Hi everyone! My name is Jeff Mays and I am getting started at Aquaponics. I just want to say Hi and introduce myself

Jeff

Things have been going well in the system. I have had a few more fish deaths. The fish all appear to seem fine when i observe them in the tank. In the last week I have found a floating fish every other morning when I do my first daily check and feed. I am not sure what is going on but I see that the gold fish may not be hardy enough. It is apparent. My water quality has seemed to stay stable. I have not noticed an increase in ammonia, nitrite or nitrate and my pH is stable somewhere between…

For the last couple of contributions, especially around commercial aquaponics and the formation of aquaponic associations / professional bodies, I suddenly found myself a little bit on the antagonistic side of the debate.  Now even though I may have never been the world’s greatest optimist (a pessimist is right most of the time, and is pleasantly surprised at being wrong, after all), I think there is much more to my train of thought than…

Hello Florida Aquapons :-)

If you are already producing in commercial quantities or plan on doing so, here is an opportunity for you to participate as a fool supplier in this years Florida Small Farms And Alternative Enterprises Conferences (usually held in July / August). I am sharing an e-mail that I recently received from Nora Wilson, chair of food committee.

Hello there,

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I have managed to kill several fish. It saddens me to see them die. I have made some mistakes with running my system and I believe that my lack of paying enough attention has caused this drama. I left the window above the system open until the wee hours of the night. Sometime around 2 a.m. I remembered I had opened a window on a 60 degree day to let my plants get fresh air. What I forgot was to close the window when the sun started to drop. It dropped to just above freezing outside. My tank…

In the previous post on water chemistry for aquaponic beginners, I tried to post the bare details of the nitrogen cycle, and why we end up with ammonia, nitrite and nitrate after feeding our fish.  There is obviously much to expand on, but then it would not have helped being in “basic and useful info” then would it.  I could bore people with valence electrons and how interesting hydrogen and oxygen really is but who cares.  Truth is I figured most people want the bare basics of why they are…

In this blog I will try to tie together many of the thoughts that have been flying around on my blogs and discussions that followed.  I will start by revisiting some important issues that influence my thoughts around aquaponic design, followed by the presentation of arguments in favour of experimenting with component ratios.  There has been much talk around these matters.  My frustrated thought at one point was something down the line of “I understand that there is a need to have some basic…

AP system, how do I build thee, let me count the ways…………………I have been tangled up in ratios and scaling for the last couple of days.  Visualizing a cubic foot is just not possible for a decimal person.  It is also not the way in which my head worked when I started designing.  I am a scientist, thus was naturally drawn to the publications around the UVI and Alberta Raft aquaponic systems.  Not because I thought that they were better, but because they supplied data.  Real sink your teeth into…

Ready! Set! Go!... ok not so fast. Update on the green house Today had another meeting at the school with several people. Facilities Maintenance, Biology Teacher, Principal and consultant. It was in the high 20's today so we walked out to the poor snow covered greenhouse to discuss what we needed to do to get it up and running.   Well the Maintenance guy named everything it needed (a lot) but I think we can get it up and running in a week or so. I smiled because we both know its going to…

I have had some issues the last few days. I have developed poor pH testing habits and failed to see my pH drop below 6. I was using an electronic meter to test samples of water in 5mL test tubes. I would submerge the meter into the test tube until it sat on the bottom. I believe the meter was reading the pH of the glass rather than the aquarium water. I say this because when I cross referenced it with the pH test dye I got staggeringly lower results.

 I have started to see…

As of last week I have begun to see more sprouted vegetables. My carrots and scallions are alive! They have stretched quite a bit in only a couple days.

Well we all know I love to wax on about the esoteric journey of my Aquaponics Zen Quest.  So recently I took my physical body and inquisitive mind over to Sahib's place.  Ahhh! now known to me as the Urban Guru.  He has all of the paths covered.  Float Beds, Gravel Beds, Verticals, NFT and lets not forget several wicking variations.  No I don't think there is a path to…

I was reading the blog by Kobus about marketing.  I was trying to visualize what I wanted to market anyway.  I spent 10 years selling the fruits from my trees to the flea market here in Hawaii.  I suffer from severe  burn out from people trying to get my produce for less than nothing.  The thought of having to go out and sell my vegetables and fish makes me want to run away.  Every time someone comes and asks me what am I going to do with the fruit of my labor I am lost.  Yet when I get to…

My vegetable seeds from Burpee arrived last Friday (Jan. 4th) and I immediately germinated after I arrived home from school that night. I ordered Scallions, Nantes Carrots, Cilantro and Catnip (for the cats, naturally).…

If you think this a good idea, please send me an e-mail to godsil.james@gmail.com that I can bundle and forward to the architect and culture wagon people whose work is featured here. 

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