Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment CATMANDOO Aquaponics Experiment

One catfish is missing. The catfish, the bluegill, and the one LMB were all at the surface feeding this afternoon. But, I only saw two catfish. I added five catfish, and two died -- so one must be on the bottom. The small LMB was gobbling pellets.

I'm going to have to grind up some of the the feed. The catfish and the smallest bluegill can't get the AQM 4000 into their mouths very easily.

I switched out the 12 VDC bilge pump for a 330 GPH / 120 VAC magnetic drive pond pump with filter. It should pump about 120-150 gallons per hour at a 3.5-4 foot lift, into the plant area. I'm going to set it to run seven times in 24 hours, for 2 hours each. I'm really short of time in the next two weeks. But, as soon as I can find an hour or so, I'd sure like to get a bell siphon installed so I could run the pump continuously.

The water was still only at 54.7 degrees this afternoon, although it was 70 degrees outside. I added a 16 mil black plastic sheet to the southside of the greenhouse. Until the leaves are off the trees, I need all the heat I can get from what little sun in coming through. I'm hoping this will help. I'm thinking about switching the present fish for a number of small rainbow trout since my water is remaining so cool. I'm just worried that the trout might not have enough oxygen.

Ken

Likewise. Maybe just handling stress for the catfish. They may be more prone to problems in cooler water than the other species.

Agreed. One of my local expert friends also figured it was handling stress. Actually, when I first asked him what he thought might have happened to my catfish -- he said "they died!" So much for expert advice.

Anyway, because the catfish and the small bluegill were having trouble getting the pellets into their mouths, I chopped some pellets. It took a while to find something that would work to make the pellets smaller. My "expert friend" suggested using a small electric coffee grinder. It worked great. The fish, including the 6-inch LMB, really seemed to enjoy the ground pellets. They slurpped down the grounds pretty quickly.

Everything has sprouted. The plants are growing, just a little slower than I'd have hoped.

I'm just getting started in Aquaponics but the text I'm reading says your plants won't thrive until the nitrates get up to a certain level. Makes sense to me.

here's another great aquaponics guide using IBC Totes:
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/Travis/IBCofAquaponics1.pdf

i've seen systems "balanced" with a reading of 0 for am, nitrites, nitrates.. but my system usually runs at 40 to 60 nitrates

I could not get that link to open.

it's a pretty big file, 37mb,
try here:
http://www.fastonline.org/content/category/4/15/29/

click on the link:
"The IBC of Aquaponics"

I downloaded it several months ago, and it has a lot of good information if you are planning on doing something like I'm doing. As Keith says, it is 37 MB, so it takes a while to download.

Ken

One catfish was floating this morning, and the last one (the one I couldn't find) was floating tonight. It was pretty disgusting. I guess it died a few days ago. I put about 45 catfish from this batch into my main pond, and about 50 in a neighboring pond. I've seen no evidence of them dying in either pond. They just weren't suited to tank life.

The bass and bluegill seem to be doing OK. My ammonia and nitrite/nitrate levels continue low. The plants are growing and green, but I may have to supplement the plant feed, unless I get more fish, and more fish eating more food. The water is still at only about 56 degrees. The 5-day weather forecast shows it getting cooler each day. I expect we'll get our first frost in the next ten days. Lots of deer wandering around, I just wouldn't have any time to butcher one for at least the next week or so.

Unless you can maintain the water temps at a higher level, the fish are probably not going to be eating much as their metabolism is slowing down. The nitrifying bacteria are also working at a considerably lower conversion rate than they would at higher temps so adding a supplement may cause problems if not done very carefully. Temperature is really the key player here.

Unfortunately you are right. As I mentioned above, I had wanted to start about a month earlier, but hours in the day just didn't permit that. I may end up changing the fish out in the next week or two. If I do, I'll put trout in.

If the fish don't work out because of temperature, I may add some worm castings to feed the plants. It is about time to get the worm beds ready for winter, and I'll have a couple of hundred pounds of castings available. I'd sure like to have a fresh salad for Christmas dinner.

In general, this is a learning experience. Hopefully this will give me enough knowledge to make it work reasonably well next spring and summer. I want to expand this as our "kitchen garden" and put in a larger hydroponic system on my pond dam.


Ken

CATMANDOO's Aquaponics Garden is not the Garden of Eden. If Adam and Eve were here, they'd be skinnin' some big furry critters to make clothes so they could keep warm.

I grossly underestimated the amount of sun my little greenhouse would receive in October. I had expected it to be about the same as it receives in late March or April, when the sun is at similar elevations. It regularly reaches over 100 degrees then. I sure was wrong. I didn't account for all the leaves that don't fall off the trees until the strong winds and first snows of late November and early December.

The internal temperature of the little greenhouse stays at about the temperature of the water in my IBC, which is now about the average local air temperature over several days. The water temperature has now dropped to about 49 degrees.

As mentioned above, all five catfish perished. There are still five bluegill and one small bass. They all seem to be quite happy -- they just aren't eating much. However, they did get quite excited this afternoon when I dropped a couple of dozen red worms in, one at a time. Still, they just aren't providing enough food/poop for the plants.

So, as of today, I am trying a backup solution. It was time to start cleaning out the worm farms for winter. I removed a 5-gallon bucket full of worm castings (poop) from one 40 gallon container.

In my small aquaponics growing space, the cucumbers and squash never germinated. In their place, I placed several quart pots. I put about an inch of pea gravel in the bottom of each pot, and then filled the pot to the waterline with worm castings. I sowed a variety of lettuce, some spinach, and a few "French breakfast" radishes into the pots. I then added about another half-inch of worm castings over the seeds.

I also reset the water pump timer so that it only runs for 10 minutes every three hours. It takes about six minutes to flood the growing area to just below the top layer of pea gravel. This will hopefully move some nutrients from the worm casting pots to the other vegetable roots.

The peas seem to be doing OK. The lettuce and spinach have good color, and look good. They aren't growing as fast as I had hoped for.

Besides giving up on the cucumbers and squash, I also gave up on the green beans. The beans germinated, but they were really far behind everything else. I believe it was just too cold.

Here is what the grow bed looks like with the addition of the pots with worm castings, that have been sown with various kinds of lettuce, spinach, and radish.

Interestingly, the "lost catfish" showed up this evening. I've been feeding lightly about every third day. Tonight, the little catfish showed up skimming the floating food.

The peas have grown about 2 more inches in the last few days from the pictures above. The other plants are growing, but not very fast.

The water is at 50 degrees F, and that was the temperature of the greenhouse near sundown this evening.

We had a lot of wind and some heavy rain today. Lots of leaves came off. That could be good for heating the greenhouse. But, the forecast is for temps in the 20s over the weekend, with the potential for a major coastal storm, and if not, they expect we'll get some snow!

Well, sounds like you're holding steady on water temps, but the plant growth is pretty cool, so something must be working okay. Keep us posted on the weekend weather!

Its cooled off here too at least in the mornings. The days are still pretty nice.

i just got 4 IBC's this week (two 330's and two 275's)
i set up an 8'kiddie pool in my basement, and seeing it sitting there, i had to do something with it so made a filter out of a 55 gallon barrel (now i can make real growbeds for the pool!) and threw in 50 rosy red minnows and a couple dozen crayfish..after i get growbeds built, i'll be putting the yp and bg in the pool
(i already have about 45 fish - yp and bg - in my aquaponic system in the basement, using three 55 gallon glass tanks, growing green's using flourescent lights..
this aquaponics stuff is addicting!

Keith -- fantastic.

How about some pictures, or even a new thread on what you are doing? As I've gotten involved with this whole thing over the last year, or so, I'm finding that it is becoming a pretty serious hobby and commercial movement amongst many.

I'm not sure what will happen to my experiment over the next 36 hours. We are expecting 4-8 inches of snow, and temps in the upper 20s. I don't know if the inside of my little greenhouse can withstand such outside temps without killing the plants. I'm not sure if my little greenhouse can even withstand that much snow.

It was 53 degrees outside when I went to bed last night. It was 41 degrees in the little greenhouse this morning when it was just 30 degrees outside. I think we are somewhere in the high 30s right now, and is becoming increasingly overcast.

You have a certain amount of built-in insurance from the cold provided by Ma Nature. As water reaches 32F, it releases latent heat. If your greenhouse is sealed adequately, this should protect your plants for short (several hours) periods. You might consider adding a small heater before the winter temps become too harsh, however.

i'll be taking plenty of pic's along the way, and will start a thread soon

Unfortunately, when it gets cold here, it gets cold and stays cold. Generally, we do not get above freezing from around Christmas until sometime in February. Some years that extends well into March. Sometimes it starts by Thanksgiving. We are just above freezing right now, with sleet coming out of the sky, and expecting 5-8 inches of snow by tomorrow afternoon.

Unfortunately, a small heater won't do. A big heater would be needed, and that is just out of the realm of possibilities. I'm guessing that a wood stove would take several of cord of wood to keep the water at 50 degrees during our cold season.

The more info we have, the better for everyone.

I've renewed my IBC-tank aquaponics experiment and project. This year's main garden is 50' x 100'. We also have a "kitchen garden" of several 4' x 4' x 14” raised beds/worm farms, plus other containers.

We moved the aquaponics system to my younger son's place, as my DIL would really like fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and salad greens out the back door. But, their schedules don't really support a conventional garden.

Today, we used my semi-trash pump to fill the tank with creek water to the 275 gallon mark. A shovelful of fresh chicken droppings was added as a "starter". Over the next couple of days I plan to add a couple of tomato plants, some lettuce and 5-10 mature fatheads. I'll keep putting fatheads in until they stop dying -- if they do. In the meantime we'll be keeping a watch on ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, and pH,to adjust as necessary. When things stabilize I plan to start adding HBG. Then I'll add more tomatoes and a couple of different kinds of cucumbers. It has room for at least 12 "major" plants like tomatoes and cucumbers, and room for pretty regular harvests of salad greens.

I'll start adding progress photos in the next few days.

I know you didnt ask me, but i'll give my 2c on PH:
I consider 7-7.2 optimal. [Most] Plants prefer PH a little lower and [most]fish pref it a little higher. That's the middle ground. If your PH is low you may want to do something to bring it up, However, i dont adjust PH down because it is going to go down slowly over time due to the nitrification process.

With that said, after years of tinkering with ph i just started to use expanded shale for my grow beds. It's cheap, relatively light and porous (which provides great surface area for bacteria.) People say expanded shale is ph nuetral but none that i have bought has ever been ph nuetral. It usually buffers my system at ph 7.8. It's a little high for plants but i havent had any serious problems with nutrient locking. And my ph is pretty much bullet proof from swings. I havent checked it in months because it doesnt move.

If you use river rock, it will probably have some limestone in it and buffer your PH as well. Some people consider that undesirable. i consider it low maintenance.


If people are interested i can start a thread showing some of my aquaponics systems.

brian

I haven't checked the water yet, but since it came from a stream after a week with lots of rain, I suspect it was pretty close to 7.0. My ponds stay locked at about 7.0. I also expect that if it isn't neutral now it will settle out at about 7.0. As Brian said above, that seems to work for both the plants and the fish.


It is 36 degrees outside this morning, and it is supposed stay cold for the next few days. I suspect it will take a bit to get the water to do much of anything until it warms. I'm just going to run the pump continuously until the water warms, before I try to do anything more with fish or plants.

.

I think that would be very good. Cecil's RAS thread has been very valuable. And, I think that those of us on this site look at aquaponics somewhat differently from people on the aquaponics sites. The things done in the past for raising fish in tanks by Cecil, Condello, Theo, etc., have been helpful to many.