Ghana Ponics 20

Just as a memory. Added the system we set up on site.  Quite prolific.

Aquaponics Part 1 'ish.......and stop..

Really is two paces forward one back..  Moved to Vanuatu. Interesting place but have not discovered any aquaponics or hydroponics.

Will look more closely...

Major Upgrade

Well we've been at this for some time. Problems with insufficient fish mass, some stolen and resulting poor crop growth.

We decided (Management decision) to expand our system. Several reasons, first being there was next to no cost involved as we already owned several concrete water tanks which were not in use and secondly to allow for two tanks giving a bit more flexibility  for faih amanagemtn. i.e. two tanks better than one.  If we have more spare we would have used them as well. Anyway thankful for what we've got.

In expanding we used the existing fish tank as our main settlement tank and continued using existing settlement tank as well.

Results for water quality. Testing scheduled for this afternoon but this mornings visual observations, water in fish tanks is clear, settlement tank a bit of floating debris but not much. Think it is some of the first fish food after relocating the fish and also poo.  Bio tank is cristal clear.

Small tank has two dead fish yesterday and three today. They only went in 2 days ago so thats not so surprising.

System is now 2 X 1000 litre tanks.
Settlement Tank 1  1000 litres
Settlement Tank 2  250 litres
Bio Tank  Tank 1 250litres
Deep Raft Grow beds 12 meters x 0.9 x 0.3 Approx 3,000 litres

All go.

Very Rough System Diagram......

Bio Filter Tank

Secondary Settlement Tank

MAin Settlement Tank

Fish Tank 1  Feeding Time

Water Testing

Just tested the water. Results look OK. I've put them all on a separate page.  Much easier to review. But plant growth is poor. Not sure where I am going wrong with all this. Will need to get some expert advice.

Stolen Fish

Stolen. Yes you read right. We've been away for a few days and when we got back I went to say hello and no reply. Some Bastard has taken out fish. I will find out who. Wanna keeps going to check but... So move on. Buy some more. Which we did this morning. Bummer...... Food for thought anyone with an open fish area.

Maintenance

All seems to be going OK. Checked the water today. Reduced the flow rate to see if I can capture more solids. Hope this has some positive result. Nitrates up and so are the ppm hydroponic truncheon test. Ph steady.  See side bar for details. I think this is all good. Let me know if I'm wrong.

And The Plants are Growing

Been standing around almost wishing I could see the plants grow. I know every day bit by bit... So I'm pleased with progress. I do still need to get a better filter system in place to avoid solids going into the plants.  I've tried along with bio balls, to add some additional filter cloth and covered the flow pipe to the plants with a fine mesh.  Latter works fine but keeps blocking up quickly. I'll be giving this some more thought. Need a bigger surface area for the filter fabric.

Fish look happy and always ready for a feed. Plants, well I have not heard any complain to me yet....

April 11th Where we're at.......................

Been putting off the additional shade cloth installation till a cooler day. Well can only wait so long and today was a bit cooler around 36Deg... So added in some 80% shade cloth to the steel frame above the raft system, and then Wanna added in the seeds.

I checked the Ph, just shy of 8 and the Nitrates and Nitrites around 0.3 and 0-12.5 respectively. So within a reasonable margin. I also used my hydroponic EC meter.  940 PMM sees a bit on the low side but adequate for salads. Not I suspect for Tomatoes. So we'd planned accordingly and Wanna had prepared seeds adding in Bak Choi (Thai) and, Bak Choi (Vietnamese) and some other greens used locally for stir frys. This time we used new seeds. Earlier we used up our old ones and all the packets has a use by date, we exceeded them all by a few years..... So little success earlier and really we cannot be to surprised.

Since we started this second system I had always planned to keep tidy and well organised. However we also started with the premise that we would do it as cheaply as possible not a completely compatible idea out the the garden environment. So slowly we have made improvements. I've put the tanks on a concrete base and added a small concrete path round the side of the Grown beds.  We also have lighting and spare electric sockets. So now beginning to look the part. All these extras being done while we completed the house, again keeping costs low and using up all the surplus bits from house construction. Amazing have you ever noticed how much waste is generated in house construction, meters of electrical cable for a start and short lengths of plastic water pipe.  Well I think I found a use for most of it.....

Also with the revamp we've drilled holes in the deliver pipes from fish tank to settlement tank to avoid air blockage which was a bit of a problem, Cleaned out the aeration tank and added proper bio balls instead of old plastic cuttings from water pipe...I've added  a short slide show of today's status. Main thing to watch over coming weeks will be the plant progress. Having been very slack on counting fish numbers and mortality etc I can only guess at food quantities, if they come for food I feed them..

Maintenance

Spent the morning doing repairs to my raft system.  I built it on an old set of hydroponic frames. So it seems a good idea at the time. However the additional weigh of the raft system has resulted in the frames sinking into the ground. The local soil is a very light clay.  Hard as rock and dusty when dry and slippery mud when wet. So any slight moisture and the system collapsed... Bummer.

Still today we  redid the frame supports and added some angle iron to sides and undersides of the  polystyrene raft.  Should be good to go. Unfortunately we lot our stock of plants which as it happens were doing abysmally...

So time to move on. Next crop.  We'll keep recirculating to keep the fish happy.  Should commence reseeding tomorrow.

I'll reset everything back in its rightful place tomorrow and also sort out the seedling table and tidy up the area.  It has all been a bit full on recently and a very hectic time. Finishing the house, Work prospects etc so this has not received priority. Cold beer this evening and start again tomorrow.

Small upgrade to tidy the place up.

Decided to concrete some of the surrounding area to the tanks and seedling area. Definetely required before the rainy season.  The dusty soil just turns to mud.  Horrible to walk on.  I'll also be doing a pathway between the runs in due course. Thats definately for another day.

Concreting scheduled for later today but maybe delayed till tomorrow.  Depends on having suffucient aggregate. Easy to buy but been busy fixing a water leak... Another story altogether.

General Update 1000 litre system

Been a hectic last two weeks. Busy on house, driving new motorbike etc so Aquaponics has not been taking the No 1 spot.  This last two weeks we've lots about 5 fish. The system is not overloaded but I think they were being slowly killed by love. i.e. to much food. So a couple of days off should do the trick.  I've done some water tests nothing major to report. Reading up the general consensus is the system needs 4-6 months to stabilise. So 6 weeks in is not to bad.

We've added in our NFT table which started yesterday. To early to say if it will work. For salads I expect it to be fine but for tomatoes doubt there is a high enough concentration of nutrients to really get it all moving in the right direction.

The first two photos show our new tables NFT and the third the inside of the tunnel with the deep water and polystyrene floats.

Pictures tell a thousand words...

New System Part 7

Just added a couple of 500 gram Tilipia as the bio level based on using my Hyrdoponic trunchon read 8.3 (initial system is reading around 14 and seems OK with the plants looking a little weak.) so I need more nutrients in the system to maintain my plants. Hopefully these two big fish should add something to all this. The fish actually were caught in our pond a few days ago. We left them in our other system until we were ready for a Bar B Q. Guess they got a reprieve....

New System Part 6

Things are going well. Did some water testing and things look good.  We did have some trouble getting the tanks to stop leaking.  I have been unable to locate a shop that sells rubber grummets. Bit of a problem. But for now plasticine seems to work. The leaking makes the ground soft and then the tanks tilt more. Sort of self perpetuating....
But all good. Next job is to add in some NFT pipes to see if I can these going as well. (added a picture of it half done). Only doubt I am having is if the fish are producing enough nutrients to feed so many plants. The system is new so does need some time to get established. I've got a EC meter for measuring the amount of nutriens in the water and will start using it this week. Interest all the stuff I'll saved over the years from my earlier hydroponic farming as it is all coming back into use. Feels good not to have so much waste and also gets rid of a lot of crap in my store!!!

One thing I have not figured out yet is why the polystyrene trays have a series of channels and then a sheet that side on top with holes. Well I know if for irrigation but my question is why 10 run channels in the base polystyrene and 6 rows of holes. Means some of the plants have to struggle a bit to get down to the water flow. I've not [put this to clearly but it is difficult to explain. Anyway all going OK for now.

New System Part 5

We've doing well. Everything installed except the spreader bar to deliver water to the plants. Just need ot cut some holes and install it. Spend this morning installing some building blocks (red clay bricks) as part of my bio filter. So spreader bar, add bio filter material and some filter cloth good to go.  Seedlings are ready.  Fish shop will have our fish ready on Friday... All done and sorted !!!

New System Part 4

Think we have finally got the main tanks completed. Wanna finished the silicon around the fittings. We did have some dramas getting the lower tank fitting to seal properly. Steve managed to buy some proper washers yesterday that did the trick. Job done. Thanks Steve.

So tomorrow off to Chat Takarn to pick up the grown beds. Also means I will not play around with the the pipes etc and give the silicon a chance to dry out properly. Get those grow beds installed and we are ready to start  placing the seedlings and add fish. Exciting times.

New System Part 3

Things are progressing at a slow pace, mainly due to so many other things going on. We've basically set up the system components I'd say we're 50% done. Still need the grow beds which are due for delivery on or around the 17th of this month. Then run trials and we're away.

We're using a concrete (ferro cement) water tank as the fish tank. It has about 1500 litres capacity. More than adequate, large plastic bins or the settlement and bio filter system. And another plastic bin for the sump. Need to connect them all up and make sure it all works. Seeds have already been planted in the adjacent grow bed, shown in bottom left corner of the last photo.  Update to follow.