Woolly's First Test System

WoollyNZ

Hi All,

Big thanks to everyone on this forum and others and GrowPower.

After much procrastinating for a year.

Here's my first go at aquaponics.

Bits

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Stand

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Notice the tomato plant in the ground to the right (it died)
To the left of it is a pepper and another tomato to the left of that.

Please note I'm not a gardener, never raised fish before.

I have killed a lot of plants though thru lack of watering.

Let the journey begin and lots of laughs.

WoollyNZ

Here's more pics

Note to self - first plants went in on the 13th feb 2012
(These were a replanted tomato and pepper)

Ok here we go
Bell Siphon Testing - there is a lot more to these things than meet the eye. (books could be written about these things)
A few things I've found out
A bloke called Affnan is worth looking up.
Just because a cap looks air tight doesn't mean it is, I used plumbing tape (white stuff) in the end as this meant I could still do more experiments.
I found breaking the syphon the most difficult.
My latest trick was to put a pin prick hole in the top (I'll let you know how that goes).
Overall they're a fantastic thing to experiment with, I wish my science classes had them.

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Ok these are the first plants Pepper on left and the other a tomato (both taken from soil).
I washed the soil off.
Drilled a hole in the bottom of the plastic pot.
Then used rock wool to keep them mounted.

Added hydroton. (not sure about hydroton, it binds just like gravel, so next time will use river stone 20mm)

Chives and parsley from garden place, used high pressure to wash off soil they came in.

I split each chunk into thirds this was ok for the chives but the outer roots of the parsley didn't appreciate this and died off but the inner ones are still lively, could of been the breaking of the root system to get them apart.

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tojo

I'm really liking the wooden stand, congratulations on you whole system.
Plenty of room for future expansion too! :cheers:

WoollyNZ

Added a sump tank as the levels in the fish tank went up and down alot.

Most probably due to the hydroton needing time to soak up the water.

The sump tank at the bottom is also feed via a syphon - a different type though.

This also gave me some head aches.

The fix was a plumbing tape to make sure the joints were air tight.

A little air hole is in the fish tank side to keep it at a constant level.

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About 3 weeks in.

I added a thing called a biological filtration booster about 2 weeks back when I added two gold fish.

Not sure whether it worked or not (I still wonder how bacteria needing oxygen can live in a bottle?)

Anyways, lots of testing of pH and ammonia.

Ph was 8.2 tapwater. Added some pH down (hydrochloric acid) over a few days (so not to stress things) got it down to 6.6 and then it rained which brought it back up to 7.6. So added 20ml over two days this has brought back down to 6.6 until it rains again.

The leaves were turning yellow on the lettuce, tomato and the pepper so I've added 5 mg of chelated iron and it seems to turn them around.

Also I've been spraying them with Seasol (concentrated seaweed) 4ml to 1L.

I now have about a dozen gold fish and feeding them breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner.

Ammonia has never gone above .25ppm.
Nitrites and Nitrates are 0ppm

The plants I washed the roots of are all white and the roots are growing like mad.

The tomato, pepper and rosemary are growing new white root into the water.

Recap
Plants
tomato (sortof ok), pepper (good), celery (really good), lettuce (okish, raft a bit yellow), brockley (ok), chives (good), parsley (center ones are good), cabbage (ok), bok choi (really good).

Fish (dozen about 1.5 to 2.5 inches)
All still alive (really good)
One jumped but solved that with netting (and it lived, not sure about brain damage).

Light blue container contains the aerator (noisy beast) within another container with rubber feet, quietens it down by half.

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RupertofOZ

Welcome Woolly... good to see a few people across the ditch giving aquaponics a try...

thorn

WoollyNZ wrote:

...
Ok here we go
Bell Siphon Testing - there is a lot more to these things than meet the eye. (books could be written about these things)
A few things I've found out
A bloke called Affnan is worth looking up.
Just because a cap looks air tight doesn't mean it is, I used plumbing tape (white stuff) in the end as this meant I could still do more experiments.
I found breaking the syphon the most difficult.
My latest trick was to put a pin prick hole in the top (I'll let you know how that goes).
Overall they're a fantastic thing to experiment with, I wish my science classes had them....

Bell siphons are just elaborate funny shaped loop siphons. Your system looks like it's getting off to a good start!

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