Aquaponics Getting started.

[Aaron]

biochar aquaponics medium

Mart,

Robert Flanagan told me that in some trials he was involved in or
knew about - they were successfully using 100% biochar as the
growing bed medium.

Would make the supreme home for the microorganisms and the Earthworms
would love it.

Have you tried that at all or heard about successes or advantages?

[Savvypro]

The problem with Spirulina is it competes for the same nutrients that plants needs.


A separate tank may be the answer.

All the algae you grow will also compete for the same nutrients as the plants.

For Spirulina the separate tank (not connected to anything else) is the only way to go. Unless you want to subject the fish and plants to a high salt and pH (of 10) level.

Mart,

Robert Flanagan told me that in some trials he was involved in or
knew about - they were successfully using 100% biochar as the
growing bed medium.

Would make the supreme home for the microorganisms and the Earthworms
would love it.

Have you tried that at all or heard about successes or advantages?

Aaron,

Did he by any chance say if there were any issues with biochar losses. Basically when the water returns to the fish tanks from the grow beds, did they notice any biochar returning with the water. With such fine particles I'd be surprised the biochar would stay in the grow beds for long.

[theremart]

RE: Biochar + aquaponics.

Mart,

Robert Flanagan told me that in some trials he was involved in or
knew about - they were successfully using 100% biochar as the
growing bed medium.

Would make the supreme home for the microorganisms and the Earthworms
would love it.

Have you tried that at all or heard about successes or advantages?

No, I have not heard that before, however, I have been to an aquarium shop about 14 years ago and they would trickle all of the water from the tanks thru a large charcoal pile before returning it to the tanks. It does make sense. Some have used lava rock because it is very porous.

I now understand that the TLUD stove will be here in the USA for sale after March 1st. If it is a good design I may run tests with it to see how well it works.

[ashtweth]

Construction of Automatic Bell Siphons
for Backyard Aquaponic Systems

http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/BIO-10.pdf

[theremart]

RE: Link

Thanks Ash,

One of my favorite PDF's is this one

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/Travis/Aquaponics_Common_Sense_Guide.pdf

[theremart]

Charcoal in grow beds.

Backyard Aquaponics • View topic - DD's System 2011

This guy has been testing Charcoal in his growbeds. I know some had an interest in what the effects would be. Interesting thread, I have not read it all, but has caught my attention.

Mart

[Cherryman]

YouTube - 105 Drip Irrigation Aquaponics Vermiculture.wmv

Just got the parts for the aquaponics system together. Just put in two plants today, and I also put in short snips of earthworm bins, and the results of the gravity fed drip irrigation.

I should have the duckweed in next week so I can grow food for the fish.

Now that I have it setup I am going to relax, it was a big hassle getting all the parts in place, now looking forward to see what happens with the plants.

Hi, I started also recently. It's fun!

I have build a test setup for a small indoor aquaponics.
I use the drip system as well. And after two months, things go well.

My goal is to get the air-pump running with a small solar panel and to rotate the whole set-up very slow ( one revolt an hour) also on solar power to get sunlight on all sides.

Here is a small movie of my set-up, the picture is a bit wrong scaled, the height of the set-up is around 1.50 meters.

YouTube - Indoor Aquaponics update 1


Good luck

[ashtweth]

Hi Cherryman, Mart and ALL

Mart that's a hell of a guide there thanks a lot. I am getting some more DVD's of the series i mentioned and will report if any thing useful there,

Cherrryman thanks a lot for doing that, that's food security, if every one in your street had a small grow bed, you could feed your street. Beautiful to watch. Have you thought about LED's for that?

Ash

[Cherryman]

Hi Cherryman, Mart and ALL

Mart that's a hell of a guide there thanks a lot. I am getting some more DVD's of the series i mentioned and will report if any thing useful there,

Cherrryman thanks a lot for doing that, that's food security, if every one in your street had a small grow bed, you could feed your street. Beautiful to watch. Have you thought about LED's for that?

Ash

Hi Ash, Tnx! And yes, more people should do that.

My goal is to make it total independent of external power and low budget.

The water is pumped up by little air pumps. They sell them also on two penlights AA.

A few months back i picked up a few solar garden lights. On sale for 2 euro. ;-)
Each had three RVS tubes, a solar panel, a color changing led, a rechargeable AA battery, a little charging and night / day controlling circuit and a led driver .. Although not very powerful, it works. I bought ten, great experimental stuff.

Anyway, two or three of those coupled could power the airlift for bubbles and water, maybe even 6 of them to power two air/water lifts.

As for lighting, i have a TL pipe now, it was laying around. Awfull color, ;-)

Leds are too expensive for now, and for good growing you still need a lot of power.

I receive a rounded TL light soon, white, that will be better, actually two or three would be best. (They need power too of course ;-) But i get them cheap.

But it should be able to operate even without that, the goal is to place it in front of a south faced window, and let it rotate. By suspending the plant part at the sealing with a low friction (magnetic) baring (read: rope ;-) It will spin easily without much energy.

I'm thinking if it would be possible to let it turn by the weight of the transported water, that would be nice!
But a simple solar clock mechanism, might do it as well. It needs to spin at around 0.5 <> 1 revolts an hour
Or i could speed it up and get some artificial wind ;-)

As plants cool air, it would be a natural airco placed in front of an open window, spinning around by heat difference, cooling your air, growing your food, driving a dynamo and fish as bonus ;-)

[Aaron]

aquaponics and biochar

Mart,

Robert Flanagan sent me this - said I could post it:

http://www.feelthevibe.com/agriculture/flanagan-charcoal.pdf

With the right microbes, it quickly converts fish waste in the charcoal.

Ammonia to nitrite then to nitrate - this is THE REAL KEY to aquaponics.

Charcoal has much higher surface area so much more bacteria can do
your work.

[theremart]

Hi, I started also recently. It's fun!

I have build a test setup for a small indoor aquaponics.
I use the drip system as well. And after two months, things go well.

My goal is to get the air-pump running with a small solar panel and to rotate the whole set-up very slow ( one revolt an hour) also on solar power to get sunlight on all sides.

Here is a small movie of my set-up, the picture is a bit wrong scaled, the height of the set-up is around 1.50 meters.

YouTube - Indoor Aquaponics update 1


Good luck

Hi,

Welcome to the club :-)

Are you using a T fitting to create like a pulsar pump to drive the water up with air?

I am also getting parts to build an indoor aquaponics setup, I may use a pump on a timer, but looks like you have a good working system there.

Thanks for sharing!

Mart

[theremart]

RE: surface area.

Mart,

Robert Flanagan sent me this - said I could post it:

http://www.feelthevibe.com/agriculture/flanagan-charcoal.pdf

With the right microbes, it quickly converts fish waste in the charcoal.

Ammonia to nitrite then to nitrate - this is THE REAL KEY to aquaponics.

Charcoal has much higher surface area so much more bacteria can do
your work.

Thanks Aaron,

I have a microscope, and I have been trying to understand the bacteria more, I know when I add molassis and air the bacteria jump in number off the chart and I get bioslime.

I have now a good culture of bacteria in my grow beds, I also killed a pump going too wild on creating bioslime But in watching the videos of Murray ( a guy from Australia ) he said his more mature 4 year old beds did the best, when I watched his video "Aquaponic Secrets" it seemed the old bed was just full of bacteria goo. That seems to be where the real grow power lies in cultivating aerobic bacteria, with composting worms.

The video I have from Hawaii the guy uses volcanic rock, it also is pourous.

From what I have read on the other site, you need to be careful when adding charcoal to be sure that it is inert, that it does not mess with the PH, and some types of charcoal are better than others.

I plan on making my own charcoal, until then think I will try a floating raft system. When I do I will wash it to get the wood ash off, then put it in a 5 gallon bucket with rain water to see what it does to the ph.

Thanks for the PDF!

Mart

[Savvypro]

Mart,

Robert Flanagan sent me this - said I could post it:

http://www.feelthevibe.com/agriculture/flanagan-charcoal.pdf

With the right microbes, it quickly converts fish waste in the charcoal.

Ammonia to nitrite then to nitrate - this is THE REAL KEY to aquaponics.

Charcoal has much higher surface area so much more bacteria can do
your work.

The right microbes develop by themselves while the water in the tanks cycle. Although this can be a problematic time for the starting fish as not all species can tolerate high Ammonia and nitrite in the water.

In a previous post, I mentioned that the plants themselves don't need to wait for the cycle to complete, as they can use the ammonia the fish release - directly, without waiting for the nitrogen cycle bacteria to process the waste.

The use of fungi is very interesting as that is something I wanted to try out but didn't know where to start.

Aaron - do you by any chance have more info on the use of fungi in hydroponics and aquaponics setups - that you can share?

[Aaron]

floating raft with biochar pots

From what I have read on the other site, you need to be careful when adding charcoal to be sure that it is inert, that it does not mess with the PH, and some types of charcoal are better than others.

I plan on making my own charcoal, until then think I will try a floating raft system. When I do I will wash it to get the wood ash off, then put it in a 5 gallon bucket with rain water to see what it does to the ph.

A floating raft system is what was recommended to me. With the pots
on top of it filled with charcoal. I'm not sure yet what the optimum charcoal
source is but for the most part, just about any biochar should remain inert
for a couple thousand years.

[Aaron]

biochar and mychorrhizal fungus for aquaponics

Aaron - do you by any chance have more info on the use of fungi in hydroponics and aquaponics setups - that you can share?

I'll ask what mychorrhizal blend is recommended. There is biochar preloaded
with the fungi/bacteria that can be added to the pots on a floating raft
system. Is supposed to make all the difference in the world. Not sure if
that pre-loaded biochar is something that can just be bought "off the shelf"
or not.