seem to be at the forefront of these discussions...

You could always put in a settling tank or swirl filter or whatever instead, (wasted space and high maintenance IMO). The reality is you will probably need pre-filtering of some kind though....Hopefully there will be some concrete numbers coming out of these 'hybrid' systems (and the people analyzing them) soon. I know I will be posting mine...

Yeah, and how much stuff are you hoping to grow? How big of a foot-print do you have to work with?

[Nick wesley]

I am also planning on harvesting 7 med sized basil plants a week, the lettuce will just fill whats left

[TCLynx]

FYI, lumen for lumen and watt for watt, I expect the Florescents get as hot as the MH, However the MH does it in a far smaller space and therefore seems "hotter" but overall, they will both be putting about the same amount of heat into the room.

Seeing putting the Florescent light closer to the plants as a benefit...... Hum.  You HAVE to put the florescents close to the plants, like nearly but not quite touching the leaves close which means you need to make the light support adjustable just so you can check on the plants and you have to move the light up as the plants grow.  And you have to have pretty uniform plant size under the light fixture or the smaller plants will not get enough light.  This might be an issue for staggered harvest and different size plants like basil and lettuce, Unless each light fixture represents one type of plant for the week.

The MH has better penetration so a mix of plant sizes can be grown under a single unit while keeping the light up at a safe distance for all plants involved.

[Vlad Jovanovic]

I have to agree with TC on ALL points. I actually returned my T-5 rig (2 tube) when I measured temps (both digitally with a DH11 temperature sensor hooked up an Arduino and laptop, and with the mercury thermometer for some redundancy) inside one of my growspaces. My 250Watt MH lamp was actually a bit cooler. The T-5's ran at 220Watts, so even with the 30Watt handicap...

Heat will do a number on your seedlings as they just don't have the parts well developed enough yet to keep up with the amount of transpiration required to cool themselves efficiently. This is not a problem since a 400Watt MH will be a good 3 or 4 feet away from them. I'm not saying you can't sprout or grow things with T-5's. just trying to convey some of what I've experienced and why I think the way that I do.

Raising lights on a daily basis gets to be a bit of a PITA depending. If you don't your keep up, you plants get burned, yet if you raise them too much in order to compensate for the PITA aspect, they often get a far from optimal amount of light. 

If you have plants at various growth stages...forget about it. The little ones languish and etiolation becomes apparent...long stretched out, weak spindly plants...in a commercial/restaurant/for profit setting, this (to me) would not be acceptable. So give some consideration to your staggering schedule as it pertains to each T-5 fixture, like TC said. (Of course this is irrelevant with MH)...

Watt per Watt the initial expense of T-5's will be more than double than with MH. Then the bulb replacements come into play...Penetration and spread aren't even worth mentioning. I've ran the numbers for various associates, clients, friends and for my own set-ups and MH just makes good business dollars and sense, so I feel kinda 'strongly' about this.

Sorry if my post comes off as trying to tell you what you should do, as that is not my intent. Just look carefully into this, by all means do you own research...talk to others (and I mean more than 1 or 2 people or commercial business') who have or do grow indoors...as lighting is generally the single largest expense when growing indoors (AP or not), and I personally would like too see ANY aquaponics venture, especially one as interesting as a AP/restaurant application be armed with the information to succeed :)   

[TCLynx]

Also, if there is some natural sunlight available, the MH light will be far enough away from the plants to allow more of the natural light at the plants.  The Florescent fixtures will shade all but the edge plants nearest the windows.

I do understand that the florescent fixtures are less "scary" to some one who has no experience dealing with lighting.  You are not going to get badly burned by touching a hot florescent fixture while if you do touch the MH fixture, while on it will be rather hot.  But the MH fixture is going to be smaller and easier to have "out of reach" of a casual passer by.

[Jon Parr]

Nick, welcome.  Glad to have you, and let me just start off that I just realized I'm an opinionated SOB.  Look carefully at using lights at all in a commercial setting growing lettuce and basil.  Lights and electricity are not likely to pay off, unless maybe the public attention to a cool AP grow boosts sales.  LED's are not cost efficient, even for more lucritive cash crops, so put them out of your mind.  Flouros are a good way to go if your total usage is less than 2-300 watts, and you do not have any natural light that may be used, as TC said, the fixture will block out everything.  Loss to heat is greater with flouros than any HID, regardless of popular opinion.  MH bulbs do run freaking hot, and heat is reflected along with light, so if your reflector makes a bright spot, it will also make a hot spot.  Heat, BTW, is not wasted if it used to heat your water, or the room.  Like Vlad said, positioning your ballast in an area you want heated is smart (like under your FT).

Yes you can speed up cycling, by heating your water and using media and/or water from an already cycled tank. I wouldn't waste time or money on a bottled cycling product either.

My personal, completely biased opinion of light choice is as follows (excluding sunlight), from best to worst, factoring in initial cost, efficiency, lumen maintenance, bulb replacement, and experience: HPS, CMH, MH, PL-L, T8, T5, T8 HO, T5 HO, cfl, T12, LED.  CMH (ceramic metal halide) is very close to claiming #1 status, and they run the coolest total heat per watt of all listed, by my reckoning.

[Nick wesley]

good to know everyone. i have had experiance with MH and HPS in the past and currently own a 400 MH. I was under the impression that it was a bit overkill for leafy greens. I visited Sweetwater organics and The Plant out of Milwaukee and Chicago, neither used any HID, it was LED or Florescent. but since there is some natural light i do think that it would be bennifical to run a 250 watt HPS or MH on a light mover over them. I would not want light fixtures blocking all that Free light.

also Vlad, since you have experiance with the Adrino boards, do you know of a way to monitor PH and PPM with an adrino? i am interested in using the Garden bot software and making this project webcamed and wired.

[Vlad Jovanovic]

I would suggest checking out this group here...http://aquaponicscommunity.com/group/automation

Yes, pH is 'cheap' and doable, with Arduino, but I'm not sure what you mean exactly by ppm? Do you mean ppm (in a hydro sense?...ppm is a conversion of EC, without getting into it here there are 3 different formulas for converting an EC value (Electrical Conductivity) to a PPM value.

Depending on who is doing the converting, what country they are from, what equipment is being used, what country it was manufactured in, and who the author of what suggestions you are trying to follow is, and what country they are from, can all lead to real mess (all called ppm). The same EC value can give you three different PPM values, and its not a small difference either. Enough to cause plant toxicity and death. So USE EC only. That being said EC values (or any of its ppm conversions are TOTALLY USELESS in AP as you are not using mineral salts, and therefor cannot take meaningful readings.

PPM can also mean mg/l (again a MUCH less confusing way of relating info...america is not 'the world' anymore so be careful :)  ...Gallons is another peave...Imperial gallons, or US gallons?

Or did you mean parts per million in the classic sense?

The web cam,pH, humidity, temps, data logging, automatically feeding your fish, controlling stuff with an SMS message and a host of other stuff is possible and pretty cheap with Arduino or any other PLC, (with the exception of DissolvedOxygen, this is a quite expensive sensor any way you look at it).

250 Watt MH or (since you are not trying to flower anything) or CMH would seem like a good way to supplement some natural sunlight). Back in my college days when I didn't have the cash for both MH and HPS setups and combo ballasts/bulbs did not exist, I used HPS to veg. This does work. Granted you'll prob notice a little more stretching and a greater inter-nodal lengths...but hey...Though for veg ONLY apps, I'd have to say MH.

Jon, I really like the CMH bulbs, but I wonder in an AP setting with plastic IBC, or non UV stabilized liner for rafts (some of it is, some is not) does the fact that it is a full spectrum (which includes UV) come into play, (in the long/mid term) in terms of UV degradation of plastic components? I'm not saying that it does (in any sane amount of time), but I don't know that it doesn't either. Plastics + UV light (from the sun at least) always made for a bad combo, so I wonder...

Everybody is biased Jon...Difference is you know why you are biased and can explain it if need be :)

Oh yeah one final thing...I personally would never, EVER use a fluorescent light above an AP setting ESPECIALLY in a commercial setting (not even in a hobby one). Because I have been in 2 different offices, in 2 different buildings were I got to witness fluoro tubes explode out of the blue. I have no trouble chewing on a little broken glass every now and again, but would NOT WANT THE MERCURY FROM THOSE TUBES IN MY AP SYSTEM. Nor would my fish. Such an event would entail a "start over from total scratch" re-set (unless you are a total evil un-caring bastard who would sell his own mom for a buck). That would be both costly and time consuming, and would rather (potentially) avoid it all together. Regardless of what any other person or company is doing/says...So, yes I am biased too :)

Nick wesley said:

good to know everyone. i have had experiance with MH and HPS in the past and currently own a 400 MH. I was under the impression that it was a bit overkill for leafy greens. I visited Sweetwater organics and The Plant out of Milwaukee and Chicago, neither used any HID, it was LED or Florescent. but since there is some natural light i do think that it would be bennifical to run a 250 watt HPS or MH on a light mover over them. I would not want light fixtures blocking all that Free light.

also Vlad, since you have experiance with the Adrino boards, do you know of a way to monitor PH and PPM with an adrino? i am interested in using the Garden bot software and making this project webcamed and wired.

[Jon Parr]

Good point about the UV, Vlad, IDK. The Phillips CMH bulb is rated for open fixture use, meaning that the bulb emits an acceptable amount of UV without a glass shield for further UV filtering, and the bulb is strong enough to contain the innards in event of rupture. The arc-tube is wrapped with a protective wire to prevent a molten rocket from burning down your house, and the arc tube is built to not rupture from the outer glass being broken. Double protection for mercury catastrophes. Good explanation of bulb and open-fixture rating at http://advancedtechlighting.com/cmhfact3.htm