Ressurected System

Hi,

Having met up with a bunch of like minds Aquaponic types last weekend in Bangkok I decided to get my system out of mothballs.

Started setting it up yesterday and today. Gone away from the high level flood and drain system to a sump tank. I think in my case this should be much easier. Need now to get pump working properly.  The old one  lasted 5 minutes and died. Then I need to add stone to the grow beds and buy some fish. Going again for using Tilapia. Fairly hardy and it gets me up and running. To think I've been sitting around here doing very little and had all this gear stuck in a store... Oh well no excuses now....

2010 Update

I've now been at this Barrel Ponics for about 6 weeks and all going well. I've got the ladder well placed to inspect the filling tank and as you can see also aquired a small light. Thats only 3 Watts but attracts insects which die and fall in the tank. Extra food for the cat fish.

In total when we started there were 20 Tilapia and 10 cat fish. 4 tilapia have died and 2 catfish. However there appear to be only 4 cat fish remaining? I know they can jump out as we put 2 back a few days ago after we found about 5 meters away! However no sign of the missing ones.

The plants have also done well. Better in the barrel on right handside but not so well on the left. I think the left side gets to much sun and is also for some reason  more full of dirt. But the good news is that I see the tomatoe plants are begining to flower so I am optimistic we should get a crop. I've also added in egg plants and
some Thai herbs so will start to see and record progress over the next few months.

One thing that seems to be going very well is the float/flood control. For the leverage system to open the flush, instead of following Travis with using some rollers and a moving wire (could not find any locally) I've used a short piece of plastic piping as a 'rocker' lever, connected it to some old electric wire and cut a grove in it and in the top of the tank where it is positioned. I then for safety put a second piece of wire across the top just to stop it jumping out of position. I have been expecting it to break down but so far so good. It is so simple and I am 'chuffed' to bits about it.

Construction Episode 2. And Commencement

We've added in the flush pipes into the grow beds and now all seems complete and all going well. So you can imagine my satisfaction when it all worked so well. We decide following advice to initially not to add vegatables, just fish and let the system 'settle'.
Wanna had yesterday bought some fish. And they appeared to be doing OK and the flood and drain system has up to now, as I write, continued without any short comings. Well I did do some initial changes, as explained earlier, about replacing the water bottle (counter weigh to the flush) as the original one kept overflowing. Hardly a major issue.

We bought two more larger fish at the market on Saturday. These additional ones were big Tilapia 'ready for market' type. Almost dead ready for eating.... We had to rush home with them before they died on us. Which we did, but they must have been pretty stressed. This later was confirmed as they did not like the new environment. Both died yesterday. But the little ones we had put in earlier remain swimming around and seem to be eating what we feed them. Just hope they grow...
We had left it like that, with only fish for a few days and yesterday afternoon after loosing the two big fish  added some vegetables. Wanna for some reason known only to her added some Water Hyacinths and then we also added in some tomato and chili plants. Only thing left for us to do is feed the fish and watch the plants grow.

I think this evening or tomorrow evening depending on time I'll do a short video explaining what we've made and how the system should work. I know, you can check out 'youtube' and you'll find several probably better explanations but I want to do my own!!

So, to summarise its going well and we're happy with the start up and intial progress. We'll keep checking and over the next few weeks after it has had time to settle down and work out the few odds and ends, we'll provide an update. No bugs I hope.

Onwards

This week seems to have been slow and I've been getting home after dark so not ideal to proceed with the project. Working in semi dark is never fun and everything seems to take so much longer. Especially on a project which is supposed to be for fun!  However, we wanted to get on and had been buying the necessary stone, and fitting etc to get it all completed.

So finally by Thursday evening, I could not wait any longer. We decided (royal we) to get on with it. Wanna had today purchased the stone, and some fish and as importantly a few plastic bags of fish pellets. Why wait any longer...

As you know we had completed the fish tank and the grow beds. Remaining to be completed were the flush tank with connecting pipes and syphoning system. I'd left the syphon till last as it was the one bit of the system I was not so sure about. Seemed sensible to get the rest completed and fully understand the syphon.

Good plan as it turned out. The syphon system turned out to be a very, very simple setup. So we cut up the remaining pipes to make the flood system and installed it all on a trial basis. Not a real commission more a 'we've got this far lets give ita go' type of thing. Swithc on adn watch... and wait while it all fills up. And wait...

It works!!!! And it works very well except for the plastic bottle connected to the syphon system. To much over spill.  This clearly has teething problems and overflowed. Not a major problem. As I said it works.

Will need a new bigger bottle, some modification to the leverage system and some adjustment to the water flow. No big deal. I can say that now as I better understand what is happening! Its a success. No worries  etc etc...

So last night we did what we could and then left it all running; complete with the fish which were being kept in circulating water.  For the evening/night I dispenced with the flush unit which I plan to adjust and get fully functional on Satruday when I can give it my full attention. Then once sorted, starts the fun of actually growing "Fish And 2 Veg".

Moving on

Not much to report. I could not wait to see what the finished product would look like so I just had to set it up. Early morning shot taken today.

Yesterday I bought the plastic pipe fittings and now waiting till the weekend (tomorrow) to do the installation. Might even get the fish in place. Exciting or what ?....