oh trust me, the overflow is really only for winter and rainy season, during late spring and summer we were so dry that every drop of extra water and nutrients was squeezed from that system.
That’s why I switched to container gardening this year, allowed me to keep a solid res of nutrient water in the bottom of each self wicking feed bucket.
Very keen on seeing what that system can do with a full seasons growth… have to start thinking on what seeds to drop in it. I’m a nub at which strains are best for full season outdoor grows, someone educate a homie please.
When I was building my warehouse plans, I had “fish water” as a product to sell… Essentially the solids waste, but I had a plan to have it in its own giant tub with big and little propellers mixing it all up, with a spout at the bottom to fill a 2 gallon jug
I’m curious what answers people have for outdoor strains too… Based on your 50g design, I got the go-ahead from my better half to do an outside grow this year
This is the full layout of the initial system. On the bottom from the left, lots of goldfish (they moved with me when I sold my house and moved into the warehouse), calm water flow bucket with a low entry and high exit to catch solids, biomedia bucket with air and aquarium wave makers, lastly was a pump bucket. If you look in the background, you can see 10 totes moving water, getting ready for a big build out.
I had this one all computer controlled. I had a computer board (arduino) configured on the network that was controlled by an app on a server. Each of the 4 grow beds had a valve the computer board would open and close based on a schedule in the app, and when nothing was being watered, the water in the line would just be pushed back into the fish bucket. This was essentially my cut of an ebb and flow design.
After getting the water moving the way I wanted, and getting the water conditioned, it was time to plant some seeds. Initially, I had lots of veggies and stuff…tomatoes, broccoli, pumpkin… all sorts of stuff. In the foreground is a temp/humidity sensor to keep track of how the grow beds were doing… I had this data logged to a database, every 2 minutes with the same computer board controlling the valves. I actually still have this running all over my house and in my grow tent today .
I found the grow beds were a little cooler than I wanted, so I picked up a bunch of those silver “emergency blankets” and wrapped it around the shelving and the plants were happy!
While I was getting into the warehouse, I had a literal sh*t ton of seeds from my first grow (every…single…bud…50+… lol), so I messed around with my mom’s indoor plants .
Mom saw how things were growing and wanted in on it, so I built her one of these systems. FYI, definitely do this with at LEAST 6" pipe, the roots grew quickly and shut it all down.
This one had the fish in the bigger blue container. The water flowed into the shorter bin which had biomedia, air, wavemakers and a pump to push water to the top of the tubing.
Because of the root issue with this grow, we tore this down shortly after setting it up and I concocted another system for her.
Starting with the first black bin closest to the grow… Fish, low flow into the calm flow water with a high exit. The last bin on the right had biomedia, air and a pump to push water up to the grow bed. I initially had this setup as a ebb and flow, so the top grow bed would fill and drain to the next bed, which would do the same to the third and then back into the fish bucket. My landlords had the other side of the yard and asked me to shut it down because the ebb and flow was so loud. So, it became a constant flow, lol.
These tomatoes were planted around July 1st, 2018.
We had a really bad summer due to forest fires that year, but they still grew fairly well. Unfortunately, nothing had enough time to actually turn red.
New system, new design. On the far right is a big bin with the same goldfish and a pump to push water up to the garbage can. The garbage can has air, biomedia and wavemakers to keep everything moving. That overflows into the 2 big totes. I kept the overflow from the blue totes really high to keep the fish bin as clean as possible.
Growbeds in, water moving, seeds planted. I had a bunch of watermelon in here. Unfortunately, the seeds came with a TON of mites and it ended up messing everything up, but it was still fun to watch grow (15 feet away I had my stealth closet grow going and it never had a bug issue, go figure).
I had the fish in the black bin in this one. I had a really big aquarium in a past life, and still had the filter for it. So, that was cleaning and pushing water up to the plants, then drained back to the garbage can with air, media and wave makers, and that drained back into the fish.
After some bowing in the black bin, I swapped it out for a 55g aquarium.
While this system worked, and it’s essentially the same setup I have now, I’m not a fan of having the fish container being the lowest thing in the system, it means when water is getting scarce, the fish have less to swim in… they’re the money makers, they need to be taken care of as well as the plants.
Damn it boys ! That is f…ing amazing shit. I have never seen anything like that. I used up all my or I would be dropping them everywhere on this thread. I need to do some reading on this subject. All I want is a fish bowl with some minnows. I assume I could just save the old water when I give them fresh water and use it to fertilize. ???
If you’re doing a water change on your tank, definitely use the water from that (if the tank is healthy) to water your plants, they’ll LOVE it :).
But, if you want to grow in a little tank, I picked up a tiny little planter from wish and hung it in a little 10 gallon tank with a tomato plant in it…
I don’t have an pics of it, but I have also taken one of those really little plastic “pots” that plants come in, used some clothes pins to pin it to the top of a cool bow front tank I had, and grew a little pot plant in there for a month or two, until I found the light was interrupting my sleep, lol. The problem with that though, if the fish are in the same tank as your plant roots they WILL be eaten (also the problem with the tomato plant above, lol)
really dig the setups you’ve tried over the years. thank you for uploading it onto OG. you have converted me from a man who ‘wants to try aquaponics’ to a man who ‘will learn aquaponics’.
some of your early grows remind me exactly of the kinds of setups i had when i first started growing some 12 years ago.
i would like to send you a dm if that’s ok. i have some questions and might be able to share a valuable aquaponics resource. first a couple of questions!
what size setup would you have if you could have the ideal setup? (fish #, gals of water, size of grow area, wattage for lighting, pumps, etc) since you’ve run multiple runs i wonder if you have found where ‘less is more’.
can it be as easy as feeding the fish and topping off water every day? unless problem occur of course
i just have to say, this journey you’ve gone through is inspiring to see!
Once you start and you get to see it producing, it’s really hard to back away from it, haha.
My early grows we’re definitely questionable, lol… That fridge, while it worked, took a lot of tweaking to get the water flow right.
Of course, DM away or ask here, absolutely… My knowledge took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to build (literally), I’d rather share that knowledge than let someone else suffer!
My ideal setup… Oh man, I’ve been toiling away on my little grows that I haven’t even thought about a big grow again… But, I would absolutely love to build out a full warehouse. I BC, where I live, cut flowers are an $8 billion annual industry, I would love to have a full warehouse again and grow that out to its potential. I definitely used to overstock my fish, but a LOT! haha. I had 40+ fish in that fridge, in my tent now I have 8 I think, so less fish can do more than ya think… It’s so cool
Yes, once a setup has settled in and everything balances (pH, ammonia, etc), yeah, it really is as easy as feeding fish. That probably why I trimmed the hell out of my plants this last grow, there’s nothing to do! Haha.
Honestly, thank you for the message man, that was incredibly nice to walk up to!!
I’ve mostly stuck to veggies and pot… I had plans to have a big peach tree in the foyer of the warehouse… I thought it’d be cool to walk in to see a tree growing in the same water everything else is in too . But alas, that remains a pipedream, haha.
Funny story about the fridge I used… I found it on Facebook marketplace for free, they said it didn’t work. Perfect for my uses, so I went and grabbed it. When I was moving it into my basement I saw connector was unplugged… I connected it again and the damn thing started working 🤦…
I used Rob’s vid as a guide building my 55 gallon outdoor systems, Depending on how hot your summers are make sure your fish can handle higher temp water (here in Louisiana it gets very hot so I use Bluegill or Goldfish in them) and need to give them a bit extra oxygen with a bubbler. also be careful not to have to many fish in there during the hot parts of the year. (2-3 medium sized bluegill, or 5-6 small goldfish seems to be ideal)
Right on . Doing smaller grows, the clay pebbles work for me and don’t break the bank… I’m really curious how it’ll look in full bloom to be honest, I think it’d be a pretty cool look to have lettuce growing out of river rock
I’m on Vancouver island in Canada, so we don’t get the same summer temps you do, but being the geek I am I’ll have a sensor in the water to keep track, lol.
I like to stick to goldfish though, they are disgustingly messy eaters and I swear they poop more than they eat, lol… Perfect for growing. Plus, they’re pretty hard to kill, haha
hey man, og is about us helping each other. “a rising tide raises all ships”, and “a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle”
wow a full warehouse! that sounds fun but also daunting. with an output trajectory like that, i would certainly be looking to market my fish as wares too. do you ever consider using a ‘food’ fish instead of gold fish? i really like the idea of being able to harvest fish as well as harvesting veggies or canna.
one big area of concern i have is the biofilter section of aquaponics. the fish tank is fairly straight forward, some kind of oxygen generation and filtering out the ammonia from the fish water. how does one know if your biofilter section is ideal? brackishness of the water? plant growth?
is it easy to keep pH in check with just minor adjustments?
also curious if you’ve tried a variety of veggies, root crops, cucurbits, stuff like that in aquaponics? i haven’t seen anyone try a legume since they’re nitrogen fixers.
for everyone - i found this guy in Hawaii on YT a while back. i’ve made several of his ‘airlift/burper pumps’ and am using one in a homemade NFT setup right now. i haven’t yet delved into the aquaponics yet (since they’re using tilapia) but they have an entire manual about how to set this up.
edit YT link seems to be ‘unavailable’, but the channel is called Olomana Gardens if one wanted to see it.
also there’s a growing number of people switching to ‘sandponics’ since sand supposedly converts ammonia to nitrates(or nitrites, forgot which) more easily than any other filter media? curious if anyone here has looked into that. seen a couple inconclusive YT vids but it looks promising.
, because why not, lol :).
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or I would be dropping them everywhere on this thread. I need to do some reading on this subject. All I want is a fish bowl with some minnows. I assume I could just save the old water when I give them fresh water and use it to fertilize. ???
. But alas, that remains a pipedream, haha.
