diy budget aquaponics simplified plumbing design | Aquaponics Roots in the media

diy budget aquaponics simplified plumbing design

Its quite possible that this is one of those things that everyone does, but its so obvious that nobody mentions it.

Perhaps everything is one of those things, but Id rather hear something twice than never know about it, so Ill say it anyway.

For some time, Ive been harvesting things like lettuce, then spending valuable seconds of my life getting the media out of the roots and retuning it to the grow beds. Clay balls get loose a bit more readily than scoria, but roots seem determined to hang onto whatever media they find themselves in.

Dont get me wrong, this is no way an issue because it really is only a few seconds, but Id rather spend those few irreplaceable seconds doing more important things - eating strawberries, looking at fish, that sort of thing.

But I discovered that if you just snap off the roots and leave them in a bucket, the media falls out all by itself.

Bam! Earth shattering tip right there.

I add an extra step for the worms.

When I pull up a lettuce, the root ball always has a few worms in it. Even in the constant flood grow bed there are worms everywhere. And as much as Im happy to feed my worms to the fish, I like my worms and like it when they live in my growbed rather than die on the ground. So when I snap off the roots, I lay the ball of roots, and media back on the growbed until the next time I wander past. This allows the worms time to get back into the growbed as their root ball home slowly dries.

The next day (or whenever) I drop the root ball into my root ball bucket, where it dries out and leaves the media behind. After the bucket has seen a few root balls added, or when I get around to it, I return the loose media back to the grow bed, and the dried roots and stems to the compost heap. Once in the compost heap, they sit for eternity. We dont use the stuff.



120 Things in 20 years - Wasting compost from the roots caught up in my aquaponics media.

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diy aquaponics fish tank | Potted Media Water Level

diy aquaponics fish tank

Slotted Orchids pots that I use for growing made it very convenience to adjust water level. Since some plants require different water level, with individual pots it can be adjusted to suite the plants that in it.

These pots has good drainage and I can easily adjust its level within the growbed to suit what ever I plant. This pots are about 6" across, therefore larger plants will not be suitable.

Shallow roots plants like Strawberry, Chives and leafy vegetable is best to use these pots. At certain stage of their growth water level may need to be adjusted to ensure they grow. Especially after transplanting where water level are normally set to high. With many plants in a growbed, adjusting the growbed water level will affect all plants in it.

Having individually potted plants in the growbed, it then can be position higher or lower within the growbed to get water level as required.

Strawberry as above was just transplanted, so the water level are adjusted to be high with pots burried deeper in the growbed.

Plants like Chives, above dont require high water so I adjust the pots to be higher up making the water level relatively low.

Above is a simple illustration on what I do to achieve different water level for individual plants within same growbed. This I find easier to do since pots containing the plants can be lifted without stressing the plants much.

Affnan Aquaponics.

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diy vertical aquaponics system | They Are Always Hungry These Tilapia

diy vertical aquaponics system

No matter how you feed them, they are always hungry. Tilapia has short digestive track they eat a little bit at a time but most of the time.

These are in my CRAFTS set, and they are getting bigger. I use fish pellets to feed them.

Never over feed fish, especially in Aquaponics. Water will get murky and Ammonia will shoot up. If you see foam or bubbles in the fish tank just stop feeding them for at least one day and continue after water had cleared.

Its okay for them to go hungry, they will start to feed on the algae making water and tank cleaner.

Surplus greens is good, above is the Sambung Nyawa plants that I cut and throw it to give them something to bite.

Tilapia will eat greens, one of the best is Kangkung these they will nibble in no time at all. However before feeding them greens make sure they are really hungry.

There are loads of green from my Aquaponics growbeds and its fish food.

After 1 day in the fish tanks, this is what left of the plants. Those stems can still be use as cuttings.

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easy diy aquaponics.com | This Years Balcony Garden attempt!

easy diy aquaponics.com

Good crop of tomatoes, no aphids since i planted lots of onions and marigolds, Blackberry bush has grown huge and still growing had to use an old clothes drying rack as a growing frame, Installed a new drip irrigation all the way around balcony from my 100liter water tank with the help from my grandson.
Biggest obstacle has been getting supplies to my apartment, carrying bags of growing mix and compost by bus is a pain to say the least, oh well at least its exercise. I am lucky with that i get 6 hours plus of sun on the balcony, but the winds can be a destroyer drying things out and breaking my tomatoes.

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diy water pump in aquaponics system | Potted Media Base Gutter Growbed Siphon Flood Drain

diy water pump in aquaponics system

A year back I did emptied my growbed and uses pots to grow Gandarusa plants, this method of planting utilized much less LECA and make it less costly to make a bigger set if needed.

It did grow well for the Gandarusa plant, its long overdue that I wanted to try this method on other plants.  This simpler setup may be more viable to do on a larger scale with minimum changes to existing media base siphon flood & drain technique.

I had done gutter growbed in 2010 and its at that time was difficult to control its flood and drain reliably. I was using loop siphon due to the confine space of the gutter and it was not successful in planting anything significant.

I am giving it another go, this time I will use my 15 mm StrainerBell siphon on left as photo above. It is the smallest siphon that I had done and after tested it for almost a year, I feel its capable of controlling the flood & drain within the confines space of a rain gutter.

As a trial setup, I decided to do a simple gutter growbed setup, that could accommodate up to 9 or 10 pots place over a fish tank. This arrangement suit the small space that I have.

The gutter was kept for a long time, I got it in Nov 2014 to do this setup. Unfortunately due to the problem I am facing during that period has kept it on hold until today. Above photo I was testing the gutter for leak, I will use only two.

Made a rack for the two gutter over the fish tank from leftover dickson bars and had to join them making a longer piece.

Water feed as usual "T" with 1000 Liter per hour pump feeding the two gutter. Water head is about 18 inches.

15 mm siphon, making it as short as possible, water level is less than four inches.

This siphon has been tested on my ornamental set and had survive a full growbed rootball without failure. So I feel its time to use it for this set, anyway this is the smallest I can make.

First flush test and as you can see from above water is not level, this is because the front part of my house is slanting. I will need to adjust the rack to take up the gradient.

The rack has been adjusted, see the different between the far and the near end tank to rack gap. It is about two inches different in height to add up on the far side of the rack.

Siphon in between the pots, I will use LECA in the pots surrounding with flood & drain water. This style reduce LECA usage and we may use pebbles too at smaller quantities making it lighter.

Water feed is at one end of the gutter with siphon at another, trying to create a nutrient flow within the growbed and water movement in the fish tank between siphon outlet and pump intake.

It does flush well, will put an aerator outlet to reduce noise and at the same time giving much needed oxygen to water.

Okay, this setup needs to be cycle with fish and simple plants. LECA will go in those pots next and will get some cheap fish to ensure no mosquito breed in the tank.

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diy aquaponics instructions | EHK 105 Power Liquid Filter Brief Review

diy aquaponics instructions

A Brief review of the EHK 105 pump that I use for my two growbed Aquaponics setup.

 

Cheers

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easy diy aquaponics download | Evolution Of The Media Base Flood Drain Gutter Growbed

easy diy aquaponics download

My ongoing quest for cheaper and easier Aquaponics set are finally coming to an end. The traditional Flood & Drain Media Base Growbed has to go. It has been more that eight years since I started Aquaponics, initially using pebbles or stones chip then to hydroton.

The traditional media base works, it does has its pros and cons as any other type of system in Aquaponics but the one that really hamper the progress of Aquaponics in this part of the world is the cost of setting up a system. Traditional growbed are relatively expensive to setup due to the volume of LECA needed. To do large scale is almost impossible due to this.

It is not so straight forward that we can design a system and walla.. it works and at the same time reduce the cost of setting up. It takes time to test and test.. and systems evolves from these trials. I specialize in media base flood and drain using siphon and I try my best to make a system using this technique cheaper and easier to construct.

I started experiment with mini growbed system few years back when I made the single barrel set to see how well a smaller siphon control the water flow in a growbed. As with siphon, the smaller it is the more difficult to get right due to very small tolerances it has to work upon.

The barrel set above uses my midi siphon, a medium size standpipe of 20 mm, it does work but not good enough to make it a cheaper setup. It still requires lots of LECA and only the size is smaller.

I had to make something that resemble a NFT set up but has a flood and drain element in it, that is when I started experimenting with the gutter growbed few years back.

Above in 2010 was my first attempt of a gutter system, the siphon use at the time is a downward loop siphon, and it doesnt work that well. As in the photo pebbles was use and most of the time it function as a media filled DWC which has limited plant type to be grown.

In order to get a good flood and drain, the siphon must work ! The problem with siphon is the smaller it is the more difficult to get it right. My 20 mm siphon is too big for gutter setup I had to design something smaller.

It was my daughter that asked me to make something for her "Show And Tell" she asked me to make a micro Aquaponics set that demonstrate the concept of Aquaponics. To make a micro set requires a micro siphon. That when I make the smallest siphon that I currently use, takes about 2 weeks for me to figure out the design proportion and further few weeks to test the proof of concept.

15 mm siphon is actually not new to me, it was the size of the first siphon that I made for my initial Aquaponics set, at the time I was very new to Aquaponics and the siphon is just a straight standpipe with enclosure to create the siphoning. Obviously it is not a reliable siphon at the time. But instead of pursuing the 15mm siphon I took the 25mm route to make a big siphon and improve upon the design until it is what it is today.

I tried the 15mm siphon on ornamental set for almost 2 years, being first make it debut in early 2014 and many test done using the 15 mm siphon that works beautifully. After extensive testing, only then I am satisfied that now I can use the smallest siphon to run an Aquaponics set that is easy and cheap to make.

This is when I started to make the #guttergrowbed system and to make it easier I didnt put the LECA directly into the growbed but uses pots to make it easier to handle. I was worry that the potted setup do not has enough surface area for effective biological nutrification processes, but it does do well it the initial test.

It is obvious the #guttergrowbed setup is not for large plants, but for commercial intent it is viable to have crop of smaller plants and leafy vegetable at a lower cost of setup.

So finally, the traditional growbed has to go and make room for #guttergrowbed at my back lane set.

These 4 gutters is 4 meter in length each replacing my 4 traditional growbed, trials shows that it uses only 1/5 the LECA for the same area and 1/3 the electricity to run it. This is possible due plants are in pots and siphon is smaller.

So this next few weeks Ill be busy with this retrofit and I hope it does work on a larger scale setup. The design and how to will be made freely available here as my contribution to the Aquaponics community.

The final part would be going off grid, which is easily achieve due to the low power requirement of this set up. For the 4 #guttergrowbeds it only consumes 30 watt of electricity total.

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