I have been doing quite a bit of testing with aquaponics over the last year. One of my aquaponics systems is growing herbs and lettuce right in my kitchen. The distance to the stovetop is about 80 cm, how’s that for reducing food miles!
This system is a small aquarium with some NFT channels on top. I made the channels from rectangular plastic air duct, the ones that you can buy at any home improvement shop, they are normally used for kitchen and bathroom ventilation. Water gets pulled through the black filter box on the right and pumped into the channels where the plant roots can take up the nutrient rich water. One channel has 7 planting sites for herbs and the other one has 3, which are spaced further apart to grow lettuce. Since the plants don’t receive any direct sunlight, I had to provide them with some artificial light. Things are growing quite nicely and I often use fresh herbs from this indoor garden.
The fish are growing pretty fast as well, but they will take some while until they are big enough to eat.
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The mailman was just here to drop of my first copy of Urban Garden Magazine. UGM is a bi-monthly magazine focusing on hydroponics and indoor growing. I hadn’t heard of this magazine before, since it is distributed through hydro- and grow-shops in the US, Canada and the UK. That is until Dan, one of the magazines editors contacted me and asked me if I wanted to write something for the magazine.
So, I wrote a piece on greenhouse temperature control and the people at UGM loved it, in fact, they already have me booked for another gig in their next issue!
If you don’t know UGM yet you should check out their website at www.urbangardenmagazine.com, they normally have a few of their articles published on their site, or pick up a copy at your local hydro-store.
If any of you already have a copy, I would love to get some feedback on the article!
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My goldfish have been polluting the water for a little while now and all the plants I have transplanted into the aquaponics grow bed are doing good. A few days ago I decided to add the NFT channel, that I made a while ago, to the system and pop some basil seeds in. The seed packet says that germination takes 15 to 20 days, the seeds I put in started sprouting after 3 days! The picture was taken this morning, 4 days after sowing.
]]>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…
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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.
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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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…
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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.
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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!
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.