captain.koons
Member
Does anyone have it? Does it cover aquaponics?
Worth reading?
Someone!?
Cheers!
Worth reading?
Someone!?
Cheers!
-
Happy Birthday ICMag! Been 20 years since Gypsy Nirvana created the forum! We are celebrating with a 4/20 Giveaway and by launching a new Patreon tier called "420club". You can read more here.
-
Important notice: ICMag's T.O.U. has been updated. Please review it here. For your convenience, it is also available in the main forum menu, under 'Quick Links"!
aquaponics - breeder steve's book
- Thread starter captain.koons
- Start date
captain.koons
Member
Biofilter: The aquarium can pump water constantly to piss lines (not drip) situated on the top of the buckets. The lids of the buckets are cut to facilitate a 3 gallon mesh bottom pot. The pot is filled with clay corn and should have wicks. I've even fed it on syphon action alone, no feed pump. Either way about a quarter to a third of the water in the tank floods the buckets until the return float switch is activated, thereby draining the buckets airing out the biofilter surface area that will be teeming with beneficial bacteria and massive white roots.
^^Above^ is posted by breeder steve.
Is the wicks from the bottom bucket just to provide additional feeding to the plants in the top bucket? It seems so to me and seems to be unnecessary as the top bucket is constantly fed.
^^Above^ is posted by breeder steve.
Is the wicks from the bottom bucket just to provide additional feeding to the plants in the top bucket? It seems so to me and seems to be unnecessary as the top bucket is constantly fed.
Hi captain.koons, I've run several aquaponics set-ups, and I had a lot more info with pics etc on Overgrow before it went down, but I have written some fairly long info here at icmag, Please do an advanced search for keyword aquaponics by author 10k and read up. Then post back here with whatever questions you may have. Better yet, post your questions to the threads you pull up in the search and I'll try to help the best I can. Sorry I hadn't replied sooner when you pm'd me, I was just a bit pre-occupied elsewhere.
B
buddymate
Didnt he call the technique guppy'ponics or somesuch title?
captain.koons
Member
yes he did I think it's only because he fed guppies to his fish.
B
buddymate
I read one of his articles years ago,the plants in the accomapnying pics looked incredible.
W
Weedman Herb
Yep ... In the last HT I bought ... talked about a sock full of guano immersed in there too ...
captain.koons
Member
Not a problem.
I've done a considerable amount of reading, mostly stuff from the stickied aquaponics log, general fish keeping at another forum, and stuff from breeder Steve. Question time!
1. In the Aquaponics sticky found above in this sub forum by "guest" he says that the nitrogen cycle is disrupted at pH's lower than 6 and that 7.5 is ideal for the bacteria. Is this accurate? I've read otherwise that the nitrogen cycle occurs in pH's as low as 3.5 which is far too low for the plants I'll be growing. I think a PH of 6.2-6.8 is what breeder steve aimed for I think this can be lowered if one desired.
2. Temps = Breeder steve maintained 22-24c/70-75f which is good for the plants but a lot of tropical fish suffer at temps that low. Breeder steve had a diverse mixture of cichlids mostly amazonian (oscars) and africans - the africans prefer a temp of 78-84f? If the water is aerated vigorously the temps don't matter too much do they? I figure 70-75f is as LOW as I'd want to go I think I'd want to be more in the 78-80f range and just take more steps in aeration.
3. Fish- picking fish isn't that easy I think I want live food eating fish to have a more organic and pure system I'm thinking oscars, catfish, plecos, misc scavengers or perhaps pike cichlids/snakeheads the latter will feel comfortable in temps of 18-22c/65-71f and a pH of 6. The prior im not 100% but amazon fish come from black water river and can tolerate pH of 4.5-7 and should be fine at 24c/75f
4. The system the aquaponics sticky said continuous fed is far better than ebb and flow and breeder steve seems to concur he uses a continuous flow to the plants which are in a gravel/clay type medium in a dutch bucket with 1" of top dressing which allows him to start seeds. The bottom of the bucket below the netpot has aerated lavarocks to work as a biofilter this fills to some point and is emptied via float valve.
I think I'll either mimic Breeder steve's system or have a continuous fed system with a seperate biofilter, I'm undecided how to set it up yet but I have extra tanks and plenty of bioballs from previous sump projects. I'm not 100% what I shall do yet.
5. On nutrient supplementation what experience do you have in this area? Breeder steve seems to have top dressed his plants witha 1" layer of worm castings and such above his hydro medium. Another thing he did which I find interesting is he put a sock full of guano and other assorted organic flowering nutrients to boost the ppm's and rework the nutrient profile. Knowing if top dressing is a good option seems fairly essential when planning the setup as it would do best in a bucket setup I would think.
6. as for pH up and down I know there's multiple options, breeder steve seemed to use stuff like apple juice or coffee for down and you mentioned potassium sillicate for pH up? I'd like natural, organic, and safe options for this.
7. there seems to be speculation that the biofilter isn't necessary, and that eventually the roots will just break down any fish waste - I believe this was covered in the aquaponics sticky via you recommendation - however the surface area of the biofilter would definitely be of value?
8. tank size vs fish count - breeder steve used a 90gal aquarium for 8kw of grow space, What do you think of lots of fish in a smaller "loop" creating higher ppm vs larger "loop" maybe as many fish collectively creating a more modest ppm but having more available nutrients? I don't know how fish would cope in a power outage if you had 500" of fish in a 90gal aquarium. I think for now I plan to run 2-3kw perhaps on such a size of tank if not larger.
in a continuously fed loop the ppms shouldn't matter as much as available nutrients I believe? I don't really know I've only run ebb and flow tables
9. Finally, how did you aerate and how much aeration is needed? Breeder steve apparently ran airstones in his lower pots which contained the biofilter and had a return reservoir at the end of his loop that returned water through pipes with holes as "rain" which would also aerate the loop. Any suggestions on this? I like the idea of the buckets and their massive surface area when considering the biofilter the whole setup seems rather elaborate though.
--
All in all I think I got this more or less figured out. The pH for the bacteria concerns me as does making a compromise in the temps for the fish and plants but it seems if one had the massive biofilter and aeration the plants could take rather high temps.
Its accurate most of the time in aquarium fishkeeping, but it's been found that the nitrogen cycle works throughout a larger range in aquaponics once a larger range of flora & fauna gets fully established into the system
You CAN run much higher res temperatures in aquaponics than a person could ever dream of running in a regular chem hydro system and not have to worry about having pythium or root diseases you'd normally see in conventional chem hydrponincs. Because of the beneficial bacteria and nitrogen cycle eating up any bad microbes before they have a chance of flourishing on the roots.
That being said though, I prefer to go with goldfish as they're very hardy creatures that can take a lot more abuse than tropical fish. Thus they can handle pH and temperature drifts much better than others, and they seemed to adjust into the turbo eating style we want to see without dieing off like some tropical fish do.
You also have to consider that higher temperatures cause higher photosynthesis rates..faster growing and faster eating plants.
So you should try to keep the temps in check for that reason too.
That's a tough question to look at. It depends on what kind of aquaponics system you're planning and how big of a total water reservoir you'll be using. Well ran aquaponics is totally dependent on having enough fish in the system. It does not work very well if there isn't a large fish population. Aquaponics blows away conventional fish population thinking like you'd have in a household aquarium setting. The nitrogen cycle becomes 'turbo-charged' to some extent and the fish become crap factories after they adjust to eating a lot more than they'd eat in a normal aquarium setting. If you have a big set-up you can raise fish at the same time and end up harvesting food as well as plants.
A big water res, like a watering horse trough can hold nice fish like tilipia, catfish or even finer dining
like crappie or perch if you can keep them from jumping out heh heh
The key point is, you'll be looking at having an "overpopulated" fish keep vs the size of the water volume.
There's all kinds of ways to design a good working system. The main thing to keep in mind is that the medium becomes the biofilter area to support the nitrifying bacteria and other friendly beneficial bactors. It must have a frequent and regular flow of the fish water to help keep the bactors flourishing and the plants eating.
This water flow acts in return to help remove nitrates from the water 'for' the fish.
However, you MUST do something to remove excessive suspended particulate matter (organic material like decaying food remnants and fish turds), or your medium will soon become way too hot for the plants. I ran an undergravel filter element with a very slight layer of course rock over it...from that undergravel grid I had a powerhead pulling the trash down thru the rockage and pumping it into an outboard filter box so the "chunks" would get removed, along with that outboard filter boxes intake pipe also pulling out suspended particulates from the water. This prevented the turdage and uneaten decaying food from ending up in the medium over ferting the plants.
For redundancy sake...
If you let the turds go to the medium, your plants will become very N toxed and suffer.
Again, I know this from personal failure the first few runs I made and also from seeing a professional operation where they go to great lengths to pull out as much organic chunkage as possible.
I cheated just a little bit too, using a bit of worm castings in and 'slightly' around the plugs the clones were in when transplanted into the lecastone.
Mine was a hybrid dwc e&f conversion system sort of dwc in an e&f tray with the tray being replenished frequently with the fish tub water recirculating through the system. I also cheated some by adding just a splash of pbp bloom which seemed to stabilize the pH
The nute profile needs to go up significantly in p & K and go down on N during the latter half of flowering.
The fish population has to be reduced or the water diluted quite a bit. This can be done by pre-treating the top up water alone.
But can also be done by supplementing like breeder steve did. I'm told he even added a dash of gh micros in some of his aquaponics grows to insure a full spectrum of micros.
Nothing wrong with adding a few minerals in the process.
Ph up and pH down can be used to bump up the overall P & K too.
That's what the professional aquaculture fish and vegitable farmers do in order to 'adjust the final NPK in the system heh heh
Epson salts for mg, calcium "tums" heh heh also a supplemental foliar spray of 'spray'n'grow for iron etc can also be used to treat anything the plants ask for. Calcium carbonate in the form of sea shells or egg shells in the loop works wonders for keeping the pH stable btw. It dissolves into the water to bump up the pH only when the water goes towards acidic and stops dissolving somewhere above 7.0. Acting like an automatic pH doser.
Sea shells or ground sea shell also adds some micro nutes to the water supply in the same process.
Yes, there is a lot of speculation on bio filters and how much, how big etc.
Much of it involves and is governed by exactly what the system plans are and how big the water & fish end of it are planned to be. With little or no medium it's good to have a working bio filter somewhere in the loop to keep the benes flourishing. They don't explode population wise very quickly so they've gotta have plenty of places to populate, mainly in the medium if at all possible in your system plans.
The size of that water volume x medium volume is what will guide you to determine how heavy of a population the system "loop" will eventually hit.
With that much lighting you'll need to have a fairly large population to sustain that kind of photosynthesis.
Yup, same thing. It's an organic food chain and tough to really substantiate wtf is all in the water at any one moment. I wish I could find my old og thread.
At one point I ran a rapid test water testing gizmo to determins NPK levels and they were all within spec, and that was before adjusting with water pre-treating and fish population reductions late in flowering. I was surprised how close it was to a transitional ratio npk wise. All told, you still need to let the "plants" tell you what they're looking for and mine didn't say much. They wanted to keep flowering way longer than I anticipated, but that ended up being rewarding.
I had an nl5xshiva that just went crasy nuts. Main cola the size of my leg hanging sideways on bungee cords and string all over the place yeeeehaaaa
Maximum aeration is extremely important to keeping the fish alive and the pH stable.
You cant have too much, but too little and carbonic acid builds up in the water from all the fish breating out c02, caueing the pH to plummet.
Aerate the hell out of the water at all times. Having an uninterruptable power supply on at least a few air pumps makes a lot of sense in case of an unexpected power outage like you asked about in number eight, for the plants AND the fish.
I hope I've helped.
I would love to see you doing a grow diary thread once you get the system fully designed and running...
Please continue this thread and show us the system working plans. Maybe myself and others can help you "tweak" the "tweakable" in the process.
ps...it is most important to get the nitrogen cycle started in the full system before you introduce the plants and equally as important of course to not populate too much too soon with the fish either. Best to fire up the system on just a few sacrificial fish or better yet do the ammonia thing for a week or two first, then begin populating with fish AND clones or seedlings after the symbiosis begins. Let the plants and fish grow together and bump up the fish population as the plants begin blasting off...
...and they WILL bigtime...
Good luck and happy fish too
10k
Last edited:
captain.koons
Member
Thanks for the reply bro, it was very informative. I'm going on vacation this week until the end of August a friend is taking care of my garden. I plan to first test this system on my home aquarium which has aquatic turtles and cichlids when I get back. I'll likely start off with tomatoes and poppies which I'll make a grow log of for sure. I don't like posting up pictures of illegal things.
One other thing, in the case of a continuously fed system. In the case where one has a large aquarium with a lower ppm/fish count per gal vs a case where someone has a smaller aquarium with higher fish count / per gal. Say for instance aquarium one is 500gal and has 3 times the fish as aquarium 2 which is 100gal the first would be more desirable?
I have a couple 50 gal aquariums, some larger 200-280gals, and I've been working on a 500gal plywood tank I was planning on throwing some snakeheads or pike cichlids which eat a disgusting amount of food. I shit you not these things can eat $20 of feeders a day. They would be rather miserable in a small tank though.
One other thing, in the case of a continuously fed system. In the case where one has a large aquarium with a lower ppm/fish count per gal vs a case where someone has a smaller aquarium with higher fish count / per gal. Say for instance aquarium one is 500gal and has 3 times the fish as aquarium 2 which is 100gal the first would be more desirable?
I have a couple 50 gal aquariums, some larger 200-280gals, and I've been working on a 500gal plywood tank I was planning on throwing some snakeheads or pike cichlids which eat a disgusting amount of food. I shit you not these things can eat $20 of feeders a day. They would be rather miserable in a small tank though.
captain.koons
Member
Basically I'm asking the benefits of overall more available nutrients vs less water with more available nutrients per gal.
for example you have a 100gal tank with fish that consume 100 feeders every 3days and I have a 500 gal with fish that consume 200 or more feeders every 3days, who is better off?
for example you have a 100gal tank with fish that consume 100 feeders every 3days and I have a 500 gal with fish that consume 200 or more feeders every 3days, who is better off?
Well, you could put that into terms of pounds of fish per gallon in which case the 100 gallon tank must be processing a lot more fish waste. It's only 20% the volume of the big tank and consuming 2.5 times as much food per gallon. but I still don't know where we're going with this question ?
Aquaponics in a big fish raising setting, is all about sustaining plants on a lot less water then ground grown plants in the long run and the same for the fish, because of the recirculating systems way of "working together" between the plants and fish to keep the system loop going. In other words the symbiosis between the fish and plants runs a lot less water than a fish farmer (or aquarium fish keepr) would use if he didn't have the plants helping to clean the water for the fish.
The regular fish farmer is running a high population of fish has to frequently add top up water in order to keep the water pollution from going toxic and poisoning or sickening the fish. So he will have to access a lot more water...higher operating costs for the water bill or higher power costs to pump more water from his well.
The usual plant farmer / gardener would run a lot more water if he were feeding plants in the ground or even in containers. Same goes for the hydroponic greenhouses. Much higher operating costs because of the high water consumption. Not to mention fertilizers, soil amendments etc.
Anyway, I'm babbling and getting off track here.
I guess my point related to your question is that you're system is dependent on how much medium & plants you'll be running and how much water volume you'll need to do the circulation and still have enough water in the fish tub during the flow cycles.
A continuous flow set-up would be running with roughly the same water level all the time, but if you were going to do an intermittent flow cycle thing like a flood and drain (e&f tray filled with rock) system, you'd need a bigger fish tub reservoir than the usual e&f hydro system.
Last edited:
captain.koons
Member
Basically for the fishes sake I'm asking if it's necessary to have a high fish count in a smaller tank to support the plants or if one could use a larger tank and overall the same or more fish.
IE is it necessary to have 5" of fish per gal in a smaller tank to maintain high ppm or could I have 3" of fish in a larger tank overall keeping more fish and producing more waste.
I don't know how to articulate my question any better
My desire is to have a larger 280+ gal tank with larger fish that hopefully consume more food collectively than those that could be crammed into a 100gal tank or whatever the case may be. Would this choice be against the best interests of my plants? I hope this helps.
IE is it necessary to have 5" of fish per gal in a smaller tank to maintain high ppm or could I have 3" of fish in a larger tank overall keeping more fish and producing more waste.
I don't know how to articulate my question any better
My desire is to have a larger 280+ gal tank with larger fish that hopefully consume more food collectively than those that could be crammed into a 100gal tank or whatever the case may be. Would this choice be against the best interests of my plants?
I hope this helps.Hey man, if you can before you go on vacation, get some water flowing through a bulk of medium and keep it running so you can get a jump start on populating that medium with our little friends. Good aquaponics takes a good deal of time to really get a lush fully populated bio filtering action going in the medium. The longer the medium is in the loop being populated, the better the results will be.
You can grow some real "bull dogs" of tomatoes in aquapoincs, and they'd be great for the log you're planning to post.
The poppies thing however, would be frowned on here as some would see it as against the site terms of use if they're the papaver somniferum kind.
Looking forward to talking when you get back.
Last edited:
OrganicMeds
Member
Check out this forum for all your Aquaponic needs......
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/index.php
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/index.php
captain.koons
Member
Aye, I got lots of "used" tank water on hand at all times. I'm also putting out some medium I have to be colonized, I have some cycled bioballs and lavarock in my sumps also.
Also noted on the tomatoes, I wasn't sure what the rules were exactly on poppies as they're legal to grow in Canada at least.
captain.koons
Member
okie dookie.
I've got some 36-50 gal totes filled with my leca with aquarium pumps running over them, and I've also some lavarock going incase I use it for a biofilter/mechanical-food-filter-thingy before my plants in the loop.
I've got some 36-50 gal totes filled with my leca with aquarium pumps running over them, and I've also some lavarock going incase I use it for a biofilter/mechanical-food-filter-thingy before my plants in the loop.
