Swirl filter tea

[Kobus Jooste]

Time to bounce another idea off people here.  I run a swirl filter in my research system that is cleaned regularly, and the run-off filtered to remove all the solids for weighing.  Once the solids are out of the water, it cannot go back into the system, as I do not want the nutrient rich water interfering with my record keeping of inputs and yields.  I have been tossing the water over very appreciative plants in the garden.  My attention is now on the small system.  It lost its 37 large tilapia in exchange for 17 small koi. Obviously the plants in there are not doing as great, and I considered adding the filtered water, about 10 liters at a time, slowly to the mixed system.

 

The water quality parameters are alright (ammonia a bit high but considering that I'm adding about 2 liters at a time to 1300 liters of water I'm not too worried), and if the plants like it as much as the garden ones did, I should see an improvement in the growth of the system.  Anyone else ever try this?

[TCLynx]

Sounds like a handy way to make use of the nutrient rich water.  You already know about keeping an eye on water quality so no worries there.

 

Other option would be to feed a soil wicking bed with it if you had those.

[Chris Smith]

I'll bet it will work fine. I now feed all the poo from solid settling and swirl filters to worms in media beds. I just put it on top of the media and it is usually gone in a matter of several hours. With the price of fish food I want to keep 100% of nutrients in the system.

Once I have my 4 media beds working properly I will eliminate solids settling.

 

[Eric Warwick]

The Urban Farming Guys, in Kansas City Missouri, created a diy filter for fertilizing their garden and their highly stocked aquaponics system: the videos ten minutes and is about building the filter system. (hope you enjoy it)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39xT5xzNu3s

[George T]

Wow.  This is news to me and I'm really impressed with the Urban Farming Guys.  Thanks.

Eric Warwick said:

The Urban Farming Guys, in Kansas City Missouri, created a diy filter for fertilizing their garden and their highly stocked aquaponics system: the videos ten minutes and is about building the filter system. (hope you enjoy it)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39xT5xzNu3s

[Kobus Jooste]

I have to admit that I have gottan a tad busy on a written document of late and have not paid much attention to this discussion.  I have been adding the "tea" to the small unit regularly and all is well.  Thanks for the replies all.  Will look at the video as soon as I have time but currently I an under pressure for Friday delivery day.  Interestingly, the water quality in the research system typically sits around Ammonia 0.35 or lower, and nitrates of 8 or lower.  Once you have washed and strained all the solids out of the filter, the discard water has ammonia above 7.  The swirl filter thus really captures a lot of stuff that is mineralised / denitrifies rapidly when washed out (this unit has no other filter stages). The "wash water" really pongs of ammonia, while the system itsself has very high water quality. This is a very interesting experiment in terms of visualizing the basis of aquaponic functioning - turing fish food into solids and turning that into fertilizer for plants.  

[Harold Sukhbir]

Hi Kobus,

Assisting the light fish load by adding extraneous solids is good as a supplement for supporting existing plant growth. It would be interesting though, if it was weighed and added to a system without fish to see what poo to plant ratio you would get. If it works a market can be developed for fish poo which usually goes to waste from aquaculture farms for folks wanting to grow only veggies hydroponically AP style. 

[Kobus Jooste]

Harold, I'm looking into that right now but not in terms of aquaponic systems - just looking at what possibilities the aquaculture waste could have.