My pilot project Francois

[Francois Lemmer]

I started messing around with tilapia 2006-2010

2010 - the end of july i had to take  my system down

i am currently trying to get a piece of property to set up a scaled system.

basickly i dont have a system that is running

but i want to share my last 4 years with aquaponics

with members.......

 

[Francois Lemmer]

2006 my system was 1 baby pool of 1000 liters in my garage and adding another baby pool later when the fish got bigger.
looking back and seeing how much I really did wrong.......the poor fish....but they lived through
all of that and grew bigger
I use to replace water when the my nitrates got to high.
My lawn looked the best.
Then I went to a fish farming franchise proposal on tilapia farming
I got the opportunity to see their setup and .......theirs was aquaculture with tilapia
that gave me the basics of a system.
After reading an article on Aquaponics I started experimenting with plants.
Then the whole idea of just fish was gone.
Aquaponics...................that what I wanted to do.
Growing tomatoes 3 meters high in a +-75 mm geyser tray.......outside my garage.....to me it was wonderful.
From that I printed something of the internet and started designing my system.
Very basic and not to SCALE.....

See 2007

[Francois Lemmer]

2007 the building and setting up my system started
From the levelling to pulling the plastic over my tunnel I battled but I did it, took time.
2007 was a very good learning curve with the fish and fish health,
I had problem....problems.....and more problems
This whole year was spent on trying to keep the fish alive and building my system.
This year I also tweaked my system and sorted out problems
So to say 2008 I only really started my system and from there it never stopped all up until July 2010
2007 I also attended a 2 day hydroponic course and that helped me quite a bit with the basics of growing plants

[Francois Lemmer]

2008 was when things started getting better.
my fish healthy and i then started planting.
never really having a scaled sytem but growing different plants very succesfull.
not syaing i never had problems and then........ the challenges also started getting bigger.
the system had grown from when i was in my garage 2000 l water
to a 96 sq meter tunnel and bigger gowing trays and more fish and......my own small worm farm.
i use to call it my hobby that turned into a monster.
this pilot project was my baby........only me but loved it.
in the port elizabeth area very few people even no what aquaponics is.
what i know comes from trail and error but was a very good learning tool.

[Francois Lemmer]

hi all

merry christmas and a happy new year

regards

francois

[Harold Sukhbir]

Hi Francois, the joy in what you have learn't is that no one can ever take it away from you, Season's greetings and Peace to you and your family.

Francois Lemmer said:

hi all

merry christmas and a happy new year

regards

francois

[Francois Lemmer]

thanks Harold and you and family have a good one too

[TCLynx]

So what are you on to next Francois?  Good to see you over here too.

[Francois Lemmer]

TCLynx said:

So what are you on to next Francois?  Good to see you over here too.

yes sir here we are again

still dreaming of building another system

but i will have to be patient until the oppertunity comes up

hopefully soon

regards

francois

[Francois Lemmer]

TCLynx said:

So what are you on to next Francois?  Good to see you over here too.

reading this again i think i have the answer

i want to try and grow snails

been doing some of reseach on how

maybe i will give it a go

[Francois Lemmer]

My 2008
Revision 1.
I in the beginning had wide and narrow grow trays. In this photo you can see the difference between wide and narrow trays and the 2 extra out flow’s that was not in use. (Blanked of)

So in total I just had 6 grow trays flowing in the system. Four were filled with building stones from a quarry down the road and the 2 narrow trays were flowing under black plastic. The dam in the background was a tilapia dam from Hydrex. Dam water volume was 23 000 litres. the small blue dam was 1 of the dams from my garage.

 

These are the plants from that time and how they grew :

 

These 3 photos are lettuces seeds sown from the packet between the stones.

 

Then this was a type of grass not sure what type but something I tried growing in my system.

 

Peas

Beans

 

 

spinach

I planted a lot of different things testing what I could get my hands on and what I had time for.
Most of what I planted grew....maybe not that good but if it did not I would take them out and plant something else.

 I started using the seeds that I was harvesting.

[Francois Lemmer]

Planting of your own seedlings for a system i feel is/should be part of your process.

Around this time I pulled the plastic over my PVC struckture (Start of winter)

Going into winter the plastic really helped, not realizing then but later when I went through a winter without plastic.

Plastic was good for winter but summer was a big problem.

[Harold Sukhbir]

This is simply amazing Francois! It's like a very beautiful story. I just love this evolutionary process of yours. What are those tanks made from? Is it welded mesh with a liner?