August Update - Baby Oh! Baby! more Fish Tanks

It's August and it's very hot outside, we are having 100+ degree days with little humidity, so I am having to add water every other day to both systems in the greenhouse. The only positive of the heat has been an increase in broods from the breeding colonies that are in place. This being said, I have had to install two new fish tanks. I fashioned these out of two 55 gallon blue plastic drums. I go over this in the embedded video.  More updates to come soon.

July 2012 Update - Mid Summer heat and bugs

OK...I know it's been awhile since I last posted any updates, but as everyone knows, everyday life can consume much of your time just tyring to get by.... Anyway, enough of that. I didn't have much time to dedicate to the plants in the greenhouse due to other responsibilities during June and the 1st part of July, but I'm in the process of rectifying that. Here's an update on what's been going on with the whole system.

As you know it can get pretty hot in Texas, and boy it has been. This has been detrimental to most of the plants in my raft system...all of the Squash, & Cucumber plants succumbed to the heat along with some of the more tender Bibb lettuce. Tomatoes and Peppers didn't do well either, but I think this was mostly due to lack of enough fish in my system to provide the required nutrients. The only plants that did well were my Basil, Swiss Chard and Romaine Lettuce plants.

As for the media grow beds inside the greenhouse, I have had to rip most of those out due to an explosion of white flies that started on my tomato plants and rapidly spread to almost all of the other plants in the greenhouse. I had them under control for quite sometime, but I believe the high heat in the greenhouse stressed the plants causing them to become less resistant to the white flies. After removing most of the plants with the exception of my red Swiss chard, some of the mint, basil and rosemary and spot spraying with insecticidal soap, the white fly population has dwindled considerably and is barely noticeable. I will continue to treat for them as I add back plants to the media grow beds. Lesson learned, be consistent and persistent with pest control.

Here are the Media growbeds partially replanted with the remaining plants from my rafts.

and a pics of the rafts after cleaning the surface of the foam boards, the liners were cleaned as well.

On a happier note, due to the increased temperature in the greenhouse, my fish tank water is hovering anywhere from 82 to 86 degrees which has promoted much spawning inside the tanks.

I currently have five broods of baby Tilapia in various stages of growth. I currently up to about 300 fish, including fry and fingerling's. A pic of the latest small fry is shown below, they are gray and hard to see in the photo but show up better in the video.

I also traveled, once again, down to Overton Fisheries to purchase some Red Mozambique Tilapia. I bought forty of these and actually ended up with about forty-six. While most were a solid orange/red color. I had 13 that were partially or fully grey with a red sheen to their bodies. The only way to tell the difference between these reds and normal grey Tilapia is by their Red Eyes. Since this is the first year Overton has offered these Tilapia, I believe their breeding program has not quite gotten to the point of producing pure reds.

I think I will try to breed these back to each other in successive generation to get  pure red females that I can then breed to a Nile Male for all male offspring....Some I'm off to by breeding tanks for my next chapter in Aquaponics. I intend to setup some breeding colonies of greys and reds, and once I get my Aquatic species/Aquaculture licenses perhaps I will try some Blues, & Niles.

Here's a quick video update on the aquaponics system...enjoy.

DWC Raft construction update

OK, so I had time to make a quick video on the DWC rafts for one of my aquaponics media based growbed systems. I have finished the rafts and will concentrate on the filter system next which will allow me to tie the two types of media together into one system - DWC and Expanded shell grow beds. I will attempt to get the filter system completed within the next several days and hopefully have it completed and tested by the end of next week.

DWC on-going construction.

Hope you enjoy the video, and remember, you can find all of my videos on the Aquaponics Gardener YouTube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Aquaponicsgardener

Until next time, happy gardening.

Construction of the DWC rafts

Well, spring is in the air, and you know what that means....it's time to expand the system and add the Deep Water Culture rafts to the grow beds. So I have purchased most of the materials at my local building supply chains, along with the 12mil B/W Poly Scrim liner material on-line from Americover.com. I based part of my design on the UVI systems, while also making it scalable using off the shelf plumbing parts bought locally.  For the raft side walls, I went with Hardie fiber cement plank 12"W x 12'L. This is very water resistant, and rot/termite proof, so it should be long lasting and it was comparable in price to ACX plywood. ACX plywood would have to be cut into 1ft strips while the Hardie plank is already the correct width. I went with PT 2"x4"x8' for the side rails for durability and weather resistance, with a 1"x 2" furring strip top rails to negate wear on the liner. The assembly process was pretty straightforward and I was able to complete construction of each raft, less the liner installation, in a couple of hours. I measured off an area that was 25ft x 25ft and placed woven weed block down prior to raft construction. I laid this in a cross hatch pattern, double layer which was approximately 1100 sq ft of material and attached it with ground pins. I will be adding edging material later and filling in the area with expanded shale or gravel.

Here are a few pics of the raft construction process, note that I used all galvanized fasteners for construction.

 1"x2"x24" PT stakes were added as side support and to negate any shifting, these were attached with 1/4"x3-1/2" galv. carriage bolts w/nuts and washers.

Since I have two aquaponics systems, I am building two rafts per system for a total of 4 rafts. Each raft is 4'W(actual is 51")x16'L, this provides me with 256sq ft of growing space, with a an average of 30 plants per 1sq meter (10sqft), I should be able to have approx. 768 plants along with those in the grow beds. I also intend to add additional  4'x4' DWC rafts inside the greenhouse. This should up the count to approx. 1000 plants between both system. Of course, once the rafts were finished I had to paint them to match the greenhouse and our home.

Based on my previous design, I am using 2" PVC to connect the beds on the far end using 2" DWV 90deg EL's and 2" non caulking floor drains. The floor drains have an internal rubber busing which can be tightened down on the 2" PVC pipe and if necessary loosened later for removal or expansion.

The floor drains require a 3-1/4 hole saw which is a perfect fit. The only problem I ran into was that the concrete board pretty much destroyed the hole saw after 4 holes...so I will have to buy another one when constructing the second set of rafts..which are kind of pricey at $17 a pop, but hey, it for a good cause, so enough about that. In the pics above I used a scrap piece of board to test the size and fit of the drain...can you say perfect.

Now on to drilling the holes in the raft beds.

 These holes were placed at 5" from the bottom and 25-1/2" on center of the Hardie plank. Remember, I build the rafts 51" wide.

And with that, I end this post as it has now been raining for several days, and I will need to continue this after I have progressed further on my installation of the DWC rafts, hope you find this helpful.

Time to plant for seedlings

OK...so I'm a little late on planting my seedlings due to other domestic obligations ...anyway, I have picked up some seedling trays from Amazon that are being used to start my seedlings. I tried using white grow cubes on my bell peppers in the past, which sprouted fine, but did not allow for enough oxygen to the roots and too much water causing rot. This time around I'm using peat moss. I have to pack each seed cell in the tray with peat moss, which should provide a good foundation for the roots. I am using a combination of rain water and FT water to sprout the seeds.  Hopefully, the greenhouse will provide enough light for stronger growing plants. I am growing two varieties of cucumbers, three different types of tomatoes, some heirloom, along with kale, lettuce, squash, etc. etc. etc. Once the sprouts are large enough, tomatoes will be placed in the media grow beds, along with the cucumbers while most of the rest will go into the DWC rafts once completed.