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I started messing around with tilapia 2006-2010

2010 - the end of july i had to take  my system down

i am currently trying to get a piece of property to set up a scaled system.

basickly i dont have a system that is running

but i want to share my last 4 years with aquaponics

with members.......

 

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Hi all
Some photos I took today…
Plants are all growing like mad….not all happy….. The beans don’t seem to mind these/my system start up conditions because they look good ….


I have been adding calcium over the last few days…slowly…
I am still adding 2-4 litre’s vermin-tea over +- 7 days
I added a few new baby’s to the system…sent my wife for small gold fish to put into my two bottom duckweed trays to help with the mozzyyyyyyyyyyys………..lots
The wife came home with 15 small Kio so I put them in the two trays 7 in one and 8 in the other.


The snail are still around ……..
As far as the system running I am very happy with the min maintenance I need to do.
The one thing I am going to change is the fish tank ibc….????????
I want to use a round tank of the same volume
Round with centre outlet……never have to worry with cleaning
Yust me thinking

Hi all
Some photos I took today…
Yust me thinking

Hi Francois

I have few questions about your system, it will be nice to clarify few things so we can follow your project easily and learn from your experience, First what is the volume of the fish tank, the clarifier tank and the rafts in one system? How many fish, size and types in the fish tank? how much EDTA iron, Calcium carbonate, Magnesium sulfate you are adding per liter in the system, I mean the concentration and how often you add them? Is your system inside a greenhouse? How about your plant troughs? Are you adding other things to get good plant growth and higher yield? I appreciate very much your important input.

Cheers, Safwat

Hi all
My system is a very simple design.
Electricity min (gravity and only pump back to fish tank)
Water min
Maintenance min/nothing
At the moment with the ibc as fish tank to me does not work…round with centre outlet is the answer.
With this system I have added only what the plants asked for but still giving the fish good water.
Basically checking the fish behaviour and if they are eating ….my test kit.
The fish happy I am happy.
The only thing I have really added is iron calcium bananas Epson salt and brewed worm tea worm and worm castings
The only thing's I have checked so far is temp/ph/alkalinity/hardness
At the moment there is a few fish in the system….. 10 tilapia 29 Kio
I feed them 44+ grams of Kio food (32% protein) worms and duckweed every day
This is my smaller pilot system to really get more detail of how things work together in a system and what work and what grows and how much fish I can grow in this system.
I want to do Aquaponics on a bigger scale somewhere in the future I hope and I am now schooling myself for this.
In system +-1800 litres water
In my tank I have +-600 litres water
Water flow’s gravity into worm filter
In the worm sump +-180 litres water
(I want the worms to breakdown all solids coming from the fish tank)
From here the water flows gravity into the 2 top grow trays
In my 2 top grow trays/rafts 200 litres water per tray (400L)
From here the water runs in the opposite direction under the grow trays into my pump sump.
This is where I pump the water back into the fish tank
My pump pumps 1750 l hour 32 watt but the pump pumps the water up about 1.5 meters so the actual litres per hour will be less
1 grow tray grow area 6500mm x 350mm =2.275 m2 (4.55 m2 total)
In this space I plant 100 plants 50 per tray
In my 2 bottom duckweed trays 150 litres water per tray (300L)
1 duckweed tray area 6500mm x 350mm =2.275 m2 (4.55 m2 total)
In my sump 180 litres water
All my pipes Ø50 mm and nothing fancy that becomes problems.
Yes sir the system is under plastic but that is for the cold…
Summer is here now so I will replace plastic with shade cloth.
Yust me thinking

These are rekords for the month up to now

Thank you for the details.

Cheers, SafwaT

Francois Lemmer said:

Hi all
My system is a very simple design.
Electricity min (gravity and only pump back to fish tank)
Water min
Maintenance min/nothing
At the moment with the ibc as fish tank to me does not work…round with centre outlet is the answer.
With this system I have added only what the plants asked for but still giving the fish good water.
Basically checking the fish behaviour and if they are eating ….my test kit.
The fish happy I am happy.
The only thing I have really added is iron calcium bananas Epson salt and brewed worm tea worm and worm castings
The only thing's I have checked so far is temp/ph/alkalinity/hardness
At the moment there is a few fish in the system….. 10 tilapia 29 Kio
I feed them 44+ grams of Kio food (32% protein) worms and duckweed every day
This is my smaller pilot system to really get more detail of how things work together in a system and what work and what grows and how much fish I can grow in this system.
I want to do Aquaponics on a bigger scale somewhere in the future I hope and I am now schooling myself for this.
In system +-1800 litres water
In my tank I have +-600 litres water
Water flow’s gravity into worm filter
In the worm sump +-180 litres water
(I want the worms to breakdown all solids coming from the fish tank)
From here the water flows gravity into the 2 top grow trays
In my 2 top grow trays/rafts 200 litres water per tray (400L)
From here the water runs in the opposite direction under the grow trays into my pump sump.
This is where I pump the water back into the fish tank
My pump pumps 1750 l hour 32 watt but the pump pumps the water up about 1.5 meters so the actual litres per hour will be less
1 grow tray grow area 6500mm x 350mm =2.275 m2 (4.55 m2 total)
In this space I plant 100 plants 50 per tray
In my 2 bottom duckweed trays 150 litres water per tray (300L)
1 duckweed tray area 6500mm x 350mm =2.275 m2 (4.55 m2 total)
In my sump 180 litres water
All my pipes Ø50 mm and nothing fancy that becomes problems.
Yes sir the system is under plastic but that is for the cold…
Summer is here now so I will replace plastic with shade cloth.
Yust me thinking

These are rekords for the month up to now

Hi All
A few photos.
I have been very busy with designing work so my system has come second.
I note that the plants are not doing great and the lettuce have lost colour
It is 6 days last that i added worm tea and the signs are visible
Yust me thinking

 

I think the nitrate is not enough to support vegetation growth, possible the system is not matured yet. I would check it's level.

I have the same problem and the nitrate is still 10 ppm and this is not enough at all for any plants except beans and other legumes plants since they can fix their required nitrogen in their roots from the surrounding air.

I would like to hear from others about this problem. Thanks Francois for sharing your experience.

Cheers, Safwat

I know of systems that grow plants great with a nitrate level of 0 ppm of nitrate so I wouldn't assume poor growth is due to low nitrates.  Often it is actually an imbalance or pH issue causing some nutrient lock out that causes the worst plant problems or sometimes with a new system it is just a lack of most of the trace elements since they haven't had time to build up and mineralize into the water.

Actually from the pictures the plants look pretty good to me.

 

Beans and peas don't actually fix the nitrogen from the air themselves, they have to have the right bacteria colonize their roots and it is that symbiotic bacteria that does the nitrogen fixing and makes it available to the legume.  This is why they sell innolculants for different kinds of legumes to make sure that the nitrogen fixing happens.

Whatever you said about the symbiotic bacteria and the roots of the legumes is correct, but I don't agree about plants grow great with a nitrate level of 0 ppm, every plant needs some nitrate and can consume little ammonium ions to give good vegetative growth, and if the ammonium ion is existed at higher concentration it can be toxic to plants as well as to the fish.

Nitrate is the backbone of plant growth and it was prooved many times before in plant physiology, without nitrogen plants do not grow at all, of course all other macro and micro nutrients are essential for plant growth and for better yield.

I am still waiting for other people to share with us the concentration of nitrate in their AP system and if possible other paremeters which gave good results.

Cheers, Safwat

TCLynx said:

I know of systems that grow plants great with a nitrate level of 0 ppm of nitrate so I wouldn't assume poor growth is due to low nitrates.  Often it is actually an imbalance in theor pH issue causing some nutrient lock out that causes the worst plant problems or sometimes with a new system it is just a lack of most of the trace elements since they haven't had time to build up and mineralize into the water.

Actually from the pictures the plants look pretty good to me.

 

Beans and peas don't actually fix the nitrogen from the air themselves, they have to have the right bacteria colonize their roots and it is that symbiotic bacteria that does the nitrogen fixing and makes it available to the legume.  This is why they sell innolculants for different kinds of legumes to make sure that the nitrogen fixing happens.

Oh I'm not talking about a system with any measurable ammonia.  I'm talking about a perfectly balanced system where the ammonia and nitrite are both 0 and the plant to fish feed is in perfect balance so the plants are growing great and using up all the nitrate as it is available.

 

My 300 gallon system this past summer when the plants were all growing gang busters and I was feeding 100 bluegill big time only had a nitrate reading of somewhere below 5 ppm.

 

My Big system has almost always high really high nitrate readings though (as in I have to dilute the sample by a measured amount in order to actually be able to read it and then multiply the result by the measured amount to get the real nitrate level) and many of the plants in that system have always struggled because the pH is too high  (due to a poor choice of media.)

 

My Tower system currently has a large number of fish and the nitrate readings in that system have been running up in the red as well.  I don't necessarily think the plants are doing any better because of the high nitrates and the nasturtiums are not blooming much, only producing lots of big leaves.

All my systems run with levels of 0,0,0... and have done for years... all with abundant growth...

As TCL says... a mature, correctly balanced stock:filtration media based system will usually show those values...

It's interesting to see the fluctuations as seasons change (and the amount the fish are eating changes) or, when you cut off a very greedy vine and the nitrate level goes from 5 ppm to 20 ppm from one week to the next.  It's all kind of a balance and each situation with it's own chemistry will be a little different.

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