Aquaponic Gardening

A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Michelle Silva's Blog (7)

Vermiponics anyone?

Does anyone have any experience or info on having a worm only operation? Since this is an aquaponic forum, wasn't sure if this was ok to blog here. I'm entertaining the idea of keeping my fish density very low, but having a lot more worms in the flood and drain that we are incorporating. Another place I could add the worms are in the large bottom pots of the vertical towers. I've noticed the strawberries and some other plants on the bottom didn't produce as well.

Added by Michelle Silva on February 4, 2011 at 4:26pm — 2 Comments

Gravel washing

Well, after I filled the second half of pots with the expanded shale and coco ocir (the other half is with chunky perlite and coco coir) I just read a post that reminded me that I didn't wash any of it!! How important is this??

Added by Michelle Silva on September 23, 2010 at 11:33am — 8 Comments

DWC net pots

I need advise ASAP with net pots.

I have 2,000 2"poppleman and made sure to tell the supplier I wanted the one with the lip so it doesn't fall thru. It took a while to receive them and yesterday when we started drilling holes, found that they slipped thru when using the 2" holesaw. The supplier sent me a photo of the only other one poppleman sells, but it's called a slit pot. The openings are larger. It's hard to tell but that looks like it could possibly have a larger "lip" to prevent it… Continue

Added by Michelle Silva on August 30, 2010 at 11:42am — 2 Comments

rafts for DWC

Can anyone advise what the difference is between using Dow blue boards and the white 2" styrofoam at Home Depot. Do the dow blue boards need to be painted? I don't know if I would ever try to be "Certified Organic" but I would want to do what is safest.. Does it make a difference? Thanks.

Added by Michelle Silva on August 7, 2010 at 8:00pm — 5 Comments

Billboard vinyl liners

I am using two billboard liners to line the "raceways/raft tanks" and was wondering if anyone knew if it would be a problem (in terms of dyes leaching or poisoning the water) to use the printed side up. I know the online source that sells them, says you must place ad side down, but the ad will mostly be covered up by the rafts and the colors will mostly only show on the top 8" of block and slightly on the sides. It's much lighter in color (blues, yellows, red etc), so will be a lot less heat…

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Added by Michelle Silva on August 7, 2010 at 7:30pm — 3 Comments

one pump system w/ open (non recirculating) vertigros and closed (recirculating) raft tanks

After much deliberation decided not to recirculate the Vertigros.

Lots of pros and cons to this, but it will be much simplier to set up the 60 or more stacks. I kept thinking of the extra work,expense w/ plumbing, uniseals etc needed and then someone mentioned might be extra alage growth at all the rt angles I was going to have on the system... main reason is to keep it as simple as possible.

A huge pro is that I can now use one pump, which will also save…

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Added by Michelle Silva on July 12, 2010 at 9:00pm — 8 Comments

system turnover

Does anyone know how many times the water in a raft system should be turned over in a day?

I am in the process of figuring out what the best pump is for my system, whether to go with a bilge pump or sump pumps and what size. I would like a 3/4" outlet on pump. Of course, trying to use least amount of energy without taxing my pumps too much as well. One will be circulating constantly (raft beds) and one will be timed(verticals). I may be going solar, will know…

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Added by Michelle Silva on July 12, 2010 at 8:17am — 5 Comments

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