System Tours

 These are some system tours I like.

Rob Torcellinis Videos

Rob is a perfectionist and an artistic builder.  With 50 videos and counting he has documented one of the most beautiful garden rooms ever built.  His design is well thought out and includes one of my favorite videos about the Rocket Mass Stove he built to heat his aquaponic sanctuary.

Aloha Mahiai Aquaponics

Important issues such as aeration, and power consumption are discussed in this video.  The FaceBook page above is alive with many more systems from around the world.

Near the end of this video the aeration system is shown.  It works by creating a strong vortex which draws air down into the water as it exits into the fish tank.



Larry Reinhardt s Videos

Larry is not focused on Aquaponics and these videos could be better, but he has built two impressive aquaculture systems in his backyard.   I liked these videos because he uses nothing but air to pump the water in his 3000 gallon system and has a very simple filtration system which he calls the manure chamber.  It requires very little time to clean.

Larry shows his filter system

 

A tour of  Larrys Aquaculture System

He briefly shows construction of his plywood tanks

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Free Form Concrete

Im experimenting with RapidSet Cement ALL.  I soaked this cloth in a slurry of this rapid setting cement to create a hard free form surface.  Im thinking this might be fun to use for free form sculpture and architecture.   I envision being able to make everything from flower pots to actual structures or garden art.  Possibly layering this over foam insulation to create light weight structures..

Taking that idea one step further a layer of expanding foam could be applied to this cloth and then covered once again with cement soaked cloth to create a very durable light weight insulated wall.  Larger structures could be created this way by draping the first layer over a tent, balloon, straw or even a few ropes to create the initial shape.

What a fun way to make a play house, or garden shed

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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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