Heres the thought. I want to run my tanks off renewable energy. Not because I'm a hippy jumping on the bandwagon, but because i HATE our power company. Their attitude makes me sick, not to mention their profiteering. As soon as the price of oil goes up they wack up prices while posting record profits...they have to increase prices they say, after all the shareholders need a return. And the thing I dont get, and maybe you can explain this to me, is WTF has the cost of oil got to do with a coal powered powerstation?
Anyway, I digress, suffice to say I am 'motivated'. The first step is to minimise the use of electricity. The less you use the easier it is to produce. Ideally I want to get our consumption down to the level where say a child sized hampster wheel would do. Two of our societies biggest problems are childhood obesity and global warming...two birds with one stone! And we have 5 of the little buggers so before the bleeding hearts start banging on about child slavery, the shifts wont be too long! Just think of it as a paper round and round!
Largest sources of power use on my pond/tanks...lights, filtration and heating. Heating is easy as the temp is decent because they are inside and a solar collector can easily make up the difference. Light problem has been removed to a large extent by useing the aquaponics system to the grow plants that improve the water quality away from the pond and under natural light, the fish like it darkish, so i only need to light the tank now when I am actually viewing them. This makes my filter the biggest problem...125watts all day everyday!
Now heres the question, if I reconfigure the aquaponics setup into a flood drain system, I can run the pump 15mins on 15mins off, thus reducing the pumps consumption by half. If I build a wet/dry fed by the return will the bacteria be okay with that cycle? They are okay to be turned off for maintenance, which is often more than 15 mins. and they wont dry out that quickly. What do you guys think?
Anyway, I digress, suffice to say I am 'motivated'. The first step is to minimise the use of electricity. The less you use the easier it is to produce. Ideally I want to get our consumption down to the level where say a child sized hampster wheel would do. Two of our societies biggest problems are childhood obesity and global warming...two birds with one stone! And we have 5 of the little buggers so before the bleeding hearts start banging on about child slavery, the shifts wont be too long! Just think of it as a paper round and round!
Largest sources of power use on my pond/tanks...lights, filtration and heating. Heating is easy as the temp is decent because they are inside and a solar collector can easily make up the difference. Light problem has been removed to a large extent by useing the aquaponics system to the grow plants that improve the water quality away from the pond and under natural light, the fish like it darkish, so i only need to light the tank now when I am actually viewing them. This makes my filter the biggest problem...125watts all day everyday!
Now heres the question, if I reconfigure the aquaponics setup into a flood drain system, I can run the pump 15mins on 15mins off, thus reducing the pumps consumption by half. If I build a wet/dry fed by the return will the bacteria be okay with that cycle? They are okay to be turned off for maintenance, which is often more than 15 mins. and they wont dry out that quickly. What do you guys think?
