A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Aquaponic limiting factors

I am not being afforded much free time of late, and my plans for the master template is running a bit behind. I thought that I would throw a discussion out there for people to mull over while we get feedback over drop box use and I get some time to get my structure right.

What is the first thing that "runs out" in your operation, thus being thre limiting factor in your system's design or operating effivciency? For me, I have always had lighting issues due to how my house is alligned on the plot. My designs have to date not been able to ensure 100% light in all the beds and thus, I'm probably not at 100% growth efficiency. The next big issue for me is system buffering and pH. I run on rain water due to drought, and the chemistry has suffered.

What is causing you to stand back, look at your system and go "what if......" Is it light like me? Temperature? Perhaps if we understand the limitiations of our current designs and operating environment better, we can optimize our design methods to optimise our production capacity.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Raychel A Watkins on February 24, 2011 at 10:51pm

Aloha Kobus

For me it is the pumps. I just wish I knew more about pumps and what I really should be using. I stumble along and make do but I would really like to have the knowledge of which pump and where to put it to get the best results. I am very thankful for the knowledge of the cascading water putting O2 into the system that I learned from you early on. One thing I learned from Murray was to clean my pumps once a week. I may not have the right pump or right size pipes but my pumps continue to work because I clean them once a week. I need to get a WWOOFer who has the knowledge and can teach me what is the proper pump. Meanwhile I will keep reading all I find on this site and grow in knowledge.

Permalink Reply by Kobus Jooste on February 24, 2011 at 11:30pm

Raychel - one of this group's members, David Waite, has extensive pump sizing and plumbing experience. Perhaps if you supply some indication of the amount of water you want to move per minute or per hour, the lift (head) height and any other specific information such as type of energy source or clean water/dirty water issues that may influence the pump choice, he could come up with a recommended pump and plumbing configuration that may be optimal for you. I'm interested in the pump cleaning issue though - Do you run your pump with some kind of intake screen? I have never cleaned any of my pumps - the one is in an uncomfortable position while the other is inline, which will require me to shut the system down, take the pump out of the plumbing, clean it, re-assemble the plumbing (rigid PVC) open all the valves and then fire it up again - something I jusst have not done ever.

I know from my experiece that I have to go with what is available in stores here, which seem to be under- or over powered but never "just right". I'm very keen to learn about 12V pumps capable of running off deep cycle batteries, as I am playing with the idea of replacing my single micro system pump with two of them.

Raychel A Watkins said:

Aloha Kobus

For me it is the pumps. I just wish I knew more about pumps and what I really should be using. I stumble along and make do but I would really like to have the knowledge of which pump and where to put it to get the best results. I am very thankful for the knowledge of the cascading water putting O2 into the system that I learned from you early on. One thing I learned from Murray was to clean my pumps once a week. I may not have the right pump or right size pipes but my pumps continue to work because I clean them once a week. I need to get a WWOOFer who has the knowledge and can teach me what is the proper pump. Meanwhile I will keep reading all I find on this site and grow in knowledge.

Permalink Reply by Raychel A Watkins on February 25, 2011 at 12:18am

Kobus I use a small pump for each tank or two tanks. The pump is either in the tank or in a small barrel outside the tank. They are pond and fountain pumps that pump about 250 to 350 gph. I do not have any large tanks. They are mostly IBC containers or Rubbermaid tanks. I just don't want to spend the money on a large tank. Now I hope someday to just be able to get one real cheap but I have to wait for that day. I pull the water out of the tank and pipe it to the trough or grow bed. The beds and troughs are higher than the tanks for the most part. The water just runs back int the fish tank. I have 2 long troughs on the ground but I am going to rebuild them to waist high as I see no reason to kill my back. I tend to ignore the trough too much. There is 3 IBC tanks with fish in them attached to these troughs and I need to find a better pump so that I can send cascading water into the 3 tanks. I do not have this at this time. Thanks for the tip about David. I will send him a note and see if he can give me some pointers.

Mahalo Kobus for opening up such interesting posts. It gets us to thinking and exploring new ideas.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on February 25, 2011 at 7:08am

Raychel,

I spent a lot of time on the Aquatic Eco site or looking in there catalog to learn a fair bit about pumps.

http://www.aquaticeco.com/index.php

Limiting factors in my systems.

Big System-pH but it's high pH in that case which causes a lock out of iron so I regularly have to add chelated iron to that system. This will vary some depending on how hard the bio-filter is working. In high summer when fish are eating lots the pH will be lower. The big system also gets a bit more shade which is actually a good thing in summer but not so helpful in winter here.

300 gallon system is still kinda new to be able to point at any limiting factors. In summer perhaps it will be too much sun and the need to add some shade. Or perhaps it will turn out to be the smaller size will fluctuate more in temperature but so far it is just riding a few degrees warmer than my big system rather than fluctuating more so I may only need to watch out for the extremes during the hottest or coldest times of the year. The growth of the plants in the beds is beautiful. I may find that with the deep beds, I don't have enough plant space and that I'll have to add some towers or other add on growing space to use up the nutrients. The deep beds are providing ample filtration.