Upgraded the water lines on the system to use clear tubing so we can see what is happening inside.
This was done because it seemed like the feed line to the main tank was always getting restricted and clogged every month, but when i cleaned it nothing would come out, but it would make a big difference.
So hopefully the tubing being clear will help me to monitor whats going on inside. Sadly i expect them to stop being clear and start to get a bit ugly on the inside. But for now they give a great visual of whats the water doing inside.
I also added a new mechanical timer for the grow bed pump so hopefully this will help keep the water pumping more consistent. And i replaced the main tank inlet port as the old one was slowly weakening from my regularly removing/adding the tube for maintenance and was starting to get concerned it may break.
Cleaned the tank input line, the new clear tubing does make it easy to see exactly where the gunk is building up so I can clean it.
The tube does get a bit of a kink in it near the tank which may have been what was causing the old tubing to have so much trouble. But you can see the kink in this clear tubing so much easier.
I opted to go ahead and clean the growbed window so it should be easy enough to see what the water level in the grow bed is now.
Turns out the window was blocked by algae and not feces. I was surprised, since it wasnt directly facing the sun or lights I didn’t expect algae to build up there.
Trying to clear the window was a bit of a process. Having to clear the clay pebbles out of the way in order to get access.
Your able to see the adjustable outlet pipe with the gravel cleared out.
Next I want to thank Martin for setting up a nice web portal for the system. Its setup as a publicly viewable website that people can view and see what sensors are currently reading on the system. It currently only reads the last 6 minutes. But hopefully we can give it some tweaks so you can see some more time in the future.
Just wanted to say, I’m not much of an aquaponics person myself, but the system looks noticeably better when I pass by it now. Good job on all your efforts, its refreshing to see it looking great.
( @Mollie moved my response over here so we arent taking over the power outage convo)
In light of the power outage there is concern over the health of the fish and the system.
If the system is without power for a day or 2?
Fish? They get a bit cold, the water in the tank can get as low as 65 if I recall without doing harm.
The tank is actually a good insulator since 80% of it is made of wood lol.
For 140 gallons I expect them to be fine for a couple days. But I’d wanna make sure the heaters are all working as soon as the power does come back on.
If somebody who lives near the space could get in touch with me and check up on this when they get a chance itd be appreciated.
The issue is all the plants are probably dead so I’ll have to get some new plants going asap to help the health of the system.
If we’re in a rush to get plants in after the freeze, I have about 12 pothos cuttings in water that have long enough roots to transplant. My pothos grow like crazy so I’m ok with planting them in the system to get something filtering the water and then we can pull them out down the road to swap in a non-vining plant.
Ill take anything atm to get that system back up and running.
Never experienced an outage like this so im not sure how the plants will handle it, but most of the books warn a 4 hour outage can kill the plants. That coupled with them being right up against the freezing glass probably doesn’t help.
The plants are alive and look totally unscathed! The fish tank is super dark and the light isnt working but I can see a couple fish swimming around when they get right up against the glass.
Hey y’all. I was at the space last night, and the plants do look shockingly ok.
The fish side continues to have very little visibility, and it’s also developed a bit of a funky smell. I can see some of the fish swimming, but very hard to see a possible odor source.
came in today to work on the aquaponics system. Sadly there were 3 fish that had died. not sure of exact cause but they had been dead for a while. Not sure if they died during the outage or after. But ill attribute it to the stress of the whole ordeal.
Went ahead and disposed of them properly.
The system is giving off a foul odor from the fish having stewed for so long. My and a friend worked to try and use cheese clothe to help filter the water, and we did a large water change of close to 100 gallons in total. So here’s hoping the system will start to improve slowly and both smell better and the water to clear up.
The tank was dark i believe because the timers for the lights were out of sync due to the power outage (the timers don’t track time when without power) so i went ahead and adjusted them back to where they need to be.
I will go ahead and plan to be back next weekend to do another water change if needed encase what we did today wasn’t going to be enough.
Thanks for the update @Tookys. Good to know there was a clear source of the funky smell. A bummer to be sure, but such things do happen. I’ll be in tomorrow, and I’ll give an updated sniff test to compare to this past Wednesday.
facepalm I was standing right there for a while programming keyfobs last night, and it didn’t even occur to me to prop open the door for some fresh air!
Go ahead and prop a door open if you’re going to be tinkering around the lobby area, but please don’t leave an open or unlocked door unattended.
Yikes. Poor fishies. @Tookys Do you still want some pothos to help clean the system? They are still rooting in water and I can tell they’re itching to get out of their mason jars.
Yeah I think so. I can plant them on Thursday when Im at the shop. Do you mind if I prune the basil while Im there? Itll help them put out new leave growth instead of flowering.
