Aquaponics in my Window

Im going to put this together for my window that faces the south and gets direct sun from Aug-Feb or so.

Not sure how itll work out as it's just for kiks.

They system: it's damn sturdy. Im going to use lava rocks in the bed to keep off the weight. Not sure how much water should be in the bed before the overflow though... Help.


For the most part, greens and beet berries are in order, with soome herbs and mini toms Ima order from seeds of change.

More to come.

das

Hey dasme,I've been thinking bout aquaponics alot lately,what with all the problems with comercialy growm produce.
Plz.keep,(well i'd say us informed),but it looks like it's just you & i for now.
What ya gonna use for fish?

PEACE;1TT

you might want to seal the light out of the fish tank. Algae can grow like crazy, even with scum eaters. Good luck! Aquaponics is one of the best sustainable sources of agriculture.

what kind of fish do u have to use? i'ed think Betas would be best,but....you shouldn't keep more then one in the same place.. so what like feeder fish or somthing?

when I had fish I used those scum sucker catfish...not shure how they would work for what you want.

Thanks for the input. Im going to use goldies, some minows called rosys or something, a few snails for the scum and a few dozen ghost shrimp. The ghosts may become food later but Im wanting to provide nuff hiding places.

As far as algea is conserned, not too worried. Ive seen 5 snails clean a tank spotless in a few weeks. Plus they add bio-diversity.

No betas!

Gidday Dasme glad you've surfaced with the plan intact.

Overflow - I'm assuming you already know this is in addition to drainage...

So the bed is filled from the top, and drains from the bottom via gravity back to the fish, in addition to this plumbing, an overflow is merely a protective device if you don't trust your drain making capabilities.

Positioned just below the top of your bed is easiest to keep clear. I can tell by the set-up that once the gravel is in there - it won't empty your tank right out if the drain does clog and the bed fills and the overflow is needed.

The standpipe drain I suggested is sound technology. (a bit of pipe with lots of holes drilled in the sides of one end of it standing in the gravel over your drain). I'm talking 5 years now with no floods from beds.

Are you going for ebb and flow or continuous. I've proved it myself as well as scientists who claim it - continuous flow aquaponics grows faster.

Algae - good place for ghost shrimp to hide and they eat it. WILL be a problem if you don't input your water below the surface of the bed to keep the top dry.

Looks good!

I will be making a stand pipe with 4" pvc so I can clean it out by hand when needed. Im going to use lava rock, the red ones, but I want to find smaller stones not the ones at Lowes or HD... I need to look harder for lava the size of hydrotrons...

I will be running continuous flow, and will leave about 1/4" at the bottom of the bed to then drain. Overflow, yah, Ill make one. I'll probly be on the side of the tray and be ugly... lol. I will also have a waterfall effect going on too and some venturi action. THis is going to be fun. Plus the kid can feed them all the time with no monitoring.

Sweet! You are well on your way it sounds good. Well thought out and executed.

On lava rock. The only drawback I've found is that it can be hard on seeds if you like to just chuck em in there. Maybe I'm just spoilt for seed sounds like most people spend their mortgage on them...

However, with you growing veg... veg seeds it isn't a problem I throw in 3 times as much as needed and the one's that find a good spot to take do so.

If people want excellent cloning directly in their beds.... use lava rock on the bottom and the top 2-3 inches of the small hydroton (ideally the bed is dry on the surface and damp from 1 inchish down). Don't use rooting hormone just soak your cuts, then scrape the stem of your cuts lightly, and put in the bed.

PS - when you've finished making it...

1st make sure all silicon etc is VERY dry. I dunno if I mentioned it should be fish safe (no fungicide) silicon for any and all parts touching the water... If it's not you can get some and coat the top of the existing stuff you've used.
2nd run a bleach solution through the system for 24 hours with the system "full" to clean any manufacturing gunk and drill shavings etc out properly.
Then cycle up.

yes, I was going to wash it out with soap. Then do a rubdown with bleach not really run it through the system. I have an aquarium that I am going to empty about 10 gallons from for this system. I am also going to use some lava structures I made and some stones too, this sshould get the bio started quickly. As soon as I get it set up and add fish I will put some pics.

I have tried aquaponic with legals. My tank is a stable community tank and I don't use charcoal. I have some aquatic plants and lush algae between scrubbings. It happens the same every time: the plants thrive with window light and oxygenated PH neutral water. They grow well and then begin to show deficiencies in every nutrient known to plants. My water is too pure. Old age is one of the primary causes of death in my fishtank.

You can spend a lot of time and effort finding livestock that will thrive in high P-K water, have a lot die in the discovery process, have your plants die of nute deficiency. Or: you could split the root system into two circiuts of water. One is the fishtank where the roots purify the water, and get the majority of their plant-thirst water. The other side of the plants' roots go into a separate hydro system. You will run high nute levels in that and tune them to the plants' various growth stages.

I grow tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, sage, thyme, oregano, marjoram, lettuce, rocket, spinach, silverbeet, chard, bok choi, capsicum, chillies, spring onions, watercress plus azolla duckweed and algae for fish food in Aquaponics. I do not experience nutrient deficiencies.

To break it down of what I feed and how much is growing.

In one system I have a variety of veggies leafy and fruiting.
It has 3 m2 of beds.
I have between 4 - 5 kilos of goldfish.
This system gets fed a level tablespoon of fish food per day (input)
It also gets 1/3 cup azolla/duckweed a day (free growing in system)
A 35 watt pump runs it all.
The sun lights it.

I have a system like dasme's. It is pretty much the exact same thing (how it runs and what's in it). This system has guppies and snails (small up to 8 mm natives) in it, is inside, and is heated. The heater is set to 22 degrees and the guppies thrive, breeding like crazy. The heater switches on in Winter, so it's a power draw then. It is well insulated though so won't draw so much.
This 2nd system has 0.36 m2 bed. It grows basil parsley lettuce mesclun mix type stuff and is right by the kitchen Leafy salad greens and herbs.
I feed this system some algae from the goldfish system, and about 1/10th teaspoon crushed fish pellets per day.

A third system 3 grows ferns and native mosses and lichens in a shaded window and has a cold water tank installed in a dark recess under it with 3 native trout. The trout get fed on guppies from system 2 and earthworms from the compost (not red wrigglers). I have pellets for them but I've only used about 20 grams in 2 years.

I'm sure you'll be ok, just expect a bit of fun and games as you cycle up. Hopefully the fish water will see it sweet.

Start small on the fish and plant something right away is a good move too. Then slowly add fish and plants as it matures it should give you no problems and just improve with age. Pull old plants out and replace with new seed direct into the beds - you'll love it. I'll see if I can pm you a photo of my system like yours.

Wow, MrFista, so it DOES work.

Now if the whole world could appreciate, understand, or at least work such systems then the world population can grow even more and people won't starve.

My aquaponics dream is to get some some property with cold water, high in the Apalachian mountains and set up a system that grows trout and corn and vegetables with enough corn for both the people and trout. Trout will serve as insect patrol.

I will attempt brackish aquaponics just as soon as I can get a mangrove plant. This would use crabs instead of fish.

Glad you like the feedback Bonsai. It does work, and the veggies are beautiful.

Now, corn.... I hate to tell you this but my attempts at aquaponic corn sucked. Small, small ears, less grains. I asked several friends about their corn efforts - small, small ears, less grains....

The Other thing Aquaponics sucks at is root crops. No luck with potatoes yams or sweet potatoes. And legumes - Too much nitrogen already. I will be growing potatoes carrots etc and corn outdoors this year to complement my steady supply of greens and toms/peppers.

This is annoying as these 'carb staples', and legumes (peas and beans) are very popular foodstuffs. I've worked out I can run peas and beans as a third filtered crop but the setup is prohibitive seeing as I'm already organised... ie:

With the first run of water the toms and most herbs get a feed and this water then goes into either watercress beds or duckweed/azolla. This is the second filtration. The plants still grow very well, and the water is being further cleaned before returning to the fish. If I were to capture this secondary filtered water I'm quietly confident it would be dilute enough for legume crops.

It leaves the fish tank at 20 ppm nitrate, I'll try to record what goes back in if I remember to today.

The trout system sound great! These native trout are my favourites they hide in the shadows and you throw a worm or bug in, BAM, they hit it so hard they bounce of the walls of the tank. They come in sideways like sharks too, very cool. Add guppies and it's....

Thunk, thunk, thump thunk splash smack!

Trout water is very cold, and some veg will be prohibited by this. Checking your local hydro outfits and see what they run in colder temps is the fastest way to learn what might work in your Aqua.

ps - there are thousands of varieties of corn - if you have the time and space and inclination to experiment - you might get lucky.

I just replaced the torch batteries (5 bucks for 2 damn batteries, only 2 bucks for the torch!) last night to check the trout tank properly - and discover it's actually a bulb that's blown - it's difficult being a genius hehe.

hey guys you may want to think about tilapia (sp?) or coi fish....i've seen a very beautiful med grow w/ coi.

Beautiful, you should checkout backyardaquaponics.com (or net, I forget), its a great forum with very experienced aquaponic growers.

Thanks Mr C a great recommendation. it's a dot com.

Fista.. I cant get my head around one aspect of AP Beds.

Let's say Im going to remove one plant from the bed, but want to leave the rest. How would I do this? Besides, "just pull it up" I know that removing roots means removing part of the filter and also damaging other plant roots. I know that you shouldnt remove all plants at once, but all plants wont live forever in the system... What's the procedure here?

Im off to wash the tray here and the tub too plus put together the drip manifold. Ill be getting some fish by the wknd. Im going to start with 6 goldies. Then a dozen rosy minnows in a 2 weeks. Then Ill get 12 goldies 2 weeks from then.

What's a good catfish that stays small that can handle all the N in these systems? Plecos get so big as do channel cats, Im thinking just do lots and lots of snails instead of cat fish. Between snails and shrimp they shoule keep it all inline... in theory anyway.

Yep - just pull em up. I grow things till they look old and then just tear them out. I try be conscious of root systems around them with big plants like toms and peppers but it doesn't seem to cause any problems. You'll find the bed naturally gets worms in it, you can add some after the first tear up anytway. A few red wrigglers (tiger worms) will deal with old roots, excess fish solids etc and only populate enough to deal with the food source at hand. they do not touch the living roots and also eat diseased/rotted portions of roots if problems are present.

Honestly, just tear em up, and throw more seeds in, it's that easy.

Again on tiger worms - not for fish consumption - they want earthworms.