Comment

Comment by Nate Storey on February 7, 2012 at 1:35pm

Our settlement tanks take care of most of the big solids for us- we do run a higher stocking density, but my feeding rate is really really low compared to most folks.  I view it as putting a big engine in a small car- you don't always have to use it but it's nice to have.  :)

Yeah, our media has almost twice as much specific surface area as pea gravel.

Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on February 7, 2012 at 9:29am

Wow, that's small! (seemed bigger in the strawberry tower vid from a while back, but kinda hard to tell)

I remember reading/hearing that the unique material in the towers offers massive surface area for mineralization and does real well at oxygenating the water, and is occupied by worms. Do you have any pre-filtering (solids removal) before the towers get fed? Or, do you rely on a nice (low) well balance stocking density (to have low solids, yet enough nitrates/nutes? 

Comment by Nate Storey on February 7, 2012 at 8:27am

Well, it's just not a very usable material for variable spacing and it's expensive.  PE tubing is so much easier to work with if you can get your solids loading down.  We just use 1/8 inch tubing off of 1/2 inch mains now.  It's made our life much easier.  We typically have 2-4 percent of our 1/8 tubing clog on a daily basis, but it gets checked every day, so it's not really a problem.  Half the time it's a stray redworm, and there's really nothing you can do to prevent that anyway!

Comment by Vlad Jovanovic on February 7, 2012 at 8:07am

Very cool Nate!

Just out of curiousity...You said in one of your other videos that the PVC is causing you some headaches, so you will be switching to poly (polybutylene? polyetylene? polypropylene?). What problems are you having with the PVC?