Gordon's Crater

faye

Love your photos Gordon

Dooes Gunagulla have a special meaning?

Gunagulla

Hi Faye, thanks

and yes, its a word from the local Kamillaroi language for sky. I'm interested in astronomy, weather and atmospheric phenomena - aurora, sun and moon haloes etc, so asked a friend, who was head of ATSIC at the time, if he could find me a suitable word from the local aboriginal language for my property name. Gunagulla was the best in a list of words he found for me.

faye

Lovely Gordon

Gunagulla

The nights are cooling down again, but the water is still averaging around 16C. This week will be a test though, as it is likely to be much cooler from Wednesday morning onwards after a cold front has passed.
Currently running about 2500litres in the system and CF most of the time, apart from a couple of 40 min drains during the day, and 4 X 1 hour drains overight. It is all still fully exposed to the night air, with no heating set up as yet.

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RupertofOZ

Perfect trout temps... and definitely no need to heat for trout... :wink:

Gunagulla

I think I'll be needing the solar heating to keep the water temp up when the days are around 10-15C max in mid winter!

RupertofOZ

If you really feel the need to pamper your trout... knit them a jumper... :lol:

Gunagulla

Nitrates (secondary Y-axis scale) are starting to increase

The earlier up and down may have been related to the 2l of worm juice added on May 6th. Nitrites well up too, I diluted 2:1, as the reference chart only goes to 5ppm, and it was a very dark purple. The FT water is now quite clear

pH 7.8
Ammonia 1.0
Nitrite 10
Nitrate 10

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Gunagulla

Crater 2 ready for the sump, just as soon as I can locate a bung with coarser thread than the one I bought, to seal the water pipe connection hole.

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Now all I need is some rain so I can fill the system with water...

anthonysm59

Very impressive, I dream of having that kind of space to play with. Where is the wind power and how you gonna build it? From scratch or ready made? Incorporating those 2 energy sources into my future systems is what I'm looking to do. We on the south american coast are at the foot of the Andes so there are constant thermals coming in off the pacific, a shame not to use all that energy. Now that solar technology should be more efficient and cheaper I want to use that as well. Your panels look very profesional, were they ready made or did you knock them up?

Gunagulla

Not much wind power here- just a little bit every now and then on a windy day from a 200W turbine on a 10m tower, although I will have another one- 500W on an 18m tower when I get around to finishing the tower. Average wind speed over the year is only 3-4km/hr here, so most days I get no wind power.

I built the solar tracker for the big array- shown in the time-lapse animation on my web page, and am building another tracker for a 2kW array at the moment. They are commercial panels, DIY panels don't generally produce very much output.

Gunagulla

Ammonia down 0.5 to 0.5ppm, and Nitrates on the way up today

A couple of pics from the AP this arvo:

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Gunagulla

Well, I guess the 3 1/2 beds of plants did... but since yesterday seems to be a bit fast.

Ammonia 0.5 to 0.25ppm
Nitrate 20-40ppm to 5ppm
Nitrite 10 - 10ppm
ph 7.6 to 7.4

I added about 50 litres of rainwater (pH6) this morning, 4C min air temp and first frost of the year.

One odd thing with the nitrate test was that solution 2 stopped dripping after the 8th drip, a gentle squeeze didnt help and I didn't want a big squirt, so I turned the bottle right way and and then it worked perfectly. It had had a good shake for about 40 seconds, but it seems as if there is something solid in there...

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Gunagulla

Finally a bit of rain, which I let fall into the FT on 14-16th, since my storage tanks are mostly empty. There was a frost on the 15th and the rain only amounted to 10mm, but it all helps. Quite a few mostly cloudy to overcast days are not helping with the water temperatures, which look set to keep falling, with overcast again today and 10C at 10am. I guess the Nitrospira wont be very active... but hopefully they will get my nitrites down enough before fish pickup day!

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Gunagulla

An interesting observation from my system (it's been cycling for 3 1/2 weeks) over recent days- the water returning from the GBs to the FT is slightly less alkaline than that in the tank.
This morning the FT water was at pH 7.50, but water returning from GBs was at pH 7.45. I calibrated my meter just before measuring, and have noticed it every time I have checked over the past few days. It is coinciding with Ammonia levels dropping to below 0.25ppm and a slight reduction in Nitrate in the 5-10ppm range over recent days. Nitrate was up from 5 to 10ppm today too.

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Gordon's Crater

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Gordon's Crater

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Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics