Crayfish 19

All very quiet.   We've been away for a while and we left Mum to feed the fish. Only problem was she thought they were very hungry.  Gave them about 6 months food over a 5 day period !!!  Major clean out of the tanks last night when we got back.  All good and the little fella's appear quite happy with life. Few babies appearing.

And yes Aquaponics will be starting up again in May......

Aquaponics Part 1 'ish.......

Finally into retirement and today commenced with a start to clearing up of my old system. I'm not going to rush it. It's remained untouched for over 2 years. Couple of hours each day should see us up and running in about three weeks.

I'm cheating in someways as I will be using some of the old water so start up timing should be quicker. And as I am forever an optimist I'll start the seedling next week !!

I will be buying hybrid fish from our local petrol station. Thinking one tank cat fish and one tilapia. Thats right you read that correctly, a petrol station! A guy there has a stall on the side of the forecourt.  Been there for years before I came up here 15 years ago. Sells fish, frogs, prawns and assorted plants etc so good place to stop off. We have bought from him in the past. Thats how we stocked our pond.

So my first day at it...... but looking at the before and after shots I hope I've got them the right way round.  Looks like very little got done !!


Before and after shots of todays work......

Before.........

After...... looking a bit better......... only a bit..........long way to go but at least I cleared up the under growth and no snakes.... or scorpions. So lucky start.


The hardest part is going to be getting the grow table sorted.  Needs re-leveling. Thinking of new steel bars as underside supports and then some fibre board before i reinstall the polystyrene channel.  (which has in part suffered severe damage due to rats in the store getting hungry.).  Can't win on that one.

Crayfish Part 11

We've moved up to Ban Muang following my retirement for engineering work at the end of May. We brought the Crayfish up with us. It was a difficult journey as we put them all together in a Polystyrene  Box with just water and an air pump. It was a 7 hour journey and they took some rough and tumbles along the way. Sadly a few small ones died and a few others lost a claw or 2 !

We have now got them set up in our Sala area of the house. Two tanks. The main one with all the Crayfish and a few fish, except for three pregnant Crays which we have separated out into another tank. Now its time to sit back and watch them grow.

Suspended Air Pump.  Air con unit is for us not them !

Taking up valuable floor space !

Relaxing on their "pipe" homes.

Ban Muang Aquaponics "Food for Thought"

I just in my last post talked about air lift pump tests.  All good stuff I know but I got to thinking about the more simplistic side of aquaponics.  Walking around with my camera I stopped to photo/video the fish we had just put in our tank.  I call it a tank. Just outside the kitchen we have a concrete pipe on its side with a concrete base.  We set it up there several years and we filled it with water Lillys and some small fish.  Main reason was to locate the pipe somewhere useful !!!
I got to thinking.  This is really a small aquaponics system in full balance.  We add water as the evaporation requires if the rain does not do it for us, and throw in some food time to time. No measurement of grams per fish weight or water volume etc,  and indeed I suspect when we are away, in fact I very much doubt if anyone bothers to check on our tank or look to see if anything needs feeding. Bit of a pun coming up but "Food for Thought !!!!"

Progress Update

We've been away for the last few weeks leaning Wanna's niece to feed fish and top up the water etc. During our absence we  did have a  power cut.. She managed to cope and I happy to report both Fish and plants doing well. You can see from the attached photos that we are getting a good crop. The veg is morning glory used a lot in local cooking. Wanna only cuts the tops and leaves the stem to regrow.  So far so good. And the fish continue to grow. We've got some fungus on the leaves but Wanna will be sorting that out in due course....
I can see on next trip home my adding another tank for more starter fish… Will be fun just planning it….Should not be such a big think to add it on.

Progress

Been a difficult few days. The supports to our deep water channels subsided at the far end. We had concreted most of it and expected the remaining few were on good enough ground to cope with the rain. Not the case.  Seems if shit is going to happen to our system it will!!!

So we lost water and obviously nutrients etc. Added drama was the shade cloth split in the wind.
Being away and leaving it all to Wanna seems a bit unfair but what can I do!!! She did a great gob and got it all sorted. Needless to say it has had some effect on the fish. Fresh water etc.  We have also continued and had a few of the small fish die. Roughly one a day this last week. The bigger tank is fine and they have got back into the habit of jumping up for food. Good sign. However given the mortality rate for the smaller ones and looking at the waste coming from the tank (see below) I suspect we are giving them to much food. Wanna (again down to her) has reduced the feed on the small ones by 50% yesterday and the waste/return looked good with little to nothing rising to the surface in the big tank. So all is beginning to look positive.

We're (royal we) have also planted "Morning Glory', an easy fast growing hardy plant with does take up a lot of nutrient but gets everything up and underway in what I hope will from now on be a continuous manner.

Additional Works

Wanna has just installed the shade cloth and this covers the seedling area and the tanks. Very pleased with it all.

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 !!!

All Going Well.

Not much to record at this time. System seems ot be going OK. Few small insects and a sort of white fly around but to be expected with no covers. Took a few photos. All growing well.

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.

Water Testing and System Review

Took some water samples today.  Looking good. (See side bar for details).

System appears very stable with 7 fish in clean water and plenty of veggies in the grow beds.

I've also checked the circulation volume, can do it from pump data but also checked with just simply collecting the output to each tank for 30 secs each. Throughput added up to exactly 2 litres for 30 seconds. Thats 4 litres a minute so 240 litres an hour. Tank volume is near 180 litres so an exchange rate of every 45 minutes. Very acceptable. If anything a bit on the fast side. But I'll stick go with the pump system I've got. You know the expression, "if it ain't broke don't fix it".