Disaster in the DWC raft System.

OK...so a few days ago, I was working on a new set of  plant nursery rafts  in the green house when I noticed as I walked by the system that is connected to the new DWC rafts that the blower was working but no water was coming out of the grow bed fill tubes.Uh Oh!..Could there be a pump problem? So, out I went to the pump box, and after a close inspection, it appeared that the Danner Mag 9.5 pump was down. Of course it was 8 o'clock Sunday night, so I decided to take the pump out and see if the impeller was stuck or gunked up.  I reached down and turned the Union Ball valve to the closed position to cut the DWC rafts off from the rest of the system. Of course, as I removed the pump, water came gushing out of the valve...how could this be?...after feeling around inside the valve, it appears that one of the Teflon rings in the valve became partially dislodged and was no longer making a seal...so how to stop the flow...hook the pump back up of course. So now what to do...

So, I decided to run down to Lowes to pick up a new temp pump, not realizing I already had one that would have gotten me by...but hey, I had to get a new valve..right?  So, off I went, 11 miles to Lowes, and after picking out a 2000 GPH pump, and PVC pipe along with a new valve and fittings I was back home in a flash, only to find out that the pump I had purchased was only submersible and not an in-line as there were no threads on the intake port, but the output was threaded, so I assumed both were threaded, and you know what "Assumed" means..right!.

So in order to take the valve out, I had to plug up the 2" PVC pipe coming out of the raft using a 2" rubber test plug, which did the trick. After placing the plug, I disconnected the pump for further troubleshooting.


Anyway, after looking at the Danner Mag pump, and giving it a thorough cleaning, after which I did some research on the problem, it appears that the outside temp  peaked at 85 degrees that day causing a rise in the housing temperature  allowing for the thermal cutoff to kick in on the pump, shutting it down to avoid damage. So, I'm not able to use this pump type in-line, but I will be using it in the winter in the fish tank once I shut down the grow bed...no big deal.

That being said, I decided to use the Danner Mag in the Fish Tank temporarily to pump water back into the grow beds until I could find a pump better suited to in-line use.

After much research, I decided on an Evolution ES3500 in-line out of pond pump with a priming pot that I can use for both Aquaponic systems. It only uses 143 watts which is about 40 watts less than both my Danner Mag pumps together, so a little bit of savings will be realized in electric cost down the road.



I ordered it from a KOI pond dealer on-line with free shipping for $245 including the priming pot and 2"unions.  It should be hear any day now via FEDEX.



Of course, this gave me the opportunity to make some improvements to the barrel filters. I removed the home made PVC male/female bulk head fitting with a 1" standard slip bulk head fitting.on the swirl filter, and I replaced the outlet PVC male/female adapter on the Baki filter with a 2" Uniseal to prevent any leaks.






I will provide an update on the new pump installation once it arrives.

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.