I toured an aquaponics system today that was pretty cool. Here are the stats:
- 300 gallon fish tank + 100 gallon sump tank + 55 gallon fry tank
- 30 pounds of fish (mostly talipia)
- preps tap water w/ vitamin C (ascorbic acid) (500mg per 50 gallons of tap water)
- adds 1 tbs of chelated iron per month
- has to add 15 gallons of water per day
- uses Gyneral Dynamics ‘pH down’ product (phosphoric acid) to adjust pH level
- maintains a pH of 6.8 to 7.0
- home made growbeds are 10″ deep and filled with expanded shale
- commercial growbeds are filled with hydroton
- added red wiggler worms to grow beds
- removes pump filter sponges
Brian C also had some very thoughtful comments about things he would do to make the system better:
- use larger auto-siphon valves (the current 3/4″ valves don’t keep up with incoming water flow, so the siphon is never broken)
- use deeper grow beds (12″)
- pipe from fish tanks into grow beds so that nutrients don’t settle in sump (currently flows from fish tank to sump, then to grow beds)
- better to use one pump instead of 3
- add power backup system
- build greenhouse around system
- add multiple water entrances to growbed to prevent solids buildup
More notes:
- 1 lb of fish to 1 gal of water
- 1 gal of water to 2 gal of growbed
- uses 33% protein fish feed
- ECOPLUS pumps are cheap, low power, and have replaceable parts
- uses flow switch to prevent emptying of tank of problem exists
- says timing of flood/drain cycle is not very important
- successfully cloned a tomato plant by cutting of healthy branch without blooms and sticking it down in the gravel
- built an egg tumbler out of a florescent light protector w/ bubbler 1/2 down tube
- trained perch to eat feed by adding bloodworms
