My 2 half barrel beds are nearly ready

Over the last few weekends I have been stepping up my system to handle a few more growbeds. 

First, I had to increase my nutrient level.  That prompted a bio-filter. The first version used bio-balls in a kitty litter tub which was mounted in the small sump where the water returns were.  The new one is a 5 gallon bucket fed only by the fish tank -> solids filter -> Bio-filter -> sump reserve.

Second, increase the size of the sump reserve. My sump went from a 25 gallon tub to a sunken 105 gallon chain of three 35 gallon barrels.  I also had to upgrade a pump with a weak lift to one that could handle at least 6' of lift and feed multiple growbeds.

Lastly, add the new growbeds.  A single 35 gallon barrel cut long ways into 2 halves set in a raised table above the sunken barrels.  I ordered expanded clay pebbles from Home Depot for these beds.  I got a pretty good deal which include free home delivery... since they don't sell this stuff at the stores anyways.

The Barrel Table Growbed
This weekend was spent building the table, mounting the barrels, supporting them, plumbing and then adding the clay pebble media.  I read up on barrel-ponics setups and decided on a frame table with half-barrels and plumbed so that the water is fed from the bottom with an overflow in each half-barrel.  When the water timer cuts off, the remaining water flows back through the inlet.

The top of the table is a simple 8 shape.  An outer shell with a middle support between the barrels.  I had to file down the top ring of the barrels to keep the frame square and the sides of the barrels close to the frame for mounting points.

Many thanks to my dad for helping with the legs of the table.  We took 2 landscape timbers, cut 4 legs to length and notched the tops so that the weight of the frame would rest on the top of the legs.  Bob Vila wouldn't be proud... but I think we'd get points for the effort because the table was level on the first try.

The barrels were a snug fit and mounted with 12 stainless steel screws and washers.

I put the table over the sunken barrels and used 4 7" square pavers to keep the legs off of the ground.  It took a little digging to level everything on the pavers.  Easy enough.  I added a 2x4 under the ends of the barrels for extra support.

Plumbing is all 3/4"
Tying into the timed pump feed was easy enough.  I used 4 3/4" Uni-Seal gaskets in the bottoms of the barrels (2 each).  A PVC T replaced the 90 deg at the pump (1 line for the existing growbed and the 2nd for the new beds) and another T to split between the barrels.  I added a valve on each section of the line to restrict the flow.  The overflow is a larger diameter pipe that is slotted at the height that I want the water height to stop at.  The drains are water heater flex hose and feed the return water the sunken barrel that is farthest from the pumps.  This helps with water circulation.

The explanded clay pellets that I use for media is NOT Hydroton.  It is ViaStone and costs about half as much for the same product.  I cleaned the first bag and put it in the barrels.  Since it floats for a few days, I am added a little each day until the media stops floating.

New sump, new bio-filter and Louisiana rain

My aquaponics garden doesn't have enough water storage to handle new grow-beds, so I decided to get some drums to extend my sump storage (the black tub to the left of the grey tarped box). The best way to handle a gravity flow system is for your sump to be lower than everything else. That means... dig. 3 thirty-five gallon drums(free) are buried in the dirt. The hole was 3w x 6L x 3 deep.

 

Do you know what happens when you bury empty containers (think cemeteries) in Louisiana? Yep, Wednesday's rain popped them up like corks. I came home to see the barrels floating on top of a FULL 3x6x3 puddle.

I didn't want to clog one of my pumps with mud, so I bailed all of the water out of the hole and shoveled mud until I hit the bottom.

Today, the barrels are back in the ground, full of water and there is about 100 lbs of cinder blocks holding them down! BTW, 105 gal of sump storage.

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One Pound Tomatoes, A New Bio-filter and New Plants

One Pound Tomatoes

All I can say is... wow.  My tomato plants are the Bella Rosa variety.  The stalks are over an inch in diameter and the none of the plants are taller than 3'. One of them has a branch that hangs over the side of the grow bed.  I had to run a string to it so that the fruit wouldn't break the branch.  That is the plant that produced some one pounders.  Out of the 15 or so tomatoes that I have picked so far, three have been 14 oz or more.  I did have to chunk some at the back fence.  Big ol' holes in the sides.  Not birds because I have a bird netting and these were on the inside of hoop house frame.

A Bio-filter In The Sump
My nitrates were flat-lining (less than 20 ppm) and the only thing that I could point to was the city water.  They said that it might have chloramine instead of chlorine.  I started using rainwater only to replenish the system.  Not much change.

My fish tank (through a radial filter) and my growbed both feed the sump tank.  The pipes come in at the same location.  My solution was to put a bio filter tank within the sump tank right where the two pipes come in.  I took a plastic 35 lb kitty litter container and drilled holes one inch apart along the bottom of the container.  Then I added a 12" aquarium aerator, zip tied to the bottom with the hose running out the side.  I attached the filter to the inside top of one end of the sump with some zip ties through both tanks above the sump's high-water line.

For filter media I ordered some bio-balls from Amazon.  In the meantime, I cut some cabinet liner into one-inch squares and dropped them in.  The liner is a kind of rubberized mesh that floated.  Three days later the mesh had sunk to the bottom and my nitrates were rising (almost 40 ppm).  Yesterday I added the bio-balls. I'll test again at the end of the weekend.

New Plants For a New Indoor Aquaponics System
Along with the bio-balls I ordered 50 2" net cups and 100 rock-wool cubes.  I started 6 lettuce and 6 cilantro rock-wool cubes.  My plan is for a 4-3-4 grid on a deep-water culture.  If a friend gives me a 20 gallon fish tank, it will be an aquaponics system.  If I he doesn't give me the tank, it will just be a hydroponics setup with an aerator with no pump.  I have another 12" aerator wand, single port air pump and a small water pump.  Either way, the water will come from the outdoor aquaponics setup.

Vermiculture produces a unexpected crop

I didn't document it, but I built a worm bin and combined my two worm beds into it.  I had one bed that was in my old raised bed garden and another that I just threw together in a Styrofoam cooler.  The new worm bin is made from 3 10-gallon tubs, shredded newspaper and the existing dirt from the Styrofoam cooler.

I've been throwing food waste in it and some butternut squash seeds sprouted.
I had just cleaned out the red beans and lettuce from my growbed and now I have space for my summer garden.  I was about to seed some butternut squash seeds and now I have them already.  Yea!

I will be seeding a few Zucchini, yellow squash and few cilantro seeds this weekend.  FYI, I tried seeding a few cilantro seeds directly into the growbed a few weeks ago by wrapping a small piece of paper napkin around them to keep them from flowing with the water, but none of them germinated. 

Picking the red beans and Pulling up the lettuce

The internet says, "let the red beans dry a bit on the vine.  When beans rattle, its time to pick." Half the bean pods are brown, the others are green.  The net said, once you pick, pull the plants up because they only produce once.  The net doesn't lie.

My son and I pulled all the bean plants, shook the rocks out of the roots and pulled the bean pods off.  I planted 24 dry red beans, I got about 100+ fresh, ready to cook (or dry) red.beans.

The lettuce was bolting all over.  Time to pick what I can as I rip it all out.  I got almost another gallon bag of lettuce off of the plants that weren't bolting.

The last picture should be the growbed after we cleared the lettuce and red bean plants.  I cleaned out all of the roots and leaves that I could see.  It looks like I have lots of available space for my aquaponics summer garden.

Lettuce Is Bolting. Nitrates Are Down

 Have you ever had a week where you have plans for a weekend project and just don't feel up to it?  I was going to build a worm growing system, but I was too busy at work this week to come up with a plan.  It is a simple idea, but I still like to have a plan.

My lettuce is beginning to bolt.  I have never grown lettuce, so I have been looking at pictures online of what to look for.  The pictures online aren't much help because their plants are farther apart than mine and grow short and wide.  My seeds flowed together and then grew on stalks as they were fighting for light.  I really should have taken a better picture from above.

I took out about 10 plants, roots and all.  I took those plants, cut them up and put them in the worm beds.  From the remaining plants I got ANOTHER bag of lettuce.  Hopefully, I didn't pick any from a plant that has turned bitter.

I checked the nitrates today and I'm not happy.  20 ppm nitrates is too low.  Everything else was in the normal or ideal zone, so I'm adding a few sheets of  dried seaweed.  I'll check again in a few days.

The tomatoes are going nuts.  The tomatoes look like a grape vine nightmare.  I have grape-like clusters of fruit, but nothing is ripening yet.  Soon.

Tomatoes, 6th bag of lettuce, banana peppers and a few dozen red beans

It has been a while since I posted because the system has been cruising along.  6 bags of lettuce and so far, no bolting.  The banana peppers are huge and ... look like bananas.  The single strawberry plant is yielding 2" long strawberries, 2 or 3 a time.

The tomatoes are coming along.  A pruning accident a while back actually yielded my first tomato bud.  I was pruning off the lower branches of one of the 4 tomato plants, I cut the wrong thing and the top of the plant fell over, leaving the branch that I was trying to prune.  I stuck the top of THAT plant deep into the gravel.  The 2nd picture shows the roots that it created for itself. 

Now, there are several clusters of tomato buds.  Nothing has ripened yet.  The biggest one of them all is abjust under  2" in diameter and growing.

The red beans have sprouted bean pods.  Based on the number of pods... we'll have 50 to 60 red beans.  Cup-o-soup anyone?

Solids, Flowers and Peppers

The solids filter is doing great, but is thorough enough.  I took the tube that goes to the bottom of the fish tank and added a 90 deg to it, along with a tube that runs diagonally across the bottom of the tank.  The new tube has holes on the bottom and slots on the top.  We shall see if the added surface area on the bottom keeps the tank cleaner.

I've been draining out the collected solids and using it to water my new crepe myrtles and the plants along the front of my house.  The 4 crepe myrtles were planted last November and now have spring growth.  I had some plants that weren't doing very well that I planted last spring.  The watering has sparked a pretty impressive amount of new growth.  The picture shows 3 of the bushes that I've been watering.  The one in the middle is healthy.  The outer two are getting there.

The Garden
As far as the garden goes, everything is flowering.  I still haven't seen any tomato buds, but the plants are getting huge.  I need to stake them up a bit more.  The 3 banana pepper plants are covered in buds. The bell pepper has flowers, but no buds.

The red beans ... I don't know what I'm looking at.  Flowers are obvious, but I'm looking for pictures of what the buds will look like.

The strawberry has 6 berries growing.  The bush needs more sun, but the red beans and the tomatoes are shading it.

Day 62... Everything is Blooming

With days in the 70s and nights over 50 degrees, I've taken the plastic off of the hoop house and tied up some tomato stakes above the growbed.  All 4 of the tomatoes are tied with string to the stakes.  All of the tomatoes are blooming.  No noticeable fruit though.

FYI.  I pulled off some tomato suckers and "planted" them by putting the 2" suckers in the media about an 1".  They are both about 4" tall now.

The single strawberry plant has 4 strawberries on it, all green and growing.

The banana peppers (3 plants) have blooms and one pepper is about an inch and a half long.

The ruffle lettuce is over 8" tall and the bibb lettuce is about 5" tall.  The ruffled lettuce is broad but not huge.  The bibb lettuce looks more like baby spinach leaves.  There are ALLOT of bibb leaves.

The bell pepper is recovering from the aphid infestation.  New leaf growth.

The red beans have not only flowered, but there are little red beans popping up all over.

The chili peppers are still tiny.  A VERY slow growing plant.

It Is "If You Give a Mouse A Cookie" Time

Let me start off by saying... brim are pigs and picky eaters.  There is not enough water movement to properly clean the fish tank.  So what do I do?


In my existing setup, my water pump feeds a top growbed with a gravity fed water return into the fish tank AND a straight feed back into the fish tank with a venturi (for air).

This is where the "give a mouse a cookie" comes into play.

• If I build a solids filter to clean the water a bit, then I have to add a sump tank and the water pump will move to the sump. 
• If I build a solids filter, I could build a bio-filter too.
• Since I'm adding a sump, I might as well sink the sump and build some extra beds.
• If I build some extra beds, I will need a larger water pump.
• If I add a larger water pump, I could use the existing pump just to cycle water and add air to the fish tank.

This week I ordered a bunch of Uniseals in different sizes.  Tonight, I built a solids filter based on the YouTube video, "Aquaponic radial flow filter for solids removal..", which is based on this guy's design, "DIY Solids Filter".  Uniseals are awesome.

Tomorrow, I have to go buy some PVC pipe because I bought the wrong diameter.  I used 1 1/2" fittings and Uniseals, but bought 1 1/4" pipe.  Luckily, I had enough pipe on-hand to build the filter itself.

I also contacted a local manufacturer of expanded clay media AND a local billboard tarp dealer.  The tarp should be available this weekend and I can get the media as soon as I have the new bed(s) ready.

Day 53... Warm Temps = Growth. Aphids.

 It has been a week and the weather has been warm.  Warm weather and sunshine in a aquaponics garden equals GROWTH.  I'm harvesting ruffled lettuce at six inches high.  I've had 3 big salads out of that.  The bibb (boston) lettuce is almost ready to start picking.  The leaves are thicker and greener than the ruffled lettuce.

The red beans have 3" by 3" leaves and the plants are about a foot and a half tall.  The beans are making a canopy over the strawberry and the lettuce plants that I moved around.  I'm planning a trellis to attach them to.

The growth spurt by the tomatoes was almost as impressive as the red beans.  Three of the four plants have started flowering.


The banana peppers are 6 to 8" tall and have LOTS of flowers, but no fruit yet.

The chili peppers are taking their time... 6 plants from seed and the largest is 1" tall.


Aphids.
Okay. The bell pepper has a problem.  What I thought was dirt left over from the original transplanting was actually aphid waste.  I noticed lady bugs the other day.  The article I read about aphids said that lady bugs can eat a 1000 aphids a day.

I have a ziplock bag full of cayenne peppers in the freezer from last year.  I chopped up about 12 of them, put them in a old small sock and tied off the end of the sock. I filled a jar full of water, put the sock in it and put it in the microwave for 2 minutes on high, 3 minutes of medium.  After the back steeped for a bit, I put the water and some dishwashing liquid in a small sprayer.

The recommendation is to hose off the plants with as hard a spray as you can.  Let the plants drip dry for a bit and spray again.  After the next drip dry, spray the tops and bottoms of the leaves and the stems with the cayenne water.  I had to be careful not to mace myself.

I sprayed everything except the lettuce.  I'll spray again tomorrow and the next day.

Day 45... Worms and Better Numbers

Yesterday, I stopped by Walmart to pick something up so I stopped by the sporting goods section and bought some live earthworms. Let's see if the fish are hungry for some live food today!

The worm container had about 20 worms in dirt.  I rinsed off one and tossed it in.  A small brim came over and got it before it fell a foot into the water.  He then zipped around the tank with half the worm trailing behind him.  I tossed another and another.  The other small brim got those.  After about 10 worms I noticed 3 worms have made it to the bottom and the large brim aren't touching them.

After about 5 minutes, the large brim still hadn't went after a worm.  Oh well. 

Today's Water Test
The water test came out much better today.  The nitrates dropped to 80, but the big change is that the nitrites dropped to 5 ppm.  That is in the NOT KILLING FISH range.

I didn't have any worms left from yesterday so I tried feeding them some of the sinking worm meal pellets. The little fish were ready.  They came to the front wall quickly, but were cautious.  The larger brim actually came over and caught some mid-sink.  Another few just waited and got them off of the bottom of the tank.

The weather, water temperature and tank water chemistry may finally be right for them to eat a bit.  This week is supposed to be warmer.  Heck, NOAA says we may have 82 deg on Monday.  The plants will LOVE it.

Day 44... Water Change Results/ FIRST SALAD

I changed 55 gallons of water yesterday.  I siphoned the old water into a 50 gallon bin and dumped the 2 day old water into the tank.  The temperature of the old water and new water was within 5 degrees so the fish shouldn't have been that shocked.

Before the water change I noticed that one of the ten bluegill is swimming at an odd angle.

I also flushed the water pump and cleaned the intakes.  I think I'll need to adjust the flow rates again because the growbed was filling faster.  I want the growbed to flush at 15 minute intervals and the circulation line back into the tank takes the excess at whatever pressure is left over.

This morning the PH is the same, the chlorine is down, the nitrates are slightly lower (80) and the nitrites are slightly lower, but still higher than 10. I didn't check on the fish

The Taste Test
My ruffled lettuce is about 3" tall... time for a taste test.  I made a salad out of a handful of lettuce cuttings, but it wasn't quite a "salad" worth of lettuce, so I added 2 romaine leaves, some tomatoes, a few mandarin orange slices and some cherry cranberries.  It was great.  The lettuce didn't have the slightest hint of fish shit.

Day 42... Nitrites Still High, Planning for 25% Water Change

With fish in the tank and nitrites high, the recommendations from the web.... which means they have to be right.  Right?  Bonjour!  I'm a French Male Model.

I have 3 buckets, a 20 gallon tote and a 30 gallon tote in the yard full of tap water, I just have to wait a few days for the chlorine to dissipate.  The fish tank is 200 gallons, so the change will be just over 25%.  Baton Rouge water is low in chlorine and, usually, neutral in PH so I will do the water exchange tomorrow or the next day.  We are expecting storms so you never know.

Maintenance and WEEDING

Since the weather was nice I pulled the top off to do some maintenance. The last picture in this blog is a weed.  Yes, a weed.  Okay it is grass, but in MY weedless garden?

I decided to thin out the green leaf lettuce by moving some plants around the bed.  I also moved a few of the chili pepper seedlings.  The boston lettuce is still too small to move, but it has come up in several dense groups.  As the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart would say if he had a speech impediment... "I have THINNED."

Veggie Stats
The bell pepper leaves are still not to the pre-aquaponics level, but the plant has been flowering and even has a small pepper (about 1/2" in diameter).  The strawberry and banana peppers are also budding out.

That Storm I Mentioned
As I am typing, the winds have kicked up to over 20 mph and the hoop house has flexed so that the outer hoop has bent under the 2nd hoop... gotta fix it.