Economic Recycling

So, I initially said that this blog was just going to be about my AP system. Well, I have decided that every once in a while I will post about regular dirt gardening.

With the end of winter in sight, I have decided to start some seedlings inside to plant outdoors when the time comes. This year I am going to dedicate part of my garden to dill pickles! So I am starting my pickling cucumbers inside.

The other day I bought two 2lb boxes of strawberrys from the supermarket (I know, they are not in season and are probably full of chemicals and have been shipped from 1000 miles away). After I cut and dehydrated them, I was about to put the boxes in my "take to Durango because Cortez doesn't recycle plastic" pile when I realized, these would be excellent seed starting trays! They have ventilated lids and bottoms, and are a good depth.

Today, I went to Let It Grow, the excellent local nursary/ gardening store/ awesome cafe and bought quality seedling soil and filled my trays. I have what I hope to amounts to 6 cucumber plants in each tray. From a very informative seed starting pamphlet from LiG, I learned that when starting seeds, it is best to water from below, so as to not disturb the seed before it becomes stable in the soil. Since my trays are vented from the bottom as well, I placed the trays in a lipped cookie sheet and put in a few cups of warm water and have been watching it wick up into the trays.



The main point of this post is use what you have at your disposal, and improvise. I saved ~$5 and the eliminated need to purchase more plastic by using what I was going to throw away.

France has it right!

Just thought I would post an interesting article I just found online talking about the resurgence of the household garden during these difficult economic times. Gardening not only provides a relatively cheap past time, but also one with a product that decreases the grocery bill! Nothing beats a homegrown tomato, or basil!

The most staggering fact in this article is that 1/4 of all the produce consumed in France this past year was home grown!!! I bet in the States 1/4 of the population has NEVER had homegrown produce... Something to strive for.

So, This spring no matter how much space you have (1 acre of open land, or a small flower box below a window), plant a garden and enjoy creating deliciousness!

Happy growing!

Continued Progress

Hello all. Well after a week of lovely spring boating on the Salt River, I have returned to continued progress with the AP system. While I was gone Alison kindly stopped by every day to feed the fish. Unfortunately since I have last written I have had 4 fish die. 2 Goldfish the day I left, one Goldfish today and my algae eating fish yesterday. I think the pair that died the day I left may have been due to some salt which I put into the tank. Fish need a certain salinity level in order to ward off illness and to maintain other necessary life cycles. Unfortunately sometimes even small changes in the water quality can stress fish to the point of dying, and I think this is what happened. Next time I will add the salt even slower if need be.

Before I left, I added 5 earth worms (from the fishing department at Wal-mart). I was a little worried that they would have a hard time getting through the dense gravel bed, but I was wrong! They wriggled their way right in there and all were underground within 5 minutes. Haven't seen them since, but I assume they are doing well.



Another development is that my Nitrite levels are increasing. Now this is a natural thing, which eventually will be countered by Nitrite converting bacteria. But until they get established in my system, I need to keep a close eye on the nitrites. If they become to high, I will have to add more salt which helps the fish deal with high nitrite and ammonia levels. But hopefully I will start getting Nitrate readings indicating that my system has cycled. Since my Nitrite levels are on the rise, I have chosen not to introduce more fish into my tank until my system has cycled. As soon as I see Nitrates, more fish will be going back into the system.

Ok, now to some photos of progress!


Tomato plants!



Arugula (Lt) and Mixed Lettuce (Rt)



Cilantro



For some reason only 1 Cilantro seed has sprouted. They should only take 10 days to germinate, and its been 15, so today I planted 3 more seeds to see if I can get a couple of more plants.

As you can see, everything has made great strides since my last post!

Today I ordered a more advanced water quality testing kit and a digital salinity testing stick. I have a water quality test kit but it isn't very accurate and with this new kit, I will hopefully get more precise measurements.

Well that's it for now!

Growth!

So it has been 6 days since I first got my system up and running with seeds planted. Today I awoke to find that both the Arugula and Lettuce have sprouted! What an awesome experience to watch growth from a seed. One day there is nothing on the surface and the next there are 6-8 sprouts!



Over the past week I have spent a lot of time on the web site Backyard Aquaponics which has an online message board for people who have aquaponic systems. It is chock full of useful information regarding anything in aquaponics (designs, plants, water quality, fish...everything). Its also useful as you can put up a question and usually within 12 hrs someone more knowledgeable than yourself has filled the void in your understanding.

Recently I have been spending a lot of time trying to understand the importance of water quality regarding both your plants and your fish. Luckily I have started off with the hearty goldfish, and thus don't have quite as many water quality qualms as some folks raising more sensitive fish. None the less, its all important to know.

One important tid bit I did learn is that the bacteria I have mentioned before that turn ammonia into nitrites into nitrates takes a very long time to reproduce (by bacteria standards). It takes about 15 hrs for these types of bacteria (Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter) to reproduce by binary division. For comparison an E. Coli bacteria in the same amount of time would have created a population of 35 trillion cells (learned that on the forum!). So the lesson here is that it will be a while for my system to cycle (or grow a full population of this bacteria) and begin to work its wonders.

Since these ammonia and nitrite eating bacteria take a while to form, I have been watching my nitrite and ammonia levels pretty closely because if these substances build up it can be toxic to the fish. In which case I will need to do water changes and add salt to the system. But as of now, things look good!

Another interesting thing I have learned is about the magic of the earth worm. We all know that worms are great for the garden, but I'm not sure I would have guessed that they could thrive in an aquaponics system. It turns out that worms can do just as much good for a grow bed as they can for a garden bed. By introducing worms to the system any unprocessed solid fish waste will be consumed by them cleaning your water even more. In return you get even more nutrients for your plants via the worm casings (poop). I was woried about them living in a aqueous environment 50% of the time, but apparently worms can extract dissolved oxygen from the water and thrive in a water filled environment. So I will be picking up some worms as soon as I get a chance.

I hope to see the other plants sprouting here soon. I will post more pictures as more exciting growth continues!

Up and running!

Yesterday made the trip to Durango to purchase the final necessary components to the system, fish and a grow medium. I had called the Hydroponic store in Durango to inquire about what they sell for a growing medium. They only have expanded clay pellets, 50L for $35. Quite pricey considering I was going to need about 100L! I then called Home Depot to see what kind of gravel they had, and they sell 50lb bags of generally 1/4-1/2" gravel for $4.50 a piece. Much more of a reasonable price. I bought 250lbs worth, which I was pretty sure was going to be excessive, but I would rather have a bit more than not enough.

Fish connection was the next stop in Durango. I bought 8 gold fish, 1-2" in length (the guy threw a 9th in for free), and one Plecostomus (for algae cleaning). I also bought gravel for the fish tank, fish food and a plant (Egeria).

Once home, I put the fish (still in their bags) into the tank which has been sitting out for 24 hrs to de-chlorinate in order to acclimate them to the water temperature. I washed the aquarium gravel prior to putting it in the tank to get rid of dust and rock particles.

Next was the task of cleaning the gravel for the grow bed. After debating as to the best way to do this I settled on putting 200lbs of gravel into the grow bed burying a piece of vinyl tubing at the low end of the bed. I corked the drain pipe and saturated the gravel with ~4 gallons of water. The tube to was then used siphon out the dirty water. And my was it dirty. It looked the the San Juan river at flood stage! I repeated this process of saturation and siphoning until the water was pretty much clear. It took about 5 or 6 washes to achieve this. I am really glad I decided to wash it otherwise my fish would already be dead from the debris draining off of the gravel!

Below is a photo of my system up and running!


When I first put the fish in the tank, they were quite shell shocked. But after a while they began to explore around a bit, and eat some when I fed them. Today they are still a bit hesitant and like to hide around the pump, and behind the curtain of air bubbles from the aerator.


Before starting the pump I planted my vegetables in rows in the grow bed. I purchased Seed Savers Seeds from Let It Grow in Cortez. Seed Savers is a great company to buy seeds from as they preserve and sell thousands of heirloom seeds that have not been effected by industrial seed production and the corresponding mutations that occur with that process that is causing genetic erosion of crop species. I decided on planting 5 different vegetables: Stupice Tomatoes (a quick fruiting variety of tomatoes), Sweet Basil, Cilantro, Arugula, and a red and green lettuce mix.

Once planted I plugged the pump into the timer and turned on the power strip. I am a bit disappointed with the analog timer that I bought for the pump. It is set to run the pump for 15 mins every hour, yet it seems to not grasp the concept of a minute and runs for about 25 on and 35 off. Going to have to mess around with that a bit.

Once I get the timing and discharge of the water pump calibrated properly, I will be in good shape! Hopefully the bacteria in the gravel are starting to form, and that the seeds are happy and will germinate within the next week or so!

First aquaponics system in Montezuma County??

I have always been a neigh-sayer of blogs. Why would other people want to read about my day to day activities? So I have never had a blog. I decided to start this blog not to share what I had for breakfast, or who is mad at who, or what color shirt I am wearing today. Instead this blog is going to be totally devoted to my adventures in a new found pastime called Aquaponics.

I was reading the NYTimes a couple of weeks ago and stumbled on this article... Read This!
I was fascinated, a completely sustainable agricultural system based on 2 interconnected ecosystems. Aquaponics is the combination of Aquaculture (the farming of fish) and Hydroponics (soil-less cultivation of plants).

In case you didn't read the article, it goes something like this:

A fish tank is stocked with X-number of fish. A water pump is put into the tank pumping the water, including fish waste, to a grow bed which is filled with a growing medium of gravel or expanded clay pellets. In this grow bed you have planted various plants and vegetables (ie lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, peppers...etc). Also in the grow bed are certain naturally occurring bacteria which convert ammonia and nitrites from the fish waste into usable substances for the plants, ie. fertilizer. The combination of the growing medium, bacteria and plants functions as a natural bio-filter cleaning the water and is then gravity fed back into the fish tank.

To recap, fish waste acts as a fertilizer for your plants, and the plants return clean, livable water to the fish. The only thing added to the system is fish food.

This is a very energy efficient process as well. The only thing, in an ideal system that needs electricity is a low voltage submersible pump.

So over the past 2 weeks or so I have been assembling the necessary parts to construct my own Aquaponics system. I have a 31 Gal fish tank (Rubbermade storage box), a 32" x 14" x 12" grow bed (another plastic storage box), a shelving unit, a submersible pump, an aerator, various pipes, tubes and fitting, and 2 twin bulb florescent shop lights (to serve as grow lights as I have little to no natural light in my tiny abode).


Above is my current, first try at a system. I still need to get a growing medium and fish, but otherwise it (in theory) is fully functional. The clear container is the grow bed, and the blue box is the fish tank. I plan on starting with different greens and tomatoes and then expand from there. For fish I am going to get ~6 goldfish and then adjust the number accordingly based on how well the bio filtration works.

My whole system will be on timers which will let the pump run for about 15 mins every hour, and will keep the lights on for about 10-12 hrs a day. The exact timing for both the pump and lights will be modified as the growing process progresses.

Hopefully this will provide me with fresh vegetable year round drastically reducing my reliance on imported vegetables from who knows where. I hope that by the time I move into a larger house, I will have this system somewhat understood so I can construct a much larger Aquaponics system and produce lots of veggies and raise edible fish. But that is still at least a year away.

I will try to update this blog with the progress of the garden frequently. If for any reason people have questions or want to tap my limited, but ever expanding knowledge of aquaponics, please don't hesitate to ask!