self sufficient life

We’re back!

Yes, I know, we wanted to live off-grid, but the property we bought is a little too far off. Now we have finally found an internet provider that can supply us with a decent internet connection, so we’re back online!

These past 2 months have been very eventful, but we are about settled now. The first 4000 liter fish tank has been set up inside the greenhouse. For now it houses goldfish. We’ll have to see how temperatures develop in the greenhouse throughout the winter. I will probably build a shed around the fish tank and connected grow bed and equip it with a grow light to be able to grow some veggies this winter.

Sorry, no pictures at the moment, as the USB cable for the camera is still in one of the unpacked moving boxes…

Aquaponics Lettuce and Basil

My aquaponics system with expanded clay granulate is doing good. The lettuce I have planted in there hasn’t grown too much, but the plants are looking good and seem to start growing now. The reason why they haven’t grown until now is because there weren’t enough nutrients in the water. When you want to grow something in a new aquaponics system, you have to let the system mature for a while and give the nutrients time to build up a high enough level to sustain your plants. I’m the impatient type and can’t wait for maturing systems when trying new things, so I planted way too soon. Things are looking good now however, so it’s all good!

I have also put a cutting from a basil plant into the grow bed and planted some basil seeds. The cutting was cut from a basil plant that I bought from the supermarket and lives in my kitchen window. I just cut a piece and stuck it into the clay granulate. Two weeks later the cutting still looks good and it has grown some impressive roots! The basil seeds have sprouted too.

Aquaponics, take 3

With some help of the nice people over at Backyard Aquaponics, I now know why my tomato plant didn’t grow. The gravel I was using as grow bed medium was the wrong type of stone, probably limestone or marble. This caused the pH of the water to rise up to 9.0 and inhibit the plants nutrient uptake.

They say that lessons learned the hard way stick better, I agree. Before getting the next trunk load of gravel and take half a day of washing it and shoveling it into my grow beds, I will take a sample home to test. I’m quite sure I will not forget to do that!

Well, back to aquaponics, square one. I got a bag of Seramis expanded clay granulate to use as grow bed medium. This stuff is specially made for plants, so it should do the trick. It is a lot more expensive than gravel, but it has a few advantages: the very porous material is very lightweight and the capillary action will suck the water up for quite a few inches. Because of this it can be used in a constant flow system with a constant low water level, so no more messing around with loop siphons. I used a small square container as grow bed. A hole in one corner is covered with a drain sieve which prevents the clay granulate from washing into the fish tank.

I’ve planted some lettuce into the grow bed and threw some basil seeds in. Stay tuned for their progress!

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Compost vs. Aquaponics

Almost 4 weeks have passed since I set up my aquaponics system and planted a little tomato plant in there. Another seedling from a seed of the same tomato has been planted into compost which I have enriched with cow manure. The plan was to compare the total yield of both plants, but there is nothing left to compare.

The aquaponics plant has not grown at all in the 4 weeks. The only difference to how the plant looked 4 weeks ago is the color: the plant is now purple, which is a sign of not enough nutrients and too much water. I guess I planted too early. I will let the system mature a little longer and try again in about a month.

The plant in compost is doing very well. It has grown tremendously in the last 4 weeks and looks very healthy with juicy leaves and a thick stem. Even the Lego minifig I placed into the pictures for size comparison noticed the difference and wanted to stay in the compost veggie-garden.

For now the score is: Compost 1, Aquaponics 0. But I expect this to change once the system has matured…

Free Fish Food

Daphnia (a.k.a. water fleas) can be bought at most aquarium shops, but what if you could get them for free? These tiny crustaceans are really easy to breed. In the summer months you can simply put a bucket filled with old aquarium water in a sunny place and they will have enough food to thrive and you will have a constant supply of free fish food.

I filled a 250 liter rainwater barrel with aquarium water and put some fish food in there every few days until I had a nice algae bloom.

I went to the aquarium store quite a few times, but each time they where out of life daphnia, I used too see them there every time, but now that I needed them they didn’t have any… typical…

Eventually I managed to buy a small bag. I put them in the green water and after only two weeks the water was crystal clear and swarming with daphnia. Every day I can scoop some out to feed my fish but the supply seems endless.

During winter the barrel froze over and I thought that the water fleas had probably all died, but to my surprise they continued breeding when spring arrived.

If you want to have live fish food during the winter as well, you can set up a culture vessel inside, but you will probably have to feed them.

Fishy Tomatoes

After a bit more tweaking, the barrelponics system is up and running! I have put seven little goldfish in that I had rescued from our 800 liter goldfish tank before the big ones could eat them. The little ones overwintered in our tropical aquarium but where now getting big enough to eat the guppy fry, so they needed a new home anyway.

I have taken one of the tomato plants that I had planted in the garden a few weeks ago and moved it into the aquaponics barrel. Another one that is almost exactly the same size will stay in the soil. This should be a nice test to compare how the two plants develop and how much fruit they produce, let the waiting game begin!

Free food production in your backyard

Summer is really starting now! The last couple of days we’ve had 23 – 25C temperatures and the forecast for the next week is the same. While our friends from down-under are getting ready for winter, we can start growing all sorts of yummy things in the garden.

I thought I’ll use the long weekend to set up a little half barrel aquaponics system. I still had one of those blue barrels laying around, so I went ahead and cut it in half to create two grow beds. After filling the grow beds with washed gravel and filling them with water the troubles started: I was using a loop siphon to do the ebb and flow in the barrel, but the loop just didn’t work like it should. When filling the barrel, the siphon should kick in at a set level and empty the barrel again, giving the plant roots access to oxygen rich air. After the barrel has been emptied the siphon should break and the barrel should slowly fill up with water again.

My siphon either wouldn’t kick in correctly, leaving the barrel flooded, or it wouldn’t break, leaving the barrel empty at all times. Some more tweaking is necessary for my barrelponics to work. Since I don’t have to go to work today, I’ll have all day to try to get this working.

Aeroponics barrel

The weather was beautiful yesterday, so I decided to go outside and make a new hydroponics system. Well, actually its an aeroponics system, because the plants roots will not be growing in water, but they will be hanging down from the mesh pots and misted with a nutrient solution. This method of growing gives the roots better access to oxygen, which has a positive effect on the plant growth.

I didn’t want to go out and buy anything, so I went looking for usable items in the garage and basement. I found a rainwater barrel, that I wasn’t really using. I cut the barrel in half, because it was too big. One rainwater barrel lid has been glued to the bottom of the half that I cut of. Another lid is used to hold the plants.

I bought some microdrip system parts, by Gardena, a while ago. Their system uses flexible tubing and they have a whole range of different drippers and spray nozzles that are installed into the tubing simply by screwing them in. Since I had these parts laying around, I used them for my aeroponics barrel. You can see the black Gardena tubing in the picture.

I made 8, evenly spaced, holes in the top lid to hold the mesh pots for the plants. The tubing is glued to the inside of the lid with some hot glue. A spray nozzle is installed in the tubing right beside each mesh pot, so each plant will have access to the nutrients.
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Here’s a close-up of one of the mesh pots and a spray nozzle. (You can click on the pictures for a bigger view)

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With all of the mesh pots installed the top of the lid looks nice and clean. The hole in the middle is used for the pump to suck the water out of the barrel. I’m using an external aquarium filter pump, but if you would use a submersible pump the whole thing would look even cleaner, with only one power cord coming out of the barrel, instead of two pieces of garden hose. Like I said: I’m only using parts that I had laying around and the external aquarium pump was what I had to work with and it does the job!

With everything hooked up the spray nozzles started spraying a fine mist of water drops onto the mesh pots. Looks like my aeroponics system is working nicely! I’ve planted some seeds in a germination tray. When they get big enough I will put them into the aeroponics system and then we’ll see if it really works as good as others say!

The lettuce raft

I build a small raft system a while ago and plumbed it into my bedroom aquarium. It didn’t turn out to work too good however. Tomato and lettuce seeds started sprouting after only a few days and seemed to grow quite nicely, but as they got bigger the growing stopped and the plants where looking terrible! I finally found out what’s wrong with my plants: the T5 compact fluorescent lamp I had installed for the plants was not delivering the light that the plants need. The spectrum of my lamp is about as bad as it gets for plants, so I need to find some better lights to start growing lettuce inside.

Since the weather conditions are starting to get better for outside growing, I’m going to build a new system for outside use and upgrade the lighting on my small raft system when the weather gets colder again.

Small scale aquaponics setup

The nice thing about aquaponics is that it is very scalable and can be set up almost anywhere. If you want to try out aquaponics you can set up a small system to grow herbs in your home. All you need is a small fish tank and a container that can be used as a grow bed. The fish in the tank will fertilize the water with their excrements and the growing plants use these nutrients to grow while cleaning the water.

In a small setup you can locate the grow bed above the fish tank. The grow bed can be filled with lightweight expanded clay aggregate or gravel. A water pump on a timer will fill the grow bed with water and small holes in the bottom of the grow bed let the water flow back into the aquarium. The holes have to be sized to let less water pass through them than the pump delivers to the grow bed. This way the grow bed will fill up while the pump is running. Once the pump shuts off, the grow bed will empty out into the aquarium.

A system like this is called flood and drain and makes the plants grow nicely. In the flood stage the plant can take up water and nutrients and in the drain stage the plants roots have access to oxygen. You can place your setup by a window or, if you don’t have a suitable spot that receives enough light, you can add some lights.

(sketchup model by: Dave)