Comment

Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on August 19, 2012 at 2:18pm

To all ABS, PVC, Aluminum composites rafts materials etc...I don't mean to sound weird, and I only skimmed over the comments, so I may be missing something...but replacing one kind of plastic with another (ridiculously over priced) plastic, or worse aluminum which is pretty toxic in acidic water to fish (not much good for people either) just seems plain weird.

Since the "raft" material in Larry's system would no longer be in direct contact with the water anyways...what would be wrong with melting some beeswax or paraffin wax with an old iron onto a piece of plywood and calling it a day? Non-toxic, wont leach strange chemicals, and cheap...

Comment by John Malone on August 19, 2012 at 1:51pm

@Scott : Time to turn your attention to another hobby for a couple of weeks.

The waiting just about killed me.   I was about to give up and then at the 20 day mark I started to see some progress.  You'll get there. 

Something you might want to do in the interim is get some seeds sprouting and ready to plant out.   That's a time-consuming art form that I'm am but still a novice.

Comment by Scott Bloom on August 19, 2012 at 1:34pm

I have my system cycling all the water through the growbeds once an hour and I added the ammonia to the water bringing it to about 5ppm.  I am also adding about a quart of water from the stock tank that has the goldfish hoping that I can get some of the highly prized bacteria into the AP system.  After putting so much work into getting the system up and running it is hard to just sit back and wait for the bacteria to start doing its job.

Comment by Chris George on August 19, 2012 at 1:01pm

@Dr. Brooks....good article!  From what I understand the fine hairs on the root system of water hyacinth are why they clean impurities from water so well.  I wonder if there is a non-restricted floating water plant that has the same properties?  And, I also wonder why an edible and seemingly useful plant is restricted, I know it is invasive in open waterways, but for urban home pond use isn't the risk of infestation close to zero??  Wondering if there might be a way to obtain a 'use' permit on an urban farm, where all of it could be contained (possibly wire covered) and the excess, if any, ultimately consumed by livestock or composted. 

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on August 19, 2012 at 10:25am

As a grad student back in the 80's I worked on a project in San Diego that filtered a million gallons of sewage daily using water hyacinth. It's kind of interesting but the concept was clearly a precursor to what we call today aquaponcis. Here is a link to a story. It is called sludge busters. The format the posted on line is unusual so I hope you can read it. http://bit.ly/N9ZVXD

Comment by Robert Rowe on August 19, 2012 at 8:45am

@ Dr Brooks - Thanks for the "heads up". I was aware it couldn't be sold but was not aware of the Restricted status. As a point of interest, I read an article years ago about an exposed outdoor septic system in which Water hyacinth was used to remove trace elements from black water, and have keeping an eye open sense then.

Comment by Robert Rowe on August 19, 2012 at 8:36am

@Bob Campbell - I have been trying to grow it for shade for my fish and to remove harmful trace elements from the water.

Comment by Dr. George B. Brooks, Jr. on August 19, 2012 at 1:19am

Hey folks, just a note. Water Hyacinth is a banned plant in Arizona.

http://bit.ly/Sa1nJX

Comment by Lee Scott on August 17, 2012 at 5:50pm

Larry, The Home Depot in this area has two types of plastic panels.  One is a white PVC product I think it is about .060 thick.  The other is a fiberglass white panel and is .090 thick.

Since the PVC is thinner, I wonder if it can be laminated by applying PVC Solvent between two panels.  If so, it would make it almost 1/4" thick.

Does anyone have any experience at gluing PVC panels?

Comment by Robert Rowe on August 17, 2012 at 5:49pm

Do any of know where I can find guidlines for Blogs in this application?

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