Rebuild and upgrade of an existing demonstration system - 90% complete - testing with water - all happy!!
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I use 2 inch pipe in my media (2 1/4 long) Find this makes it easier to just drop in net cups.. similar to a raft table.
In a perfect world I'd like to be off the grid as much as possible - growing under lights is the one thing I dislike about indoors aquaponics. Here in Chicago there is a commercial operation called Grown Here. They have one row of Aquaponics, but the rest of their operation is aeroponic/hydroponic. It's a very aggressive urban vertical farm project; probably the biggest in the US. Their grow beds are 165 feet long and 6 (yes six!!) tiers high, all under lights. They have just opened their operation, and have built about 25% of their projected capacity, all inside a big box warehouse building. I believe they are going to have serious heat dissipation and micro-climate issues come summer, with some costly energy costs. Still, it is quite an impressive spaceship, and I hope they are successful.
The media we are using in the F&D is expanded shale - great stuff and much more reasonable cost than the hydroton clones, but you need to thoroughly, and I mean thoroughly, clean it before you use it. Ours is sifted to 3/4", but it comes with lots of grit and muddy muck from the crushing process. You need to get all that stuff washed out; very labor/time intensive - and a big mess to boot. It's pH neutral, once it's clean.
I found that growing in a greenhouse the widest I could go on the top box was about 29/30 inches in order that enough light would available to the second level (4 ft). What kind of media you using in the F&D beds?
None of the lights are installed - that's my primary work for next week. The whole system will be under 6 bulb T-8 fixtures. Inelegant, but inexpensive as of today. Have been running water through the system this week making sure everything works and nothing leaks ... happy enough with how it's running. This is a rebuild / expansion of a small educational demonstration system. It has evolved into a sort of a design experiment to see how much real production you could fit into the footprint of a 2 car garage. We added 50 sq ft of F&D media beds, a 2nd grow tank for fry to establish 2 concurrent generations of fish, and redesigned the water flows so the system would clear the water more completely. The older system (which I did not build) suffered somewhat in the water quality department. There is also space on the tank platform for a seedling start rack and aquariums for tilapia breeding. I'd personally prefer to locate such a system in a green house, but it is sitting in a large work space adjacent to classrooms where it was originally built. These 10 photos are more or less in reverse chronological order ...
You running lights for your lower beds ?
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