300 gal. Aquaponic System - update

[mrgrackle]

I posted about this in the past but I figured I'd give you all an update... well, that plus you folks seem to be the only ones that care. My friends just look at me and go ... 'great.'

http://wallaby.telicon.com/extraneous/aquaponics/system.jpg

So, I've built something called an aquaponics system. It's the merger of aquaculture and hydroponics. I raise fish and use their waste to grow plants, which in turn remove the waste from the water and send it back to the fish nice and clean. This gives organic vegetables and fish with minimal water and energy usage. In the forground you see the 300 gallon stock tank. There's a 900 gph pump sending water up the 1/2 inch pipe and into the water manifold at the top of the picture. There are 7 ball valves. one of them is for draining water from the system and onto the garden if there's some need for that. The others each feed into their own gravel filled half barrel with acts as a hydroponic grow bed. The grow beds are the blue half barrels in the middle of the picture, you can only really see 3 of them. There's a siphon in the middle of each bed so that once the barrels are full of water the siphon kicks in and drains the water back into the stock tank. You can see the two drain pipes coming back into the tank.

300 gal. stock tank with 10 bluegill (1-2"), 1 spotted bass (3") and 2 crawfish.

http://wallaby.telicon.com/extraneous/aquaponics/grow beds.jpg

http://wallaby.telicon.com/extraneous/aquaponics/peas.jpg

1 x 25 gal. bed planted with peas (100%)
1 x 25 gal. bed planted with spinach (75%) and carrots (25%)
1 x 25 gal. bed planted with chard (100%)

you can't really see the spinach, carrots or chard in the picture because they're just sprouting.

3 x 25 gal. bed empty - these beds aren't removing nitrogen but they are converting the ammonia & nitrite to nitrate, which is less harmfull for the fish. These beds will get planted with I get more lbs. of fish per gallon. Right now I don't think I have enough nutrients from 11 fish to feed all 6 barrels full of plants.

http://wallaby.telicon.com/extraneous/aquaponics/solar heater.jpg

I turned one of the empty grow beds into a solar heater. I'm not sure if it actually helps much, but the idea is that the sun heats up the lava rock, the glass keeps the heat trapped inside and the water that's raising and lowering inside gets heated up. I plan on building a better one.

Here are some water quality numbers. This is after 2 months of the system up and running. I don't think the system has completely cycled and once it has the nitrite will also go to a trace level. I've never done any water changes. Only topped off from evaporation.

water temp 12.5 C / 55 F
ammonia < .25mg (under the lowest color on chart)
nitrite .5mg
nitrate <.25mg (under the lowest color on chart)
oxygen 5.0 ppm (at 13:30, since this will fluctuate due to algae respiration depending on time of day)

[frasertheking]

wow love it , keep us updated as the growing season goes on . id like to hear the changes in nitrates and ammonia over the growing season :headbang2

[ziggy2]

What a project. Really nice.

[hamato_yoshii]

That is awesome!!! :headbang2:headbang2:headbang2

[Fish Eat Fish]

gotta love to nature.

[Aqua Doctor]

Very nice work bro!:D

Thanks for sharing.

[hillbilly]

Pretty cool!

[ambition420]

That is amazing. I am excited to see how your project grows through the seasons.

[Weylin]

Wow...Awsome project.. Be sure to keep us updated on the progress..

[the_deeb]

Looks great. I set up a 50g mini prototype of an aquaculture system for an engineering class I took back in college. It's nice to see a full scale one.

[muckieman]

wow very nice cool. would do something like this but i live in ga too cold in winter.

[mrgrackle]

Thanks all :)

[King Edward]

ypu eating the bluegills?

[pwmin]

i concur with everyone else :cool:

[53special]

Talk about ingenuity

[Nic]

nice set up....I'm curious as to how this will pan out during the season.... keep it updated.....

[mrgrackle]

ypu eating the bluegills?


When they get big enough, that's the plan. I hope they're really bluegill and not green sunfish. I suppose I can eat green sunfish as well, but they won't get nearly as big, right? I collected them from the colorado river near austin, tx. They're all still really small and hard to tell what they are. Maybe I'll scoop a couple out and see if I can get some 2nd opinions.

Had a scare this afternoon when I got home. 2/3rds of the water was missing from the tank and the ground under the grow beds was soaked. One of the hoses going to a grow bed fell out and started to drain the tank onto the ground. Luckly for everyone my girlfriend noticed and saved the day.

After this lesson I'm going to lift the pump off the bottom of the tank, in case this happens again. That way it can't drain the tank all the way down and kill the fish. Also wondering about a float switch now.

[Kevaldo]

nature careing for nature, cool idea :D

Kev

[Primus]

That is awsome!!! This looks like a fun project, love to see how well the veggies do in this setup.

[mkman]

I really like this, great job!!!! More pics, more pics!

[bigdee]

:eek::jaw::nutkick:

[Casper]

Does the fish waste actually provide everything the plant needs? Aren't the 3 major plant nutrients nitrogen, phosphorus (or is it phosphate) and potassium (N-P-K)? Do you have to make sure that the food you feed your fish contains potassium? Also what do you do about the iron your plant may need?

[mrgrackle]

You got it right, Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium.

Nitrogen is in obviously present.

Phosphorus can come from different things you feed the fish.. I want to use black soldier flies.. dried they're 1.5% phosphorus and should end up in the plants after the fish are done with it.

Potassium also comes from fish food. Some people put pieces of banana's in their grow beds. I'm somewhat sceptical of this method, but apparently it works and probably what I'll try if I notice potassium deficiences.

Another thing that can be done with live food is feed it what you want to get into your fish and plants. My girlfriend and I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, the left overs go in the worm bins, fish eat the worms, worms poo in the water, cycle is complete. Some people have fruit eating fish and they just feed the fish fruit with the nutrients they want in the system. Some people use a product called Seasol which is a liquid seaweed/fish fertilizer.

Iron is the biggest nutrient problem in an aquaponics system. Most people supplement with Iron Chelate, it's what I do.

The only thing I've ever added to my system is food and iron chelate.

[jdepasqu2]

nice to see this.... I too am into sustainable practices. Plus if you raise your own fish you wont have to worry about eating dirty pollution ridden fish form everywhere else.... I like to eat fish but its hard now-a-days........

[vahid]

cool

[daveolejnik]

Great setup!!!!!! Ive been wanting to do something similar to this for a while. But I live in Northern WI. Right now Im running all my tanks filtration through the basement. I want to run it through a hydroponics set-up. I just have to decide if I want to use 55 gal. plastic drums or possibly gutters for the hydroponics. Keep us posted with plenty of pictures!!!!!!!!!!!

[mrgrackle]

I was trying to take some pictures of the fish the other day... I left the camera outside and it rained... It's drying out now before I dare try and turn it back one /sigh


Daveolejnik - if you use gutters are you going to fill them with some sort of grow media? People grow plants in gutters without gravel or medium in there, just styrofoam floating on the water, but this doesn't do anything to break down solids. If you do gutters and fill them with gravel it would break the particles down but it's hard to make sure that all the medium gets equally dosed with nutrient rich water. You could do a combination of barrels and gutters... have the barrels filled with gravel, they get filled with water and once it reaches the high water point on the barrels have it drain into the gutters then back into the fish tank. I think people call the gutter systems NTF (nutrient film technology). Let me know what you do Dave!

[brianp]

Very nice project. I admire your industriousness. I'm sure you had a lot a fun thinking thorough this and planning the various components.

[imanlyman]

I am planning on a similar setup. I was wondering do you filter the water leaving the growbeds before it is returned to the pond?

[mrgrackle]

the grow beds are the filter. filtering the water futher would just take nutrients from my grow beds. don't have enough to go around as it is!

[tyl089]

really cool project. Have you thought about stocking your pond with tilapia?

[cassharper]

You should completely cut off that solar heater and take some temp readings, and then hook it back up to see what difference it makes. I really like that idea, but wonder how effective it is?

[mrgrackle]

the solar heater isn't in the system anymore. and you're right, it was a neat idea but I have doubts about it's effectiveness. The water temperature is plenty warm now. I've got idea's for a better heater for next winter. I'm going to update this thread soon. I'll post some new pictures.

[Sir-KS]

CRAZYYYYYY NICEEEEEEEE........

[Fish_Fanatic]

Nice setup and keep us posted.

[qqqqqq]

Its real nice.

Any problems with excessive evaporation? How much do you top up each time?

[Windex]

mrgrackle just a thought for ya since you said somthing about a float switch. think about putting a barrel to collect rain water or something similar and hook up the float switch to that. seems like it would save you time in the long run and you wouldnt have to worry about it as much.

[90cat]

Thats pretty cool

[mrgrackle]

mrgrackle just a thought for ya since you said somthing about a float switch. think about putting a barrel to collect rain water or something similar and hook up the float switch to that. seems like it would save you time in the long run and you wouldnt have to worry about it as much.

Love the idea. Collecting rainwater is a problem though. In Austin we get plenty of rain in the winter when my water isnt evaporating but during the summer we don't get a whole lot of rain and when we do it comes all at once. I'm pretty close to putting a metal roof on my house and if I do that I'll hook up gutters for massive rainwater collection (think in the area of 40,000 gal a year.)

[beno]

Nice set up!

[killrmack]

this is a really cool project i was wondering how do you seed the beds or do you transplant

[mrgrackle]

With large seeds it's easy to just seed the beds. With small seeds like basil I think it may be better to transplant. I've done it both ways.. I think the seeds started in the beds do the best.

[killrmack]

do you think you could draw up a diagram of your water distribution and bed setup it would much appreciated im real interested in doing some thing like this