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Oh! Thanks. I probably should have guessed that... Forgive me, I haven't had my morning coffee, yet.
Jeffrey Walls said:Nutrient Film Technique. The roots are exposed to nutrients via a thin layer of liquid passed along the bottom of a pipe or gutter type grow tube.
The truth is you might want different % for different purposes and times of year. In summer here I definitely need it mid day and could probably have a higher % than I do but in winter, I'm better off removing it. I wound up going with 40% aluminet to let in more light but hopefully block a little more heat.
Over the fish tanks, I used fencing wire for safety and then I put netting or shade cloth to keep leaves out of the tank and on top of that I often have a piece of black fabric to block most light from the tank.
At some point you will probably just have to make your best guess about what will be most appropriate to your situation. Think about what types of plants you will be growing (some things are more affected by extreme sun and other things will suffer with more shade.) It will also depend on your methods since most people keep like things together in a raft but if you use gravel beds you might mix taller sun loving plants with smaller ones that prefer more shade so the bigger ones will provide the shade and allow you to use a lower % shade cloth.
Good luck making the choice.
Aloha- I read through this forum and thought it would be the appropriate place to put up some details on my system, as it is a little unique. I'm at about 4000' elevation on the Big Island of Hawaii, and it can get pretty chilly, and we get 80-100 inches of rain annually. That's great for keeping a system topped off with free water (my entire community is without county water lines- each residence harvests their own household water from the rain), but it's very acidic rain, not at least because we are just a few miles from one of the worlds most active volcanoes, steadily spewing sulfur dioxide into the air. Anyway- in order to balance the pH of my 10'x12'x24" pond, I lined it with ferrocement, which is basically brick mortar with a little more raw cement added, and applied to wire mesh. After my first fill a few weeks ago with water that was below pH 6, it balanced out to nearly pH8 within a few days. Already it is starting to drop down to a sensible 7 as more rain flushes through it- the ferrocement will be leaching a lot of lime in it's initial post-cure life. So it looks like a very sensible system if you have acidic water.
The other system details are as follows:
• Flood and drain system.
• Pond is a hole dug in ground, approx. 10x12' and varying in depth from 18" to 36" in one deep corner. Lined with ferrocement with 1/4" mesh reinforcement.
• A 3/4hp, 13 gpm Grundfos pump delivers pond water to the grow bed every 30 minutes. Fill time is just under 3 minutes
• Grow bed is 18"Wx8'Lx11" deep (2x12 lumber frame with plywood bottom, also lined with ferrocement and filled with locally quarried volcanic cinder (a fine medium with it's porosity, and it's free!)
• Grow bed drains through a 1/2" PVC line to the pond. Drain time is about 10 minutes.
• Since the system is in my backyard, I also want it to look nice, so hence the pond instead of a tank. There is much pondscaping yet to be done, however.
The pond does not have any fish in it yet, as it is all coming together just now. I had a successful desktop system last year with a 10 gallon aquarium and a rubbermaid grow bed, to get mey feet wet with Aquaponics. Now I'm jumping in with grand style. I found this forum through Sylvia's blog in a search for aquaponics info at wordpress.com, and I already love it. Backyard Aquaponics is great, but agree with Sylvia in that it is a little overwhelming, and not totally applicable to those of us in the Northern half of the earth. At least Hawaii is somewhere between!
I hope to get more pics of my system up soon, but do let me know if you have any suggestions or questions...
Shawn
Aloha, Shawn. Thanks for sharing the details of your system - sounds to me like you are off to a great start! When do the fish go in? How did you cycle it? You might want to get in touch with Jeff Givan in this community who is from Southern CA and has also integrated an aquaponics system into his landscaping. Looking forward to the photos!
Sylvia
Shawn said:Aloha- I read through this forum and thought it would be the appropriate place to put up some details on my system, as it is a little unique. I'm at about 4000' elevation on the Big Island of Hawaii, and it can get pretty chilly, and we get 80-100 inches of rain annually. That's great for keeping a system topped off with free water (my entire community is without county water lines- each residence harvests their own household water from the rain), but it's very acidic rain, not at least because we are just a few miles from one of the worlds most active volcanoes, steadily spewing sulfur dioxide into the air. Anyway- in order to balance the pH of my 10'x12'x24" pond, I lined it with ferrocement, which is basically brick mortar with a little more raw cement added, and applied to wire mesh. After my first fill a few weeks ago with water that was below pH 6, it balanced out to nearly pH8 within a few days. Already it is starting to drop down to a sensible 7 as more rain flushes through it- the ferrocement will be leaching a lot of lime in it's initial post-cure life. So it looks like a very sensible system if you have acidic water.
The other system details are as follows:
• Flood and drain system.
• Pond is a hole dug in ground, approx. 10x12' and varying in depth from 18" to 36" in one deep corner. Lined with ferrocement with 1/4" mesh reinforcement.
• A 3/4hp, 13 gpm Grundfos pump delivers pond water to the grow bed every 30 minutes. Fill time is just under 3 minutes
• Grow bed is 18"Wx8'Lx11" deep (2x12 lumber frame with plywood bottom, also lined with ferrocement and filled with locally quarried volcanic cinder (a fine medium with it's porosity, and it's free!)
• Grow bed drains through a 1/2" PVC line to the pond. Drain time is about 10 minutes.
• Since the system is in my backyard, I also want it to look nice, so hence the pond instead of a tank. There is much pondscaping yet to be done, however.
The pond does not have any fish in it yet, as it is all coming together just now. I had a successful desktop system last year with a 10 gallon aquarium and a rubbermaid grow bed, to get mey feet wet with Aquaponics. Now I'm jumping in with grand style. I found this forum through Sylvia's blog in a search for aquaponics info at wordpress.com, and I already love it. Backyard Aquaponics is great, but agree with Sylvia in that it is a little overwhelming, and not totally applicable to those of us in the Northern half of the earth. At least Hawaii is somewhere between!
I hope to get more pics of my system up soon, but do let me know if you have any suggestions or questions...
Shawn
Aloha, Shawn. Thanks for sharing the details of your system - sounds to me like you are off to a great start! When do the fish go in? How did you cycle it? You might want to get in touch with Jeff Givan in this community who is from Southern CA and has also integrated an aquaponics system into his landscaping. Looking forward to the photos!
Sylvia
How long can bacteria go without a flood. The bacteria can survive as long as it doesn't dry out completely or starve too long, overnight shouldn't be a problem for the bacteria as long as the system is not heavily stocked. However, during initial cycling up of a system, I would advise running it more often rather than less, you want to build up your bacteria colony and running the system often, even constant can help that.
If the weather is warm and the system heavily stocked and fish eating well, the fish might not do well with the system being shut down overnight. When things are going full tilt, the ammonia could build up quickly and the fish might not thank you then.
Temperatures. Well, our night time temperatures can get even colder than that in winter and my system is still ticking along ok. If your system is heavily stocked and you get a cold snap that manages to chill your water down below 50 F, you might want to watch your ammonia and especially nitrite levels for a bit after that to make sure you don't get any spikes but I expect you will be ok on that score. Night time temps in the 40's and 50's sounds like really good growing weather to me.
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