Grow plants in your biofilter
- Thread starter mrgrackle
- Start date
Are the grow beds purely bio filtration? IOW, do you have a settling tank or prefilter prior to your grow beds? This is very interesting.
Thanks,
Steve.
Thanks,
Steve.
Thats pretty cool. I have a bog for my pond. Do vegetables actually filter as well as cattails?
Are you doing any long term parameter checks to see how the total system is working.
Are you doing any long term parameter checks to see how the total system is working.
This is a very cool setup. Does the flow rate of water affect the aquaponics setup in term of the bioload-water-substrates ralation?
fishdance,
yup that's the plan. I think I've finally settled on the type of fish I'm going to try and grow out. I found a lady that will sell me 30 (4"-6") channel cats for $15. Channel cats seem to be awesome aquaculture fish because they can be a bit crowded, can tolerate water temps from close to freezing to 95 fahr., they have great food/growth conversion ratio, they're omnivores so I can feed them some of the stuff that would go in my compost, grow fast to eating size in around 1 year (maybe faster if I'm starting with some 6 inchers), they make a lot of poo for the veggies and frankly, i really like the way they taste. I didn't realize that they will produce more ammonia and waste then the same biomass of smaller fish. My only hesitation with them is I don't think I can breed them, I'm going to try, but it seems like something that only happens in super large tanks or ponds.
RBE17,
The grow beds are the only filter I'll have. The beds actually flood and drain. I've got a bell siphon in the middle of each growbed. The water flows in continuously and once it reaches a certain height in the bed, if flows over the standpipe in the middle of the growbed, forcing the air out and then starting up a siphoning action... once the water reaches the bottom of the bell it sucks air, breaking the siphon action and then the bed starts to fill again, till it reaches the top of the stand pipe inside the bell, starting the siphoning action all over again. The flood/drain of the system makes it where I don't have to have a settling tank... any poo caught in the grow bed will be broken down into smaller and smaller particles and eventually converted by the bacteria. In some of the really intensive commercial aquaponics systems they use settling tanks but my fish density isn't going to be that high.
tunerx.
I don't know if veggies filter as well as cattails but I know they filter well enough. In the small system I had set up once everything was balanced the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates all register at 0 and was getting a few beans out of it, the veggie production actually slowed down a lot once all the plants started putting out veggies, they actually became nutrient deficient so i know i could have added a bunch more fish. Granted I only had 2 semi-large goldfish in a 55 gallon barrel but the growbed I was using was about a third of the size of just one of these half barrels. I plan on keeping pretty detailed info once I get my gravel for the growbeds and the fish put in the system. I have my goldfish in the system right now with a few bluegill to start the ammonia cycle and get a bacteria population going.
mosthated,
I was a little worried about rain overflowing the system but I think the overflow drains i have in the beds should do the trick, they will take the water back into the fish tank and if it overflows from there, no big deal. if it becomes a problem i could put an overflow on the tank as well and divert the water to someplace in my garden or the street... i don't think it'll be a big deal.
arl,
i think you're asking wether or not there needs to be a certain amount of flow to make everything click? I think the more water flow the better for the bacteria to convert everything and get larger particles broken down. I believe most aquaponics folks try and get 2-3 water changes per hour but I believe that most of that is for aeration. That's another nice thing about the large gravel biofilter is that all the surface area on the gravel really helps aerate the water due to the flood/drain of the beds.
More then happy to answer any more questions to the best of my knowledge. I know I'm going to be asking you folks a lot about fish
I've kept fish when I was a kid for pets but have only had fish again for the last 6 months or so and they're goldfish of all things (my aquanauts).
Here's one of my bellsiphons, the bell actually goes over the standpipe (im still mucking around with it to get them to work exactly the way i want)
Here's a link to a page that shows how bell siphons work. no moving parts!
http://www.siphons.com/operation.html
yup that's the plan. I think I've finally settled on the type of fish I'm going to try and grow out. I found a lady that will sell me 30 (4"-6") channel cats for $15. Channel cats seem to be awesome aquaculture fish because they can be a bit crowded, can tolerate water temps from close to freezing to 95 fahr., they have great food/growth conversion ratio, they're omnivores so I can feed them some of the stuff that would go in my compost, grow fast to eating size in around 1 year (maybe faster if I'm starting with some 6 inchers), they make a lot of poo for the veggies and frankly, i really like the way they taste. I didn't realize that they will produce more ammonia and waste then the same biomass of smaller fish. My only hesitation with them is I don't think I can breed them, I'm going to try, but it seems like something that only happens in super large tanks or ponds.
RBE17,
The grow beds are the only filter I'll have. The beds actually flood and drain. I've got a bell siphon in the middle of each growbed. The water flows in continuously and once it reaches a certain height in the bed, if flows over the standpipe in the middle of the growbed, forcing the air out and then starting up a siphoning action... once the water reaches the bottom of the bell it sucks air, breaking the siphon action and then the bed starts to fill again, till it reaches the top of the stand pipe inside the bell, starting the siphoning action all over again. The flood/drain of the system makes it where I don't have to have a settling tank... any poo caught in the grow bed will be broken down into smaller and smaller particles and eventually converted by the bacteria. In some of the really intensive commercial aquaponics systems they use settling tanks but my fish density isn't going to be that high.
tunerx.
I don't know if veggies filter as well as cattails but I know they filter well enough. In the small system I had set up once everything was balanced the ammonia, nitrites and nitrates all register at 0 and was getting a few beans out of it, the veggie production actually slowed down a lot once all the plants started putting out veggies, they actually became nutrient deficient so i know i could have added a bunch more fish. Granted I only had 2 semi-large goldfish in a 55 gallon barrel but the growbed I was using was about a third of the size of just one of these half barrels. I plan on keeping pretty detailed info once I get my gravel for the growbeds and the fish put in the system. I have my goldfish in the system right now with a few bluegill to start the ammonia cycle and get a bacteria population going.
mosthated,
I was a little worried about rain overflowing the system but I think the overflow drains i have in the beds should do the trick, they will take the water back into the fish tank and if it overflows from there, no big deal. if it becomes a problem i could put an overflow on the tank as well and divert the water to someplace in my garden or the street... i don't think it'll be a big deal.
arl,
i think you're asking wether or not there needs to be a certain amount of flow to make everything click? I think the more water flow the better for the bacteria to convert everything and get larger particles broken down. I believe most aquaponics folks try and get 2-3 water changes per hour but I believe that most of that is for aeration. That's another nice thing about the large gravel biofilter is that all the surface area on the gravel really helps aerate the water due to the flood/drain of the beds.
More then happy to answer any more questions to the best of my knowledge. I know I'm going to be asking you folks a lot about fish
I've kept fish when I was a kid for pets but have only had fish again for the last 6 months or so and they're goldfish of all things (my aquanauts).Here's one of my bellsiphons, the bell actually goes over the standpipe (im still mucking around with it to get them to work exactly the way i want)
Here's a link to a page that shows how bell siphons work. no moving parts!
http://www.siphons.com/operation.html
