SnailPowered's Aquaponic Adventures

This thread was borne from THIS thread, which has videos and the stuff that got me interested in the aquaponic idea.

I moved to Washington State a few months ago and have been using MMJ. The prices are about the same as what it always cost to get cannabis even when I was in HS so it has really pushed me to begin looking at growing my own. I used to have a 150 gallon aquarium with discus and I really enjoyed the design of the filter system and the science of how the filter worked. I heard about aquaponic gardening and it sounded like the perfect science project to keep my interest. Of course, there are things that are different about the gardening side and I have already learned that it is a fairly delicate balance. It is not as easy as I thought it would be but I think that I have put together a solid setup that will work well after my first setup was high maintenance and killed one sprout.

Failures I encountered:
* Overfeeding will lead to more nitrates, plants can't live in more nitrates even though they need them to grow.
* Some foods have lower phosphorous, N-P-K balance is important
* Clear-water formula means that it is trying to reduce algae growth, algae is a plant and we don't want to inhibit plant growth
* Mother Earth brand coconut fiber is finely chopped and not good for this project
* Start with fewer fish, they are cheap and it is easier to add a fish for more nutrients than it is to recover from burned roots
* Seeds are expensive and when they die, you will probably look at them for a few days hoping they will pull out of it.

Now, on to the design of my system.

After doing research I decided to build a system out of a 10 gallon aquarium. Lots of design attempts and failed tries at stuff and I finally ended up with an undergravel filter, a 120gph pump, a 10 gallon plastic tub from Lowe's and about 60 lbs of aquarium gravel for grow media. The problem with this system is that the small amount of water means that the water parameters can spike very easily. If you have kept fish extensively, know you can be patient and not overfeed or anything I would imagine that a 10 gallon aquarium based system could be quite effective. I would not recommend it for your first. Actually I would recommend going as large as you can for your first try because it will be more forgiving as you learn. I lust after using an IBC container of ~200 gallons but I don't have the space right now.

So, now that I have told you what not to use what is that I am here for?! Well, let's start with the list of stuff that I used to get my project up and flowing;
1x Centrex Plastic 27 gallon black tote with yellow lid
1x Mortar tub (this will be the grow bed)
1x Pacific HydroStar 260pgh pump from Harbor Freight
1x 10 foot length of 3/4" PVC pipe
1x 10pc bag of 3/4" 90 degree elbows
1x 10pc bag of 3/4" T-fittings
1x 3/4" ball valve
25' of clear vinyl tubing 5/8" ID
misc.

This isn't exactly a complete list, the words are getting heavy and I know everyone just came for the pictures anyway. So, we will start it off with the fish tank,

In this picture you can see the PVC pipe matrix that the pump will sit on. The goal of this is so that fish excrement will be pulled up into the growbed so that the worms can eat it. First time hearing about the worms? We are getting ahead of ourselves.


I used a drill bit smaller than I expected the aquarium gravel to be. The matrix is large enough that it shouldn't pick up anything heavy like that but just in case.


I put enough decorative lava rock to cover the matrix. This is cheaper and I was hoping that it would bring my PH down but it doesn't seem to have an effect.


I then filled the bottom with the white aquarium gravel so that the fish are easier to see. The gravel will also be a bed for beneficial bacteria to grow.


This is showing the way that I did the feed into the grow bed. I am using the ball valve as a bypass because the pump is stronger than it needs to be, it also gives me a place to pull water for a water change if I need to bring the water parameters back to being lower. This also makes your fish tank have a constant current, which may or may not be beneficial. I figure the fish need a workout.

In that last picture you can see the clear grow bed that I was going to use. That was a bad idea because light will begin to grow algae inside your grow bed and it can start to smell bad. That is the worst problem that I have heard but no one wants to have their garden smelling like a swamp I figure.


I added some 1/2" PVC pipe under the board that straddles the fish tank because the sides of the fish tank were starting to bow. I'm not sure if it was the water or the weight of the grow bed but I wanted to alleviate at least the weight of the grow bed. The PVC with the 90 angle is actually holding the sides together, it was a safety before I added the struts.


Here you can see the system set up, with no lights or anything, but the water is flowing. I have 4 goldfish in there and I think that is probably excessive. Luckily our favorite plant is quite nutrient hungry so hopefully I will be able to leave them all. I used the bottom of a plastic cup to keep light out of the water feed to the grow bed. It isn't anything fancy at all.


Here you can see that I put notches on three sides of this pipe about an inch higher than the water should ever be in the grow bed. I keep the water flow high enough to just run over the top of the pipe. You can also see the bottom of the cup in the corner of the picture.

I'm waiting for my LED light fixture to be delivered, it is supposed to be here tomorrow. Then hopefully I can hang the light and move the plants into the grow bed. I have three plants that will be making the migration.

I don't have any more pictures at the moment. Should I add the pics from the failure? I think so. I will get on that.

This is the old setup. The tent is a 5 foot tall tent, you can see that I am already out of space for the aquaponics to grow at all. The new system is in a 7 foot tall tent so I have at least two feet of height I can accept, maybe a little more if I start finding ways to hang the lights closer to the ceiling.


THIS is nutrient burn I do believe. The nitrates in the water were definitely close to 200ppm which is the max that the color changing stick strips I have goes to. I now do a 5 gallon water change (approximately 50%) every other day to keep the water in the safe for fish realm.


This plant was able to recover from the burn. It may be a bit short on phosphorous as well but I'm not sure. The pond sticks I was using from Tetra have less than 1% phosphorous in the food. This is where I learned about the "Clean Water Formula"

I wish you great success. I've thought about aquaponics on a scale like this, it seems like a real neat way to grow. I'll let you do all the heavy lifting and just blatantly steal your ideas when you get it dialed in!

Hell yeah, that is what I am making this for. I'm hoping to have a comprehensive walk through of my journey that people can reasonably follow along. It seems that aquaculture is an extremely valuable way to grow crops and yet I find it hard to get any "info for dummies." I will be taking some pictures in a bit, waiting for the lights to turn on as I just changed them to 12/12.

So this is sphagnum moss to drive the PH down because my PH was up around 6.8 and since I put it in there the plant looks much healthier. It is just a 3 inch diameter PVC pipe that I put slices in with a circular say so they are approximately 1/16 inch in width.


This is inside the short tent, you can see the moss in the corner. This is really odd because I messed up early on and nearly killed that plant so the soil is in the water and this is kind of a hybrid system.

Here's a side view of that plant. The pot is a 4 inch diamater pot at the top for a size reference. Also the black PVC is three inches inner diameter.


This shows that I went from the 10 gallon aquarium to a MUCH shorter plastic container. I also reduced the number of fish in this setup to 2.

This is the little sprout in the 7 foot tent. She is looking really nice. I topped and the branches are starting to come in now. I'm running my lights for 18 hours. I know most run them for 24 but I just decided not to. I may later, this is my first time.

I took the basil out of the small tent because it was bolting and becoming annoying and basil is not the focus of what I'm doing here. The big plant is a male and I'm thinking of taking this tent to seed if the AP plant is female because there were some definite casualties among the seeds I was shipped.


Here are the Aloha Grape Stomper and San Ferndando Valley clones added to my big tent.

Impressive stuff! I'm heartened by your suggestion that noobs start with a bigger system, how's 450 gallons? I'm thinking if converting an old hot tub...

I think that would be perfect! The IBC containers are what I think are the cheapest and easiest to convert. All you need to do is cut the top off and build your bell siphon into the lid, flip the top up side down for a grow bed and use the remainder of the container for your fish. I think the cage might support the grow bed too, though I'm not sure.

One word of caution that I think I will change in the future; I think the expanded clay doesn't support the plants. I think I will be adding 4" PVC pieces full of aquarium gravel for my grow spots. The middle plant in the 7 foot tent isn't growing up but it is still pretty bushy. I also need to change the water at least once a week I think. I let it go for two weeks and the leaves started to yellow. The clones are looking kind of dire, but I don't know anything about how they were growing before I got them (I believe they were in soil since they were in soil cups when I got them, but I didn't ask).

@SnailPowered I did a bit of recalculating, and I came up with 450 gallons for the hot tub/fish tank/duck pond... plus as much as another 600 gallons elsewhere in the system. I run RDWC and I'd be looking to utilize the same systems, only with aquaponics instead of chemical salt based nutrients.

Thoughts?

I'm really unfamiliar with growing...anything lol. I have been relying on a couple I know that managed a banana farm in Hawaii in the 80s for all of my growing questions.

So far, I have added a mound of Happy Frog 5-5-5 fertilizer that must be getting in the water and I haven't seen ill effects. The one thing I would say is that no matter how big the system, I wouldn't try loading it up with fish. Probably start with 10 or something I'd say. You may want to let the system cycle for a couple weeks before trying to plant anything as well.

It has been a long time since I updated this but the AP plant was female and I used the male to bring her to seed. She is looking good and smells really delicious!

Also, I think the volcanic stone was a terrible idea. I'm not 100% sure on that but that is my guess. Once this female is done budding I am going to move that tent out and build a new desk in my office that supports a water reservoir. Not 100% what I will use yet but maybe a 55 gallon drum.

SnailPowered said:

Also, I think the volcanic stone was a terrible idea. I'm not 100% sure on that but that is my guess. Once this female is done budding I am going to move that tent out and build a new desk in my office that supports a water reservoir. Not 100% what I will use yet but maybe a 55 gallon drum.

Click to expand...

Let's how you manage to produce more yields next time. That lil thing is hardly worth all the effort!

Well, it will give me seeds so that is valuable. But yeah, not worth the hassle of going through everything. Silverarm32 on Youtube is not growing small plants like mine at all!

SnailPowered said:

Well, it will give me seeds so that is valuable. But yeah, not worth the hassle of going through everything. Silverarm32 on Youtube is not growing small plants like mine at all!

Click to expand...

I surely don't mean to sound disparaging in any way, I am diligently taking notes in order to get my own aquaponic garden going!