Day 12: Squash and Bell Peppers

Not much to report other than the Green Bell Peppers and the Crookneck Squash are doing great!

Green bell pepper (the big one on the right); you can see how large it has grown in the last few days.  As a comparsion, the bell cyphon is 3" in diameter.

The crookneck squash: I'm real proud of this guy - currently about 4 times the size when I first planted it (12 days).

Aquaponics Planting Density

Some of the advantages to utilizing aquaponics as a main or alternative method of gardening are:

• Mobility: depending on how one chooses to design it, the system can maintain mobility (you can move it or take it with you if you relocate - try that with a traditional dirt garden/farm)
• Water Usage: depending on the climate that you are in, aquaponics tends to use about 10% of the normal water used in a traditional dirt garden; the water is recycled through the system and is only lost through evaporation and what the plants consume, unless you spring a leak
• Virtually Weedless: yes, it is possible to have a rogue weed get in your grow medium, but the entire problem is virtually eradicated; if one does show up, it doesn't require the same effort to get it out
• Density: because you are eliminating the plant's need to "find" nutrients through its root system, the plant spends its energy producing fruit rather than looking for food; hence, you can pack your garden more densely than you can in a traditional dirt garden

Cabbages growing at about 12" apart.

It is recommended that these cabbages grow at 24" apart, but 12" will do fine (it could probably be even closer).  You want to allow the plant to grow its leaves and fruit without impeding another plant, but the root issue is eliminated.

By the way, my squash growth is exploding!  I will put up more pics this weekend.

Aquaponics: Day 7

Current Progress

After some additional reading, I realized that I jumped the gun on our trial-run aquaponics system.  Though there are varying opinions on the subject of 'System Cycling,' the preponderance of evidence by those that appear to maintain success in their systems shows that system cycling should take between 3-6 weeks.  This means that the aquaponics system is not in balance (microbes converting ammonia to nitrites and then nitrates) until about the 4 week mark.

There are things that can be done to expedite the process, like:

• Adding pure ammonia to the system; don't add fish yet - high levels of ammonia will kill them very quickly.  This will encourage the natural airborne microbes to flourish in the ammonia rich environment and begin producing the nitrites and nitrates for the system.
• Obtain established microbial cultures from: 
• local ponds; I have seen suggestions to use a bucket of pond water or take a few stones from the pond; this would have the microbes present.  The down side is that you also get things in the water that you may not want in your system.
• other cycled aquaponics systems; a handful of medium or water
• filters from fish tanks; the filters will have the microbes, however they may also have any lingering fish disease - make sure the tank is healthy

However, we did not do that.  I guess I was a little impatient and wanted to get it going; the next time I will wait.  But, so far so good - though, it could probably be better.

Here are some Day 7 pics:

You can see the green bell peppers in the upper right are really coming up strong.  However, the tomato sprigs are there, but not jumping up either.

Our cabbage looks decent, but they took a beating from a very heavy Mississippi rain.  The cucumbers are looking pretty good.

 So, comparing the cucumbers (above pic, in the middle section next to the white bell cyphon) and the cucumbers growing in our traditional potting soil mix, it is obvious that the potting soil mix is doing a little better.  Currently, I attribute this to two things:

1. My aquaponics system has not fully cycled yet (not enough nitrate production)
2. The potting soil mix comes from a friend of mine that has a master's in biology and agriculture (or something along those lines); who knows what illicit super-charged grow juice he put in that stuff

Cucumbers are jumping!

Strawberries are looking great; yes, that is another bell pepper in the middle.

Death in the Family

Unfortunately, right in the middle of feeding on Sunday, one of our goldfish gave up the ghost.  It was like nothing that I have ever seen before; swimming happily, he came up for a bit of dinner, he went stiff and then floated.  It was like he had a heart attack or something.  In any case, I was glad I was there to pull him from the water so as to avoid any other problems with the other fish.  They seemed a little disoriented at first, which is understandable.  But, they soon moved past mourning and went right on eating.  Happy fish!

Happy Fish!

Aquaponics Set Up

This is our trial run for aquaponics.  While there are many designs possible, we took a little from here and a little from there and combined them to make the most efficient use of our current resources and our bank account.

I took the frame design idea from a PDF publication that I found online called Barrel-ponics by Travis Hugley.  Last year when we were still in the early stages of research, we saw an ad for some 55 gallon barrels for $10 apiece.  I know some people can get them for free, but I thought $10 was a decent deal, so I bought 4 of them.  They have been sitting in the back shed for the 6 months, though I have used them on occasion as saw-horses for various projects.  LOL

I split them in half and cleaned them out.  In fact, after I cut them, I left them open out in the rain for a week or so to really make sure that any of the former contents were washed out.

As you can see, the two half-barrels sit open on the frame, which rests on cinder blocks.  The drain system is based on a bell cyphon.  There are lots of YouTube videos on how to build them.  Mine is made from a 1" stand pipe, with a 2" bell cyphon and a 3" rock guard.  Under the barrels, the standpipe drain is a 90 degree elbow, a 1' extension pipe, and another 90 degree elbow with extension.  This drains directly into the tank below.

The cheapest tank for the fish that we could fashion was a 50 gallon, plastic storage box that we got at Wal Mart for $20.  However, since it is not really made to handle the weight of the water inside, I had to reenforce the sides using two wooden slats and a ratchet tie-down.  Otherwise, the weight was causing the sides to bow out.  Hint: this works, but may not be the best tank; choose wisely my son.


The pump was a simple 210 gallon/hour pond pump that we picked up on Amazon for under $35.

I connected a splitter to direct the pumped water to both barrel halves.  The cycle for the water is about 8 minutes to fill until the bell cyphon kicks in; then it is about 1 minute to drain.  The constant ebb and flow of the system brings oxygen in between the medium (river rock and hydroton) for the roots of the plants and also oxygenates the water for the fish.

Water draining into "tank" from bell cyphon; this brings filtered water to the tank and oxygenates at the same time.

We bought the fish (12 goldfish to start) for .27 cents apiece at Pet Smart along with fish food and test kits for ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, pH, and alkalinity of the water.  Eventually, we will make a transition to Tilapia, but we figured that the gold fish were expendable in case we screwed up something.  However, at this time I can report that the fish are darting happily to and fro as they explore the depths of the "made-in-china" plastic Wal Mart container.

Happy Fish.

We let the system run for a week without planting or adding fish in order to make sure everything was working correctly and to allow the chlorine and hopefully whatever else they add to city tap water to burn off.  In addition, we did add two full cups of vermiculture tea (red wiggler worm pee) to the water to spike the nitrogen levels before we planted.

Many of our plants were donated, but we picked up a few more from the WM.

And... that's it.

In the future, I may go into more detail about how aquaponics works, but there are plenty of sites that explain the process.  For us, we are very excited to start down this road of self-sufficiency.  Yes, we are just starting and no, I don't think that we will grow enough in 2 grow beds to feed my entire family - as I stated, we just started.

Here are some pics...

My son feeding the fish.

First day (night) after planting: cucumber, crook-neck squash, green bell pepper, and some different herbs.

First day (night) after planting: cabbage, herbs, tomatoes, and cucumber.