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Tag: DIY

Backyard Aquaponics 2019 Edition

Post Views: 1,131 Introduction Howdy, folks. For those of you who followed along with my 2018 Notes series, or are following me via YouTube on the 2019 play list, I wanted to take a bit of time and get a blog post put together. This is going to be a combination of a “Build Walk”, a “State of the System” report, a “Hopes and Dreams” discussion, as well as whatever else comes to mind as I’m writing. Words of warning now; I expect this will be a long one. The build plan for 2019 As you likely recall from the 2018 Backyard Aquaponics, I had remarkably high Nitrate levels in the system all summer. Essentially, with 60 plants growing vigorously all season, I had heaps of “plant food”…

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Notes on the 2018 Backyard Aquaponics Build (Part III)

Post Views: 1,932 Hello, and welcome to the third article in my series about my Backyard Aquaponics Build.  The idea is to raise 25 or so rainbow trout to right around 1Kg / 2lbs each to put into our freezer for suppers over the winter.  If all goes well, the system will recover its set-up costs over three summers, and will yield all the ingredients for sizeable batch of a good tomato-based pasta sauce each year as a bonus. In the last article, I talked about the “Grow-pipes” I am using instead of standard deep-media beds.  In this article, I’m going to touch on what I’m doing with air and power for the system.  I hope you find something useful! Disolved oxygen, known as “DO”, is crucial to…

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Indoor Aquaponics 2015 – Update 1

Post Views: 293 As I said in one of my YouTube Video Blogs (Aquaponics Build Update #8), I won’t be running my greenhouse aquaponics system over the winter.  So, instead, I’ve been working on a “Lake In A Box” prototype for an indoor system. “Lake In A Box”, of course, is the quick-phrase I use to explain aquaponics to someone unfamiliar with it.  If you’ve seen a lake with plants growing in it, that has fish, you understand the rough idea behind aquaponics.  The fish waste is used by the plants to grow, which cleans the water for the fish. I’m going to do a much more detailed “how I built it” post later on, but I wanted to put something here for now for posterity.   It’s…

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Searching for 600 – My Experiences With A Rocket Mass Heater – Part 3

Post Views: 580 Searching for 600 – My Experiences With A Rocket Mass Heater Part 3 In my last blog post, I talked at length (3 pages!) about the fundamental concepts behind Rocket Mass Heater systems as well as the physical parts of the system. I also talked about safety issues as well as ways to better incorporate them into your living and working spaces. In this post, I will talk about how I run my Rocket Mass Heater system in my greenhouse, including lighting, feeding and cleaning. After that, I’ll talk about my first and subsequent testing burns that I have done with the “Version 2” system and a few surprises I have learned along the way. “Normal” Operating Temperatures As a quick review, when you are…

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Ongoing Adventures In Aquaponics – July 2014 Edition, Part 1

Post Views: 351 Howdy folks! Welcome back to my blog series on aquaponics. In last the last post, titled “Not Quite Free” I discussed the idea that aquaponics isn’t really “free”. One of those things that I do try to keep in mind is that any my success in aquaponics is a result of “standing on the shoulders of giants”. Which is why I’m writing these blog posts. I’m hoping to help other folks who are interested in this remarkable sustainable farming technology. I’ve made some mistakes and I’ve tested some theories, and I want to make sure that anything I’ve learned or proven or tripped over winds up out in the collective record of the Internet community. Charcoal vs Biochar – The Important Detail So as I’ve…

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Ongoing Adventures In Aquaponics – June 2014 Edition, Part 4

Post Views: 258 One of those things that you will eventually encounter in aquaponics is fish poop. While the short term problem with fish is that they “exhale” ammonia which needs to be nitrified or diluted to avoid a fish-kill, their solids waste is the long term problem. Now, fish solid waste (FSW) is generally pretty benign to us humans. Since fish are cold blooded, E.Coli et al are not threats. However, FSW that accumulates at the bottom of a well-stirred tank begins to aerobically decompose fairly rapidly. This is a double-hammer to the fish; this processes steal dissolved oxygen (DO) from the water, and release complex volatile organic compounds. Not enough DO or too much VOC in a fish tank is a fish kill in the making.…

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Ongoing Adventures In Aquaponics – June 2014 Edition, Part 3

Post Views: 132 A Different Sort of Seeding I opted to change how I planted the seeds this time. Instead of just broadcasting the seeds as I did last time, instead, I scraped the gravel back to the “wet zone”. The wet zone is the high-water mark of the growbed during the flood part of the flood-and-ebb cycle. It’s about 15 mm (0.6 in) below the surface of the pea gravel. The reason we don’t flood the bed all the way up to the surface is to keep blown-in weed seeds from getting started, and to prevent mildew and / or algae from starting. None of that is healthy or welcome for an aquaponics farmer. There seems to be a split decision in the Internet aquaponics community about…

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Ongoing Adventures In Aquaponics – June 2014 Edition, Part 2

Post Views: 140 Picky Pepper Plants As I noted in my video blog post in April , one of the mistakes I made was not understanding the best way to plant my grow beds. For much of the life of the system, the entire thing has been dominated by a forest of 60 cm (28 in) tall pepper plants. This shaded out everything else I planted; we got a couple of beans and a radish before the Great Pepper Rainforest blotted out the sky and cast everything beneath into deepest shadow. The other thing I didn’t clue in on was that peppers are tropical plants. The will not set fruit if the nighttime air temperature drops below 16C (61F). At night during winter, our basement auto-learning thermostat drops the air…

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