Late post of last years Aquaponics activities

Sorry for the late post. This was at the end of the season last year towards the end of September 2012. I moved positions within my company at my day job...you know the one that truly pays the bills, and didn't have much time to dedicate to my Aqauponic adventures. I'm hopefully back on track and can post more as time allows.  This post is related to the phenomenal growth of my tomato and Basil plants in the fall. The tomato plants along with the basil, actually choked out all the other growth in the beds by late November. I harvested the Basil, drying some and making the rest into homemade pesto which I froze.

Mainly Tomato and Basil plants

I also had several types of Lettuce and Kale growing in the sprouting rafts

Some of the final product, Dried Basil and Pesto.

Here's an Overview of the September 2012 Growth in the Greenhouse.

Until Next Time....Enjoy!

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.

Plants, Plants and more Plants

Here's where my system is at going into mid May, I just got finished placing some of my left over expanded shale into the area around the pump house and barrel filters. I placed some above ground plastic edging at the boarder of the ground tarps over to the greenhouse , and then used about 3 wheelbarrow's full of shale to fill it in about 2" inches deep. I was in jeopardy of losing the weed block as it was beginning to deteriorate from the sun.

It turned out rather nice and provided good drainage for any rain water coming off the greenhouse.

I have also included a few pics of the raft system plants to show some of the growth that is going on.

I have five varieties of lettuce, which include Romain, and bibb. Just wish I had more growing.

 I also have squash and cucumber plants in the raft systems which seem to being doing "Just OK", but really haven't taken off yet.

Here is a quick overview video of the entire greenhouse setup, inlcuding the DWC Raft and new nursery plant rafts.

Until Next time....

Disaster in the DWC rafts...UPDATE.

OK...so it's taken me awhile to get the system back up and running. I received the ES3500 pump with some shipping damage. The unit's condensor cover was cracked along with the plastic base due to improper packing.  The FedEx delivery driver handed me the box and the pump was just bouncing around inside apparently with very little packing material. There was no obvious damage to the outside of the box, but of course the box was dropped and the pump's cover cracked when hitting the ground. Any way, I contacted the seller and was assured that a new cover would be sent out, I have yet to see one after 2 weeks, so I will follow up and see if or when it was shipped. So for now, I just epoxied the cover back together, everything else apparently works and I haven't found any other cracks in the unit.

After getting the pump in shape, I had to do a bit of re-arrangement on the plumbing for the system using 2" PVC throughout and getting rid of the 5/8" garden hose feeding the grow beds.

and as you can see, the new pump is in place. I also added downspouts to the feeder pipe with ball valves attached and have built spray nozzle which redirect water back into the fish tanks and provides extra aeration.  Of course, now I have a multitude of piping to climb over to get to the fish tanks. Of course I have also had to redesign the bell siphons to adjust to the increased water flow as the fish tanks were filling to fast and over flowing. I am still tinkering with balancing the system. I added some nursery DWC raft to the systems and so far I have had good success in sprouting new seeds.

I also added a washing machine tray on top and I have a constant flow of water traversing the tray and grow beds which then drain directly back into the fish tanks  So far I have had about a 75% sprout rate on seeds, not great but good for what I'm trying to accomplish.

That's it for now...more to follow soon.

Adding Mozambique Tilapia to the Fish Tanks

I finally have some Mozambique Tilapia in the fish tanks. I made the journey to Overton Fisheries south of Corsicana, a three hour drive one way to pick up about 50 fish. Overton's has a pretty nice operation with quick friendly service. They had me in and out in about 30 minutes.Overton's was out of fingerlings so I had to go with the normal stocking mixed sex/ mixed size offering at $10 per LB....it was a much better choice than fingerlings, and for about the same price, I received much larger fish.

The fish were packed in a large bag/box with some fishy valium and oxygen to keep the Tilapia calm for the trip home.

Once back at the greenhouse I had to move all of my gold fish out of three of the tanks and into a single tank, which took me a couple of hours..it's hard catching 75 gold fish...I now have about 100 in one tank.

Before doing this I opened the box to check on the fish and placed an air stone in the box to aerate the water. I also, checked the PH and Ammonia of the fish box water, the PH was 7.2 and the Ammonia was a whopping 8.8ppm, versus my own tanks levels. I thought the fish were going to be goners...but they are tuff. I started adding water from my fish tanks over the next three hours to help equalize the PH and cut the Ammonia down, after which I introduced the new fish to their tanks. I graded these into three sizes, small, medium and large and placed each size in their own tanks.

Here is a video overview of the Tilapia in their new homes.

I also picked up a 50# bag of Cargill Aquafeed for the little beasties, that should last me several months. I plan on going back in June for more fish and will pick up another bag of feed if the fish do well on it.

 Until next time....keep on farming those fish and veggies.