Tanks and Grow Media

If I only knew then what I know now...

I like these troughs I found at Tractor Supply.  They are a bit shallow, but I think they will do very well.

Heres an update to my expansion using bunk feeders.

Im seriously considering this long one (approximately 10"Dx24"Wx108"L) for a grow bed.  $154.00

These would make a nice fish tank.  The big one is about 300 gallons. 5Dx3H  $250.00

After building my own tanks from both 45mil EPDM and the pond liner they sell at Home Depot I would lean toward these heavy duty Rubbermaid Structural Foam Stock Tanks, because they are less likely to leak, easy to clean, easy to insert bulkheads into

I have also built an IBC system.  But polyethylene is not UV proof.  This round tank appeals to me because it would be less difficult to manage than a 4 deep IBC fish tank.   

My relentless quest for a reasonably priced media has finally turned up Pumice.

UPDATE 12/3/2012
Pumice has turned out to be a great media for net pots, but it packs, and I believe it would tend to clog if used in an aquaponic media bed where the purpose of a media bed is to filter the solids.  It might be acceptable in a hydroponic or bioponic system where solids are not an issue.

The pumice I bought looks exactly as in the picture.

The size ranges from about  3-8 mm.
The pieces are very hard and do not easily crush.

I crushed a piece with a pair of pliers.  Then I rubbed it between my hands.  Some particles first appeared to be long and pointed, but the rubbing caused them all to break down into irregular grit.  There were no sharp shards left in my hands afterward, and nothing that looked sharp remained.  It tends to form roundish particles.

Its extremely easy on the hands.  Its soft on the skin and nails; not at all like feather rocks or lava rock.  There are no shape shards, and if it brakes I doubt that it would create sharp shards. When it was dry it felt like placing my hands in puffed rice.
The best description I can think of is like heavy Perlite

After soaking for approximately 20 hours about 2/3 sank and the other 1/3 remained floating.  It was easy to separate the sinkers from the floaters.
After two days 95% had sunk and eventually all of it sank.
I would suggest rinsing well as the water was a bit cloudy.

When I rinsed it, the first water changed from pH from 8 to 6.6, but after several rinses the pH did not change.  
The cost was $28 per 1/2 yard.

I would assume that it is available at many garden nursery suppliers so availability is less of a problem than expanded shale, and yet the price is well below clay medias.

Overall I think it would be a very good media for ebb and flow if some protection were put in place to screen the very small particles.
The material could be separated according to size with a screen, but it packs well enough that it does not fall through the cracks of a net pot like the clay balls, and yet continues to drain well allowing for plenty of air.


Im very impressed by it, and look forward to replacing all of my other medias including Hydroton.  Considering the price it is well worth taking a look at.

  

The pumice worked in a net pot.  Fewer grains fell through the pot than if I had used Hydroton.

 

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Filtering Poo with Continous Flow Media Bed

My indoor system started out with a gravel bed. After repairing a leak in the 45 mil EPDM liner of that grow bed, I decided to go with a Deep Water Culture (DWC) raft.  With only one 10 wall glazed my grow bed is 30"x10 long which is a rather small 25 sq ft..  I found it easier to utilize that precious space with a  raft system.

A panoramic view inside grow room.  800 gal fish tank on left grow bed on right

But loosing the large media bed meant that I would also lose the filtering capability of the 3/4" rock media.   So I decided to build a filter using evaporative cooler pads.   This works great at first, but after a few months the fish population began to grow and the fish got bigger.   The filter could no longer keep up with the poo.   Cleaning filters everyday was more work than I was willing to do.

So I decided to return part of the bed to a gravel media, and keep the rest as a DWC grow tank.

The DWC tank with gravel to the right of a plastic fence partition

I built a partition out of plastic fencing and PVC pipe.  Filled one side with 3/4" gravel and extended the return water pipe from the fish tank so that it dumps on top of the gravel.   One thing Id like to say about that is I also used 2" pipe rather than 1-1/4" because the smaller pipe tends to clog.

At this point I began to have concerns about a continuous flood gravel bed.  RupertofOZ was kind enough to dispel my fears by pointing me toward a very good experiment done by backyardaquaponics.com.  

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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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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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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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