Aquaponics build

[MitchM]

Gordy,

I've seen those videos. It's incredible when you think of it. Native species are completely overwhelmed.

I don't think it's a matter of controlling small back yard setups, it's more a matter of controlling who breeders of the farmed fish can sell to. They can only sell to someone who has a license. Plain and simple.
I would pass the license phase no problem and the cost is $150.00/year. The inspection consists of an inspector coming out and assessing whether or nor there was any possibility of the cultured fish escaping into the surrounding streams or rivers. I have a natural 1 acre/ 10 foot deep pond on our property that was inspected a few years ago for the addition of trout but was turned down.
There'e no chance of anything escaping from my greenhouse.

These are the only fish that they will issue licenses for:

Atlantic salmon
Chinook salmon
Coho salmon
Sockeye (Kokanee) salmon
Freshwater prawn
Goldfish
Koi
Tilapia
Bigmouth Buffalo fish
American eel
Apple snail

Arctic char
Rainbow trout
Brook trout
Brown trout
Triploid grass carp


Goldfish and koi are on the list if I ever wanted to sell to a local pet shop, but again, I live in a restricted area where they will only issue a license for rainbow trout.
It's the government though, so maybe that's open to interpretation.... :dunno:

 

[Fishylove]

Maybe they would go for Midget Trout?

 

[MitchM]

The water has cycled now, plus I added some sand, rocks and driftwood for a bit of visual interest.
Algae has started growing and there is a bit of cloudiness to the water.



The cloudiness kept getting worse so I removed the driftwood. I'm concerned that the driftwood brought in some fungus. The driftwood was from a previous freshwater tank that had some driftwood fungus, but I had left the driftwood outside for a couple of years in the elements, thinking that that would kill off whatever fungus was there.I thought driftwood fungus was a temporary thing, maybe a few weeks. We'll see.
I was ready to remove the canister filter as well, but with the cloudiness of the water, I added some carbon and some finer filter material and will run it until the water clears up.

Added some fish, 5 goldfish and a plecostomus.
The way the goldfish are behaving this morning, I got 4 males and 1 female, poor girl.



I've been reading that almost anything will grow in an aquaponics system, so we purchased some tea roses, washed out the roots and put them in.



We've also had a rosemary bush for a few years now. It has always grown back well after I pruned it for cooking, so we'll see how it does. It was very root bound.

 

[MitchM]

The water no longer clouds up during the day, it was especially doing it after strong sunlight - just algae. The water now stays pretty much crystal clear. The system must have reached a balance with regards to the nutrient production/consumption. I added some water hyacinth and water lettuce for the goldfish to take shelter from the sun and to help with nutrient uptake.




I've added some more herbs purchased from the grocery store, basil, parsley, oregano, marjoram. We bought some already grown plants and washed off the roots just like before. They have really taken off growth wise. The parsley is growing about 4 inches/week.




Another thing growing is the pests. Spider mites and aphids. We bought a bag of 250 ladybugs a couple of days ago and let them go in the greenhouse. We'll see how they do. Initially they just crawled over top the "prey" Maybe they need some time to settle down.




A couple of weeks ago I planted some seeds - watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew, celery, kale, sweetpea, butternut squash. They're starting to come up now. I scattered them on the Hydrocorn and ran my fingers through a bit to make sure they were down in the water part, about 1" down.

 

[MitchM]

Well, as an update, all the plants I planted are doing great. Everything likes the aquaponics.
Tea roses, sweet peas, swiss chard, celery, squash, kale, rosemary, parsley, oregano, basil, honeydew, cantaloupe, watermelon, water hyacinth, water lettuce.
I'm just going to keep adding things now as space allows. As the water hyacinth and lettuce grow, I'll add them to my outdoor pond.

One goldfish died, got a huge lump on one side and despite still eating, just died one night. All others are doing fine.
I'm doing top up water with the garden hose with water straight from our well, and we're watering the dirt based plants in the greenhouse with the system water, giving the aquaponics it's water change every week.

The 250 lady bugs we added were a flop. We saw them for 2 days, then they were all gone, can't find a single one. It's a closed greenhouse so I don't know where they went. Haven't seen any new larvae either. Aphids and spider mites are still going strong. Will keep on working on a solution for those.

 

[crsublette]

Pictures! :claphands:

Yeah, funny thing about the lady bugs being migratory. My grandfather was a big believer in using beneficial bugs. He would open crates full of thousands of them in the middle of fields. After a couple months, he would no longer find the bugs in his fields and would rather find them in his neighbors fields.

 

[MitchM]

Sorry Charles, no pictures just yet. Things looked about the same as my last ones. It's hard to get a better picture with only my cell phone. I'm working on getting a better camera set up to take better pictures.

I was noticing some yellowing lately on the leaves. During the water changes I have been topping up the system with well water and that has brought the PH up to 7.6. According to the local hydroponics shop, a PH of above 7.0 will inhibit nutrient uptake by the plants, so I'm topping up with RO/DI now. I also purchased some trace elements from them for later addition if needed.

 

[HTH]

. According to the local hydroponics shop, a PH of above 7.0 will inhibit nutrient uptake by the plants, so I'm topping up with RO/DI now. I also purchased some trace elements from them for later addition if needed.

Well this blows chunks. My pH is 8.2 and stable. Really would hate to mess with it. Also found out the PDZ/Zeolite does not work in hard water. I miss the soft water.

 

[MitchM]

Hi, hope everyone is doing well!

An update:

The aquaponic system has not been doing so great. The PH is wanting to remain stubbornly high.
I've been replacing the water change water with water from my Amazon freshwater aquarium.
Here are the parameters:

Amazon tank
PH 7.0
KH 3 dkh/53.7 ppm
GH 6 dkh/107.4 ppm
Temp 24 C/76 F

Aquaponic system
PH 8.0
KH 6 dkh//107.4 ppm
GH 12 dkh/214.8 ppm
Temp 21 C/70 F

Here are the pictures. (I would have liked to post lush green photos, but it is not the case)

The fish tank.
The water hyacinth, water lettuce, algae and fish are all doing great. The original goldfish that I had have been transferred out to my outdoor pond because they were so active and growing very big - also, the hyacinth and lettuce apparently had some goldfish eggs on them so I have raised them and they are growing in this tank now. I even transferred some of the hyacinth and lettuce to the outdoor pond, but they are struggling out there.



The first media bed.
Here I have the miniature roses, sweet peas. It's been a constant struggle fighting spider mites. The roses are constantly blooming, which keeps the greenhouse smelling wonderful. The leaves, however do not seem as healthy as they could be - could be from the mites. The mites were winning and almost all the roses were close to dead so I broke down and used some insecticidal soap. I covered the substrate first, sprayed the roses and now the mites are at a minimum.
I added some onion bulbs, which are growing like mad, maybe that's helping with the pest problem as well.



The second media bed.
This one contains the herbs. They are growing like mad. They are also flowering, which I am clipping as the flowers form. I've harvested from the plants numerous times. The cilantro was overcome by aphids so I removed it.



The third media bed.
This one contains the vegetables. Everything is struggling, however the celery in the center seems to be doing better lately. The swiss chard is constantly under attack from aphids, despite my spraying. Kale and the others have died. After initial growth, progress stopped.



Fourth media bed.
Melons. Again, since initial growth, progress has been extremely slow. No pest problems though.



This is the freshwater tank that I am supplying water to the aquaponics system. (sorry for the reflection in the picture)



Does anyone have any suggestions for improving growth for the plants that are struggling? I've searched around for high PH problems and the consensus seems to be to just leave the system alone and the PH will come down on its' own. I have tried adding things like vinegar or Seachem neutral regulator, but those effects are temporary.

Thanks.

 

[Waterbug]

I don't know if I've already said this...so sorry if I have.

I read about the pH issue a lot. There was a commercial AP business here in AZ that had the same problem. Their solution made the most sense to me. Water and waste from the fish was applied to the plants. The plants were moved from AP beds to soil. There was a lot of benefits. They could adjust pH of the water going to the plant without risking the fish. They could insect control on the plants without affecting fish. Soil beds are cheaper than raised AP beds and media which allows plants to be spaced further apart which can reduce insect problems.

The whole AP recycle - closed system thing sounds compelling but when I look at how most AP systems are kept they're way different than that ideal. They remove solids and apply to soil based plants. Large water changes are common with waste water going to soil based plants.

I have seen a couple of AP systems that did pull off the closed system. They seem to need to be very large and/or need a lot of maintenance and monitoring equipment.

In a greenhouse my plan is to not recycle the water between plant beds and fish tank. Instead fish tanks will get a 24/7 trickle fill and overflow waste water will go into the beds. Water can be recycled in the beds like standard AP minus the fish. Will be much easier to lower pH in the bed system once there's no fish to worry about. I'm hoping I can get one season before the water in the beds has to be dumped to salt tolerant landscape plants.

Insect issues scares me the most. There's tons of info on standard greenhouses and insects. No great solutions. I have had success in a regular garden removing aphids manually, just have to stay on top of them. In a greenhouse that might be even easier.

 

[MitchM]

My understanding is that a lot of insects do better in a soil environment, so I prefer the media beds for that reason.
For water changes on the AP system, I water the dirt based greenhouse plants and those are all doing very well from that.
I've also had weird yellow almost florescent mushrooms show up in some of the dirt based plant pots.

For the time being I'm going to add more herb plants and continue to monitor the PH. If it does drop then I'll consider adding vegetables and fruits again.

I'm also going to keep trying various methods for insect control. In our outside gardens, parasitic wasps are very active. I've tried bringing in a few that I've caught but I don't see them again.
Regardless, it's been a fun project and hopefully I can keep fine tuning it through the winter.
The fish load is small right now, so I'm going to buy a couple of koi that will stay in there year round.

Lighting is going to be an issue as the seasons change. I have a couple of 1000W HPS lamps, but I don't really want to run them because of the high electricity use. I purchased a LUX meter that will help with the monitoring.

 

[Mucky_Waters]

Lighting is going to be an issue as the seasons change. I have a couple of 1000W HPS lamps, but I don't really want to run them because of the high electricity use. I purchased a LUX meter that will help with the monitoring.

Generally it's the length of the daylight hours that is the problem in the winter that is the problem, not the intensity of the light during daylight hours.
You are in a pretty cold zone, what will you be using to heat your greenhouse in the winter?

 

[MitchM]

For heating, I have radiant floor heat, a fireplace and a forced air heater. The greenhouse is a lean-to style built against our house with double glazed windows.
The fireplace alone is enough to take care of all the heat requirements, but keeping it full with the wood available around here is a challenge. Poplar burns quickly and leaves a lot of ash. Spruce clogs up the spark arrestor. We sometimes bring in some birch from BC.
My understanding with the light is that the spectrum also changes quite a bit, so supplementation is required for most days..

 

[Mucky_Waters]

For heating, I have radiant floor heat, a fireplace and a forced air heater. The greenhouse is a lean-to style built against our house with double glazed windows.
The fireplace alone is enough to take care of all the heat requirements, but keeping it full with the wood available around here is a challenge. Poplar burns quickly and leaves a lot of ash. Spruce clogs up the spark arrestor. We sometimes bring in some birch from BC.
My understanding with the light is that the spectrum also changes quite a bit, so supplementation is required for most days..

That's a ways to be hauling firewood. Is it worth it transporting it that far?
We heat our house with wood as well. My preferred choice of wood to burn is beetle kill Lodgepole pine. I like it for a number of reasons. First of all it is very plentiful, thanks to the intrepid pine beetle. :bowdown: Also because of the way it dies it dries out very nicely while still standing, and that means it can be burned right away and we don't have to split and stack it and season it for a year or two. Also it's very easy to split and process because it grows long and tall with tiny branches so no big knots. A lot of the trunk of the trees (especially near the top) the rounds are small enough to fit right in the stove and no splitting is necessary. It throws off pretty good heat for a "softwood", in fact BTU wise it produces more BTUs per cord then almost all other softwoods and many so called "hardwoods". According to this BTU chart it even has slightly more BTUs per cord then birch. Oh and it produces very little ash too.

Here's our woodshed.

I guess I digressed from the thread topic a bit. :redface: Oh well. :dunno: I don't know much about aquaponics, so I can't add much in that department. At least I'm doing my part to keep the thread alive. :cheerful:

 

[callingcolleen1]

Nice wood shed Mucky, did that take all summer to chop and stack? Mush have been tons of work I imagine.

Mitch, Are you keeping plants in the greenhouse all summer? it must be hard to keep plants indoors during the summer?
My cheap homemade greenhouse comes alive during the fall and winter, as I clean out and place succulents, lily's, and geranium plants back inside. I like just keep plants that don't get bugged as I hate to use pesticides and would rather get rid of bugged plants. Then come spring I plant seeds too, but I am quickly running out of room for all the plants I bring in these days...