Aquaponics Discussion

@Tookys I am in the zoom meeting

Technical Difficulties folks, were trying to get the meeting started.

@Tookys let me know if you want me to start a new one, I have a pro zoom account

Kye is calling Val, ill let ya know in a minute if we just wanna start a new one

Sounds good, let me know

meeting has started sorry about the delay

Thank you to everybody who joined the meeting today, it was appreciated and I hope y’all enjoyed it.

Sorry for the technical difficulties that delayed the start of the meeting but things went smoothly once it was started.

If there are any questions anybody has feel free to ask them here or email me.

This is a picture of the frogbit I mentioned. I floats and if the Talipia eat it I would be happy to bring some to the space. It is easy to completely remove if we want to get rid of it later.

I have some duckweed if you really want to put it in, I don’t think it will ever come out though. I removed all of the duckweed from this tank and must have missed one because it came back.

Here is a picture of the mystery snails I thought about adding to clean up the algae, they are very helpful for removing algae but won’t touch Cyanobacteria. They are great and very interesting to watch. I am not sure if the fish would eat them because they could fit in their mouth at the younger age. They aren’t generally considered a pest because they are easy to remove if desired and lay their eggs above water.

I would be up for giving the snails and frogbit, since they aren’t to problematic to try.

Probably just start with 1 or 2 snails, just to be sure they don’t run out of algea to quickly.

Think we should try the frog bit in the sump? or directly in the fish tank? i Think the tilapia would eat it to quickly if we grew it in the fish tank but we could try it just to see what happens.

@Tookys the frogbit will die quickly in the sump as it needs light, the frogbit reproduces like crazy given enough light though, it may die in certain areas of the tank that don’t get light. Thoughts on removing the trash bag and letting the frogbit get the natural sunlight? It would block out the light and keep algae in the tank down. It will make the tank look dark if we let it fully take over. Once a month or so we will need to pull some out.

The snails love eating the roots of the frogbit. I just need to make sure the snails won’t get sucked down the drain tube and we can try a few. If we put only one snail it won’t be able to reproduce. Maybe that is desirable?

Now that I think about it, I have read that the frogbit doesn’t like high surface water movement, with the pump blowing as hard as it does it probably will die. Maybe just a snail to start with?

lets try 1 snail in the in tank just to see if the fish mess with it.

We could do the frogbit in the sump and just add some lights. The sump does get some direct sunlight

@Tookys quick google search shows that the fish will eat the snail. We could put one in the sump and it would eat the undesirable things down there and help break down things faster thus feeding the plants more nutrients. We just need to make sure the snail wouldn’t get sucked up anything. Are the pipes down there covered?

In the sump the pumps have basic screens on them, the return tubes dont have any covers.

FYI – did a callout to Aquaponics in this month’s newsletter (Mailchimp update 1/31/21). There’s also a link in there to the Zoom recording if anyone missed it and wants to check it out!

Cool, thanks for doing that Valerie.

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Moving conversation here to the discussion chat.

Im tossing around the idea of doing a few improvements to the system. To help keep the water clearer, and help make some of the systems redundent.

Im thinking to make a “radial flow filter” for the system. This would help to seperate the solids wastes from the water returning to the fiah tank, and help concentrate it into the growbed for filtering.

The current sump tank had baffles built into it to accomplish this but it really disnt work as intended as the solids didnt really settle out how i hoped, and it created deadzones that couldnt be effecticely aggitated.

The radial flow filter works much like the cylone filter on a vaccuum line. Where the water enters a round counter at an angle to induce flow. The solids like to go to the outside wall and slowly fall down and collect on the bottom. Meanwhile the clean water is collected from the middle.

The idead would be to try and make a 20gallon filter in the shape of a hexagon from plywood. Have the fish tanks return lines go to the filter, and the clean water go back into the regular sump.

The radial filter needs to have a 20gal capacity as the pump for the grow bed wpuld be inside it and would need to have enoigh capacity to not run dry while filling the growbed.

This would also be combined with increasing the size of the water lines to the fish tank so the water can be pumped and turned over more quickly as well. As one of the biggest issues the system encounters is the accumulation of waste on the main tank pump line that slowly chokes the flow over time. This being the #1 cause foe the water becoming murky.

If we combine this with both a new radial filter to limit the amount of solids the main tank pump has to handle, and increase the size of the water lines so waste buildup is less of an issue, thwn this should fix the issue of the murky water on a much longer term basis.

Issue being is that this radial filter would need to be positioned to the side of the growbed as there is no room to put it. I dont think this is a huge issue. But since id be changing the foor print of the system and needing more space, id wanna write up a new proposal for the board to review. (As well as get an agreement that if i put the money into these mods that the board will allow me to run the system for atleast 6 months)

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Another point of consideration is that if i cant get volunteers to help maintain the system i may go to the board and propose converting the system to hydroponics (using chemicals instead of fish waste) this would leave the tank un-used. On the updates tab there is a poll asking what to do. I would add this to the poll going on in the aquaponics update thread but it wont let you update polls after 5 mins.

Remove the water, dry it out, prop it up a couple feet and just use it to show off other peoples projects. (Maybe leave some tank decorations amd hang up some fake fish lol)

[EDIT-adding images of the radial flow fliter]
24" tall, 16" flat to flat, just shy of 20 gallons

image



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@Tookys i think you will be there today at 3:30pm? I am coming in around 3:00 and will keep an eye out for you.