A List of Double Up Food Bucks Locations in Albuquerque and Valencia County

Thanks to an initiative approved by the State Legislature this year, New Mexicans who receive food stamps can use their EBT cards to double the amount of fruits and vegetables they purchase at growers markets. Here is a list, courtesy of the New Mexico Farmers Marketing Association, of locations in the Albuquerque area and Valencia County that offer the Double-Up Food Bucks option.

• ABQ Uptown Growers’ Market 2200 Louisiana Boulevard NE, Albuquerque (Saturdays 7AM–12PM)
• Albuquerque Downtown Growers’ Market Central and 8th, Robinson Park, Albuquerque (Saturdays 8AM–12PM)
• Albuquerque Growers’ Market at Presbyterian 1100 Central Ave. SE, Albuquerque (Tuesdays 7AM–12PM)
• Albuquerque: Rail Yards Market 777 1st St. SW, Albuquerque (Sundays 10AM–2PM)
• Belen Growers’ Market Anna Becker Park, Highway 309 & Reinken Avenue, Belen (Fridays 4:30–7PM)
• Bosque Farms Growers’ Market 1090 North Bosque Loop, Bosque Farms (Saturdays 8AM–12PM)
• Los Lunas Farmers’ Market 3447 Lambros Circle, Los Lunas (Tuesdays 4PM–7PM)
• South Valley Armijo Village Growers’ Market Isleta Blvd. and Arenal Rd. SW, Albuquerque (Saturdays 8AM–12PM)
• South Valley Gateway Growers’ Market 100 Isleta Blvd. SW, Albuquerque (Thursdays 5PM–8PM) 
• Zia Bernalillo Farmers Market 335 S. Camino del Pueblo (Fridays 4pm-7pm)

Double-Up Food Bucks benefits are also available in Alamogordo, Aztec, Cuba, Carlsbad, Clovis, Dixon, Española, Farmington, Las Cruces, Las Vegas (Tri-County Farmers Market), Lordsburg, Mescalero, Mora, Pojoaque, Portales, Ramah, Santa Fe, Silver City, Socorro, Truth or Consequences (Sierra County Farmers Market), Taos and Tucumcari. Click Here to find specific information about each of these markets. 

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Electronics Motor repair success

I fixed my broken motor that is meant to power the auger via the tiny gearbox that will deliver the fish food in my demand fish feeder.

Normally I prefer less complicated sentences.

But Im all excited.

It turns out, the problem was there were simply too many parts.

Or more accurately one too many parts, and one that was simply in the way.

The silver bit was the one too many. I think that broke off the bit where the wires connect, and fell into the motor, generally clagging things up.





The little nylon washer creates part of the front bearing, but it made getting the brushes back on impossible, because it had to be put on after the brushes. Thats an impossible path through the plastic front. I dont have the kinds of quantum tools that walking through walls requires. And if I did, I wouldnt waste my time with motor repairs. Id do much more interesting stuff, like poking my head through the fridge to see if the light really does go off when the door is closed.

So be leaving out those two small parts, I managed to make my motor work.

Only two parts.

And they were tiny.

Those that know me will realise thats a pretty low number of excess bits after a repair. I think I did quite well.

So well in fact, that it looks like this when its running.

That should do nicely.

What this all means, is that there is really no reason why I cant put this thing together today, and actually finish something.

Maybe.








120 Things in 20 years - If I keep repairing them, one day an electronic motor repair might leave me with enough parts to eventually build another motor. I should fix cars.

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Tweets from the FrancisFactor Conference in Albuquerque

Below are a handful of tweets from "The Francis Factor: How St. Francis & Pope Francis are Changing the World," featuring Richard Rohr, Shane Claiborne, and Ilia Delio

Pope Francis is s.master of symbolic action. Symbol is much more powerful than words -Richard Rohr #FrancisFactor.

— Carlos Navarro (@CNinABQ) August 31, 2015

RT @AKRicky: Richard Rohr to @ShaneClaiborne “You live a fire that I only talk about.” #francisfactor

— Richard Rohr, OFM (@RichardRohrOFM) August 31, 2015

#ShaneClaibornes ministry is very Franciscan. -Richard Rohr #FrancisFactor

— Carlos Navarro (@CNinABQ) August 31, 2015

RT @tasha7wahl: Evangelism is not forcing Gods love on the world, but fascinating the world with Gods love. @ShaneClaiborne #francisfactor

— CAC (@CACRadicalGrace) August 31, 2015

Ilia: The greatest suffering is not the suffering, its the suffering in the suffering. The isolation. The alienation. #francisfactor

— Ron Hofius (@r_hof) August 31, 2015

2. Restorative justice: the greater the wrongdoing the greater the need for love. @RichardRohrOFM #FrancisFactor

— Ed Bacon (@RevEdBacon) August 31, 2015

"Re: protests, "our goal is not to create enemies, but to courageously proclaim the vision of God. #ShaneClaiborne #FrancisFactor

— Carlos Navarro (@CNinABQ) August 31, 2015

"We must dispossess our consumptive patterns to live the virtue of enoughness." -Sr Ilia Delio #francisfactor

— Julie Ann Stevens (@tdastudio) August 31, 2015

"A life of poverty is not to live without things but to live without possessing things." Ilia Delio #francisfactor

— Brie Stoner (@briestonermusic) August 31, 2015

Perhaps vow of poverty is not the right term. We have to promote a "theology of enough." #ShaneClaiborne at #FrancisFactor conference

— Carlos Navarro (@CNinABQ) September 1, 2015

— Mike Morrell (@zoecarnate) August 31, 2015

When our need to be right eclipses our hunger to love, we must let go-"we are all just kids playing in Gods sandbox." Rohr #francisfactor

— Shelley Drake (@Shelley_Drake) August 31, 2015

Every few hundred years the Church needs a rummage sale. Lose the clutter. But you never sell everything. Keep the treasures. #francisfactor

— Ron Hofius (@r_hof) August 31, 2015

The opposite of faith is not doubt, its control -Richard Rohr. #francisfactor

— Carlos Navarro (@CNinABQ) August 30, 2015

The small people build cages for everyone. The sage keeps dropping keys for all the beautiful rowdy prisoners. #francisFactor #Hafiz

— Ed Bacon (@RevEdBacon) August 30, 2015

RT @RevEdBacon: Some of the loudest versions of Christianity havent always been the most beautiful. @ShaneClaiborne #FrancisFactor

— Richard Rohr, OFM (@RichardRohrOFM) August 31, 2015

To avoid misusing power we must embrace our own journeys of powerlessness. Thank you Richard. #francisfactor

— Julie Ann Stevens (@tdastudio) August 30, 2015

We are not punished for our sins. We are punished by our sins. -Richard Rohr. #FrancisFactor

— Carlos Navarro (@CNinABQ) August 31, 2015

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Immaculate Conception Church in Albuquerque to Offer Church of Second Chances Program this Fall

Photo: JustFaith Ministries

Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Albuquerque is one of dozens of faith communities around the country that will participate in one of three JustMatters modules that JustFaith Ministries is offering this fall. The modules encourage small groups to explore critical current issues within the context of the Gospels and the life and example of Jesus. "In a world that is too quick to encourage rhetoric that divides us from one another, these experiences cultivate genuine dialogue, contemplative prayer, and community," said JustFaith.

Immaculate Conception will offer an eight-week session around the Church of Second Chances module, which shares the stories of incarcerated people and exposes injustices in the judicial system through the lens of faith. This module hopes to inspire a prophetic revision of incarceration that invites restoration, mercy and reconciliation.

This newly revised eight-session version of JustFaiths Prison Reform module represents greater diversity in the voices of those behind bars, includes updated video resources, encourages deeper dialogue, and incorporates Pope Francis’ message of mercy.

The eight-week session will be held  each Thursday evening at Immaculate Conception, 619 Copper NW (map) in downtown Albuquerque, September 24 through November 12, 2015,  in the Guadalupe Room.  For more information or to register, please call or email Joy Dinaro in the church office.(505) 247 – 4271 ext. 3034  jdinaro@iccabq.org

In addition to the module on prison reform, JustFaith Ministries offers the Crossing Borders program (immigration) and The Sultan and the Saint (Muslim-Christian relationships) this fall (More details here), but no churches in the Albuquerque area are offering these two programs. Other programs on the environment, solidarity and peacemaking are currently available but have not been recently revised and are not supported by JustFaith staff this fall.

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Sister Simone Campbell Urges us to Engage in Holy Curiousity and Sacred Gossip

"Faith calls us in the Christian tradition to carry Jesus into the marketplace, to ask the questions Jesus would ask now,” Campbell said. “We the people have got to have holy curiosity and sacred gossip so that we create a groundswell of claiming the communal reality that we’re in this together.”

Holy curiosity that makes us ask people those very improper questions like when you’re in a restaurant and you speak to your waiter and you say, are you 8 making more than minimum wage, or do yo u depend upon tips to get by? When you’re in a dress shop or a grocery store, are you all unionized here, do you have good wages? And what I’ve discovered is often, the answer is no. No, they don’t. How do we get justice if our focus is getting the cheapest possible price, or the most possible stuff? How do we do justice in our lives? That’s the holy curiosity we have to ask, where we have to ask the question, is justice happening here? Can we make a difference? But then, the best part, my favorite part is then, we’ve got a right to sacred gossip, sacred gossip where I can tell you, do you know?

“I always joked that the miracle of loaves and fish was sharing. The women always knew this. But in this moment of need and notoriety, I ache, tremble, almost weep at folks so hungry, malnourished, faced with spiritual famine of epic proportions, my heart aches with their need. Apostle - like, I whine. What are we among so many? The consistent 2,000 year - old ever - new response is this ... Blessed and broken, you are enough. I savor the blessed , cower at the broken, and pray to be enough.”

Sister Simone Campbell
excerpts from keynote address to Episcopal City Mission Annual Dinner, June 2015, and comments in ECM Awards Dinner

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Thinking Six degrees future communication

Those six degrees of separation are really a lot less than six when it comes to communicating with people who are, say, on the same forum as you are, live in the same street, or to people you actually know.

But even when they arent people you know, six is not so many. From now on, Im going to just rely on the few degrees of separation for all my communication needs. Booking doctors appointments, airline tickets, ordering pizza, everything.

Ive been dealing with the support desk of a net based business trying to find some information, and I think my new method might be substantially more effective than my current approach of filling out thousands of web forms.

It would certainly be more comfortable.

Because theres only a few degrees of separation between me and whoever it is a want to inform,  from now on, Ill  just chat about it casually to someone I meet in the street, and hope the query or order finds itself on the correct desk on the other side of the globe.

As a method of getting a help desk to respond, I cant see it being any worse than my recently tried methods.

I feel better already.




120 Things in 20 years - Going crazy one purchase at a time when thinking about my communication issues.

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End Hunger in New Mexico Summit Around the Corner

The Second Annual End Hunger in New Mexico summit is only a little more than a month away (September 23-24).  If you havent registered, here is the link. The registration fee is $20, and participants are encouraged to bring non-perishable food items to donate to Desert Harvest, which will distributed it to 17 organizations in need of food.

The summit features many interesting workshops, including  Faith In Action: An Introduction to the Interfaith Hunger Coalition, led by Ellen Buelow, a member of the steering committee of the IHC.

Here is a description. "Our interactive workshop introduces participants to the vision and activities of the Interfaith Hunger Coalition focused in three areas; education, advocacy and direct action. Here’s an opportunity for faith communities to collaborate in a common place. Explore how you and your organization can join forces without duplication of services."

Some of our friends and collaborators are also leading thought-provoking and informational workshops, including SNAP and Work Supports (Louise Pocock, New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty); How Our Food System is Harming Hungry People (Alicia Edwards, Volunteer Center of Grant County); Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization: Strengthening the Safety Net (Patty Keane, MS, RD, Nutrition Scientist, UNM Prevention Research Center/New Mexico); Community Bulk Buying Program (Janet Page-Reeves, Research Assistant Professor, University of New Mexico); Food Insecurity’s Impact on Education (Patrick Scott and Jeff Berg, APS Title I Homeless Project, Homeless Liaison staff, and Sandra Kemp, Executive Director, APS Food & Nutrition Services); and Reaching Food Neutrality in your Community by Increasing Capacity (Sherry Hooper, Executive Director of the Food Depot, and Julie Anderson, Food Rescue Manager at Roadrunner Food Bank)     See full list of workshops.

Nancy Pope, another member of the steering committee of the Interfaith Hunger Coalition, will be one of the keynote speakers during the luncheon on Wednesday. Sherry Hooper, executive director of The Food Depot in Santa Fe, and Archbishop John Wester of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe, will also present remarks at the luncheon.

For more information about the summit, visit the official site.

And here are some tidbits of information in the most recent poster promoting the summit:

DID YOU KNOW?

• NM has the 2nd worst rates of poverty in the country - 1 in 5 people live below the poverty level
• NM has the worst child hunger in the nation - 1 in 3 children do not have enough to eat
• NM seniors are 2nd in the nation regarding food insecurity - last year over 30,000 seniors relied on food banks
• Every day 40,000 New Mexicans seek food assistance - 40% are children
• 67,795,200 - the number of additional meals needed every year to end hunger in NM

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Garden in my shop

I had an epiphany today.  My 48 x 36 shop has south facing doors.  My plan is now to remove a roll up door and replace it with polycarbonate and build an 8x10 aquaponic room within the shop.  The material costs will be much less than if I insulate my existing greenhouse and I should be able to control the environment much easier within the shop. 

I found a pretty decent article about how to calculate the requirements of a Passive Solar Thermal Mass System. But Im still looking for the entire package.  Its unbelievable that this information is so hard to find.

In an effort to understand the process I created this spread sheet.   
This spread sheet contains the formulas and data for Specific Heat Density and Volumetric Heat Density.  Its is probably more than we need to know.

I would like to add Coefficient of Heat Transfer and then create a systematic approach to entering the required data in order to design a Solar Thermal Storage System.

Just for grins, I just did a measurement of an unheated room inside my shop.  This room has no insulation in the floor and R19 in the walls and ceiling of this room which takes up about 1/4 of my shop.  The outside temperature has ranged from 43F - 65F and inside the room has ranged from 46 to 56F.   So what I learned from this is that the thermal mass inside this room levels out  near the low end of our daily temperature swings.

Update June 15, 2012

Its now June 2012 and the temperatures are over 100F  With the ad of an evaporative cooler the garden room stays at about 82F.  In February with a little help from an electric water heater element in line with the pump the room stayed a comfortable 70F.   The power to control the environment is probably costing me about $1.50 - $2.00 a day at 33 cents per Kilowatt Hour.  

Compared to previous green house attempts this is extraordinary.   This is still my first year and Im experimenting, but I think I used too much supplemental lighting during the winter months.  Next winter I will cut that back and only use it to extend the hours rather than add brighter light.

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Thinking Driving Hollywood style

For years I would cringe every time I saw a driving scene in a movie.

The driver would look away from the road for ages at a time to talk to their passenger.

I always thought it was just poor realism, in much the same way as people in movies get pushed off their feet when they get shot, but now Im not so sure.

Perhaps the reason people cut me off sometimes is because they actually drive like that. Perhaps the reason some people just drive into intersections when their light has been red for a few minutes, is because they are trying to get their partner to understand something really important. The kind of important that only fifteen seconds of sincere eye contact can truly establish.

Or perhaps they watched some movies where people looked  away from the road for ages, and instead of being a little disappointed at the lack of realism, they just took it on board as the obvious way to drive.

Either way, I want it to stop. In the movies, and anywhere Im likely to be.




120 Things in 20 years is sounding like a grumpy old dude when thinking about driving Hollywood style.

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Making and Installing Ollas in the Garden an Ancient Watering System

Saving water with ollas is a great idea.  This series of videos from High Desert Garden shows how to do it easily and inexpensively.     High Desert Garden also created a video showing how to make your own ollas from clay, but using terracotta pots is less expensive, faster and easier.

Ollas will buffer the water needs of a garden, but realistically they are not large enough to get you through the day, so High Desert Garden uses an ingenious method of feeding the closed ollas from a larger reservoir.

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Food and Energy in the Cold Northeast

The Cold Northeast Regions of China and the United States
Point A: Shenyang, Jilin, China
Point B: Plymouth, Massachusetts, United States

I found a delightful report the United Nations put together in 1994 on how to produce crops and energy in the cold northeast (42 degrees north of the equator). Its got a wealth of information on topics from methane production to solar homes and greenhouses, and integrated plant/animal ecosystems.

Its also chock full of charts and graphs and experimental results.

The full title is "Integrated energy systems in China - The cold Northeastern region experience."

Happily, the cold northeastern region of China is eerily similar to the cold northeastern region of the United States - same latitude, near an ocean, and populated by millions of folks who like to eat and stay warm.

I particularly liked the documented results from the experiments comparing Subterranean heating/Cooling Systems or Underground Heat Exchange Solar Greenhouses (UHESG) to Conventional Solar Greenhouses (CSG). The 1980s-era researchers document greater than 50% improvement in yields (in both weight and money value) for UHESG over CSG.

The English in the report is a bit awkward and laden with engineer-ese, but there are plenty of great ideas for those of us who have uncomfortably cold winters.

[Post Script - Latitude isnt the only story. The hardiness zone in Shenyang is between 4 and 5, while the hardiness zone of latitudinal twin Plymouth is an ocean-warmed 6. Due to the Gulf Stream, London enjoys a hardiness zone of 9, though it is almost 10 degrees further north than either Shenyang or Plymouth. Id have to travel south to Florida to get to a hardiness zone of 9!]

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Winner The great MPPT solar charge controller competition

So I asked the invention engine what kind of competition I should hold to give away that first solar charge controller I bought, and it said I should ask everyone else.

Helpful.

It said I should get a load of people to submit their ideas.

I asked it why people should spend their precious time helping me out with their ideas.

It said I should provide some kind of incentive.

Like a competition.

So the first ever 120 Things in 20 years competition is as follows...



Whoever can come up with the best idea for a competition wins.

The prize is that solar controller I had so much trouble with because it didnt match my solar panels too high voltage.

There is only one rule*, and that is the winner wont be anyone who enters by simply adding another layer of competition to the competition to see what the competition should be.

I already thought of that one, and Ive decided I probably wont give the prize to me, although I am currently in the lead so I may change my mind.



Mrs 120 Things and I will judge the winner at our own discretion, in our own time, whenever we feel like it, if we feel like it, and reserve all rights to do whatever we want without reservation or regard for others.



120 Things in 20 years thinks the invention engine may have just gained consciousness, or at least the beginnings of a consciousness-free sense of humour.



click the comments thingy to enter or offer derisive laughter

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Cycled in 4 days!

I just cycled a new 40 gallon aquarium with a 10 gallon wet/dry sump tank in four days by using water and media from my aquaponic system.

Day 1 Ammonia = 0.50 Nitrite = 2.0
Day 2 Ammonia = 0.25 Nitrite = 2.0   (added more urea)
Day 3 Ammonia = 0.00 Nitrite = 5.0  (this is the Nitrite spike)  (added more urea)
Day 4 Ammonia = 0.00 Nitrite = 0.0  (Wow,  Ive never had it happen so fast)
The water was kept at 75F.

Inoculating with good strong culture from an established system will greatly speed up the time it takes to cycle a new system.  This time the aquarium was filled with water from the aquaponic system, and I used a small activated carbon filter about 4" x 6" that I had been using to disperse the water with as it poured into the aquaponic grow bed to inoculate the aquarium..

I have also notice that a wet/dry sump is especially helpful compared to a letting the water flow through all of the media.  

Its not real pretty,  but this is my bio filter.  I used a couple baskets filled with new Hydroton, you can see it is still floating.   One basket is submerged while the other is above the water level  (wet/dry sump).

My aquaponic system uses ebb and flow, but Ive seen better results when I duplicate a wet/dry sump by not completely draining the grow bed.
.  

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Winner The first 120 things in 20 years competition

So a while ago, I bought a MPPT solar charge controller.

It turns out the nice ebay based company I bought it from was a fraud, and sold me a product that wouldnt work with my solar panel in spite of my having asked them and then double checking. My solar panel had too high a voltage, but the listing said it would be fine.

Anyway...

The result was that I was sent a product that didnt work as advertised.

Eventually ebay made them give me my money back. The company insisted I return their product at my expense.

I posted it to their registered address, but the post office in China said there was nobody by that name at that address.

So China Post returned it to sender.

Me.

All this is old news to anyone who follows this blog, but this is the new bit.

I thought Id give it away because its of no use to me, and might be exactly what someone else wanted. But who to give it to?

I thought Id hold a competition, and give it to the winner, but I cant think of a decent theme.

The current plan for the first ever 120 things in 20 years competition is to run it through the invention engine and see what it thinks.

so... stay tuned I guess. Its late, and Im going to bed.

Tomorrow, the competition begins!

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Aquaponics External Tomato growing in fishtank

Ive been away for a few days.

It was nice.

One of the best things about aquaponics, is the fact that it takes care of itself. I came home to a system overflowing with produce, and with lettuce that was ready to eat, where when I left, it was nowhere near ready. Its amazing what a few days can do.

Also, not seeing my system for a few days made me realise just how big my tomatoes were getting.

Thats them hanging off the side of the little grow house.

Im calling this experiment a complete success. I had to tie the foliage to the growhouse to support it, because it was starting to pull the roots out of the water.



Theres fruit forming everywhere, and in spite of the late start due to pruning it all back to only a few leaves, I think it will be a good season. Once the capsicum season is over, I think I might just pick up the tomato, and move it back inside for winter.

The tomato grows through a PVC pipe to stop it growing inside the growhouse, and the roots are all just hanging inside the fish tank. There is no media involved, and it relies on the water being oxygenated by the water movement, and the nutrient it gains from the fish.

This has been a lack luster post.

Im sleepy from too much driving.

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Hanging Basket in Fish Tank

Hanging Basket holding smaller fish
Bluegill are piscivores. They loves to eat them some fish.

I first suspected this when all but two of the happy minnows disappeared in a single day without a trace. Never saw those last two again.

Now, if bluegills ate their own without a trace, I might not have roused myself to make a hanging basket. But they do enough damage to kill the victim fish and nip off the yummy parts (not necessarily in that order). So from time to time Ive lifted the lid to find the remains of a meal floating belly up.

Since these remains were always from small fish (< 2 inches), I decided I needed to protect the fish. The basket you see above is just a mesh laundry bag, a section of hose, and a hollow pool noodle (I used a 6 inch length of 3/4" PVC pipe to connect the two ends). I snipped holes in the hose so it would flood, then used a rolled-up bit of snipped hose shoved in the two ends to hold the ends together to form a ring. The only problem is the little fish are hard to catch. But I caught the slow ones (the ones more likely to end up as a meal), and the bag itself serves as a bit of cover. At least thats my theory, which I will proclaim proved if I dont find any more remains...


Then there are the other denizens of the garden. Spiders I actually welcome, and I recognize most the bugs I see. But my daughter was shocked to find a mass of not-so-little black bugs on one of the strawberry plants.

Bugs on the Strawberries
If you happen to know what these are, Id love it if youd share. I initially thought they were ticks (yikes!), but on closer examination, Im back to not having a clue what they are:

Do you know what this bug is?

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Water is flowing in the IBC system Cycling and Phoshate

Close to completion. The outdoor IBC system is flowing water. Take a look at my settling tank. Its based on a wet dry filter. The cool part is if it gets clogged it will not jam up the system.

Ive begun to fill the beds with plants, but have no fish.  Im cycling the system, but right now I want root growth.  So I embarked on a study of Phosphate.  

Here are two articles I believe are quite good although somewhat over whelming.

• Phosphate and the Reef Aquarium
• Aquarium Chemistry: Phosphate and Math

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Aquaponics Roots in the media

Its quite possible that this is one of those things that everyone does, but its so obvious that nobody mentions it.

Perhaps everything is one of those things, but Id rather hear something twice than never know about it, so Ill say it anyway.

For some time, Ive been harvesting things like lettuce, then spending valuable seconds of my life getting the media out of the roots and retuning it to the grow beds. Clay balls get loose a bit more readily than scoria, but roots seem determined to hang onto whatever media they find themselves in.

Dont get me wrong, this is no way an issue because it really is only a few seconds, but Id rather spend those few irreplaceable seconds doing more important things - eating strawberries, looking at fish, that sort of thing.

But I discovered that if you just snap off the roots and leave them in a bucket, the media falls out all by itself.

Bam! Earth shattering tip right there.

I add an extra step for the worms.

When I pull up a lettuce, the root ball always has a few worms in it. Even in the constant flood grow bed there are worms everywhere. And as much as Im happy to feed my worms to the fish, I like my worms and like it when they live in my growbed rather than die on the ground. So when I snap off the roots, I lay the ball of roots, and media back on the growbed until the next time I wander past. This allows the worms time to get back into the growbed as their root ball home slowly dries.

The next day (or whenever) I drop the root ball into my root ball bucket, where it dries out and leaves the media behind. After the bucket has seen a few root balls added, or when I get around to it, I return the loose media back to the grow bed, and the dried roots and stems to the compost heap. Once in the compost heap, they sit for eternity. We dont use the stuff.



120 Things in 20 years - Wasting compost from the roots caught up in my aquaponics media.

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Electronics Aquaponics Demand fish feeder software

As far as I know, the software is all working on my demand fish feeder.

Its a bit of a mess, with a few goto statements and a few unused variables. Ill fix it in time, but for now Im going to move onto getting a finished product up and running. As far as I can tell with the software simulator everything works, but the real world might be a completely different story. (the breadboard version also works)








A switch lever extends down into the water. If a light near the lever is lit, the fish can press the lever and feed is delivered. Feed can also be offered with an override button that sets the light on and the feed on if the fish hit the lever (so you can show people how it works)

Dawn detection seems to work. In the end I went with two startup options.

1. A human who holds down the FeedNow override button during startup, then taps out the approximate number of hours since dawn. This skips the code that searches for a new dawn.

2. An abnormal restart with no human. This stops all feeding (there might have been a blackout, and subsequent ammonia buildup) (note to self - add code that flashes some lights to indicate the device is in abnormal start mode so a human can reboot it if they desire). Feeding resumes after night time is detected, and a dawn is detected.

The user can select (via a screwdriver to resist little finger making their own adjustments) ...

 - the feed amount per day in tenths of a second of motor on - from 0 to 65 (Im guessing Ill use 1/2 a second per feed event) The motor turns an auger under a hopper full of feed. So there is another adjustment available

- The number of feeds in a day that are offered (0 - 255 per day)

- The level of light at which dawn is detected. This allows for a system built in the glow of a streetlight or whatever. At dawn each day, all the numbers reset. This is a bit of a problem as far as reading how many feeds were delivered in a day, but for now Ill leave it as it is. My fish feed like crazy at dawn, so I want to give them the greatest opportunity to feed. Eventually Ill add a data logger, so it wont matter when it resets.


The system reports...

- the number of hours since dawn

- the number of feeds since dawn

- The number of false hits to the feed lever when the FeedIsAvailableLED is NOT lit (these will go down to near zero once the fish learn they can only get food when the light is on)


I ran out of feed a while back, and have been feeding my two big silvers on duckweed, lettuce, and worms, so I will need some pellet food before I can test it in the real world. (I still have the PVC device from the first version).

Ill also need a motor as my original one is no longer with us.

The feeding regimen isnt very intelligent at the moment, but Ill do a bit of research, and add some code that tries to deliver the maximum amount of feed in a day that the system can handle. This will probably involve allowing 3/4 of the feed to be dumped at will, with the rest being spaced out over the day ... or something. I havent given it enough thought because I dont really know what the fish need. My experience in fishing for wild fish indicates that the feeding pattern is far from a constant grazing all day long. Ill work it out.

But...

Its going to work. In fact, it already does.


120 Things in 20 years Thats all. Just 120 Things in 20 years.

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Tilapia Legal in Your Town

98% of America can legally raise Tilapia

I can legally raise tilapia at home. It just takes a couple of inexpensive permits.

Many members of my family live in Utah, where it is completely illegal to raise tilapia. That puts a big damper on enthusing about my latest project in family circles.

So I got curious - where in the US and her territories may tilapia be raised in a closed loop system?

So far, the only states that appear to prohibit tilapia entirely are Utah (0.9% of the US population), Nevada (0.8% of the US population), and Maine (0.4% of the US population). Utah and Nevada make a big point of prohibiting tilapia. Maine merely fails to list tilapia as one of the myriad species allowed (and all not on the list are prohibited).

Tilapia appear to be allowed in all other states and territories, or the other ~98% of the US population. If I found something in a somewhat believable website that explicitly stated no permit was required for an indoor, closed loop system, I colored that state green. However laws change and the websites I found might be wrong. You should contact your local Department of Natural Resources (or whatever its called in your state) to make sure what kind of permit(s), if any, are required for you to set up a home-based, indoor, closed loop aquaponic system. You may also find that your "favorite" kind of tilapia are prohibited, but some other variant is not on the prohibited list.

Relatively few places in the US permit uncontrolled outdoor use of tilapia, especially where there is risk the fish could get into public waterways - another reason US folks are unlikely to be able to set up tilapia-based aquaponic systems in their backyards.

If you find out my map is wrong, let me know and Ill update it.

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