I was considering building wooden GBs and appling a layer of fiberglass to waterproof them.Is fiberglass food safe? I havent compared the cost to liner yet cause I dont know if it is safe to use. …Continue
I understand the difference between NFT & DWC but my question is how deep is the water in each system? I want to build one or the other after the growbeds but I want if to be gravity flow…Continue
I'm fixing to build some GBs and wondering about the size. Would you build them 4 x 16 or 4 x 20 ? In the end the total sq. footage will be about the same. Figure some one who has worked around…Continue
L F re the minnows I caught a few (unidentified species) in the ditch behind my house. I fed them basic pond food and they did well. Minnows will be great in an aquaponic system becuase they school well (so look cool) and tolerate really broad temperature ranges. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you just kept the top ice free they would be fine all winter. Let me know if you find stock, as I'd like to try some more too. I don't know anything about their breeding cycle so I don't know how profitable it might be to raise them for bait.
At 3:39pm on September 22, 2010, Nate Storey said…
LF, I would go with generous spacing at first using hanging towers (that way you could add more later if you wanted to without changing your greenhouse configuration). If you wanted to use almost all of that space, leaving you 3' walkways, I would start with 120 5' towers. As for strawberries, the Seascapes I've been using are doing great. They've produced solid now for a month and a half (they're only three months old). I'll be chopping them back soon though and then kicking them into another production cycle. I think I can keep them going continuously. Let me know if you have any questions!
At 9:28am on September 20, 2010, Nate Storey said…
L F, No, one greenhouse should be oriented E-W, if you are doing two or more, they should be oriented N-S. I hope I didn't say that earlier- if I did, my apologies! My brain is like an old, rusty colander. Anyway, this is to maximize sunlight reception/interception during the winter.
If you are doing flood and drain gravel beds, I'd just add a hand full of worms to each bed along with some worm castings. I know some people who actually run systems fishless and feed the worms by fermenting some grains and soy before adding them to the grow beds under some fabric for the worms to eat. Other people have set up systems where they have a worm bin that gets water from the system and drains back to the system. I like to have worms directly in the grow beds but if you ever want to harvest worms and castings, that is difficult to do from a gravel beds.
I'm not sure how you will manage a system without any sort of tank but you could probably manage something with a smaller tank if you want to cycle up fishless and add on later.
What sort of system are you thinking of?
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L F re the minnows I caught a few (unidentified species) in the ditch behind my house. I fed them basic pond food and they did well. Minnows will be great in an aquaponic system becuase they school well (so look cool) and tolerate really broad temperature ranges. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if you just kept the top ice free they would be fine all winter. Let me know if you find stock, as I'd like to try some more too. I don't know anything about their breeding cycle so I don't know how profitable it might be to raise them for bait.
What sort of system are you thinking of?
Thanks for joining the Aquaponic Gardening community! I hope you find it a fun place to explore aquaponics. There is a real blend of experienced and new aquapons in this community, so please don’t hesitate to get in there and start asking questions. Everyone is quite happy to help out new members – no question is too basic.
A great place to start is by checking out the forums, blogs and groups. If you are interested in a forum or blog topic, but don’t want to join in right away, just check the “follow” box to be notified whenever there is activity on that subject.
Here is a quick video that will guide you through some of the unique attributes of our Ning community http://creators.ning.com/video/getting-started. Please participate!
Thanks again for joining us, and I look forward to getting to know you.
Sylvia