Rain, Dead Fish, Lightning



Aquaponics in the rain

It’s raining. Since 5pm yesterday night the clouds have been dark and the rain drops have been steady. Thankfully I just installed a rain gutter for the roof of the aquaponics system. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, my tap water is amazingly potent and is not suitable for aquaponics. So now I’m collecting rainwater for my plants and fish. It’s a good thing we got this rain too because I had a quarter of the water in my system evaporate over a period of two toasty weeks. My fish did not appreciate the reduction of square footage. I do wish I could spread out this enormous amount of rain over the period of a few days. My rain barrels on the side of my house have been overflowing for nearly six hours. I should install more capacity. 


Eggplant in the rain



Lettuce is doing very well in the rain....

As far as the system goes, I’m still waiting to get higher levels of nitrates. I also lost another fish yesterday. It made me feel pretty sad. I know I need to cycle the system to make it work, but I also hate killing fish. It probably didn’t help that I watched a YouTube video about a gold fish that could do nine separate tricks for food. It could even fetch. My dog isn’t even that good at fetch. I’m anthropomorphizing my fish and can’t help it. Maybe the rain is making me sad about the whole process as well. At least I’ve got the fish tanks full of water again.

After completing the previous paragraph I went outside to take a picture of the system in the rain. Lightning struck the building 100 yards from me, which quickly ended my fish lamenting state of being. It was replaced with a healthy dose of excitement and fear. Gardening is pretty extreme after all: Growth, death, and lightening. Everything desperately wants a crack at life.



Nutrients and NFT



I updated my Nutrient Film Technique “NFT” design and actually have it working. Large diameter PVC pipe cascading down the sides of my grow deck is aesthetically pleasing to me for some odd reason. It’s very techy looking. Aside from feeding into my own vanity, the new NFT tubes are practical as well. I now have 30 additional plots for any vegetables wishing to take up residence. The neighborhood is great. The plots include 3” diameter holes that get full sun for the majority of the day. Tomatoes will especially enjoy having their roots dangling in the gentle flow of nutrient rich water. The plants will be grown in net pots and once their roots have grown enough to reach the inch deep water flowing within the tube I will transplant them.

The NFT Pipes!

Another bit of exciting news is that I have detected trace amounts of nitrates within my fish tank which means that I am now growing both types of essential bacteria for my aquaponics success. This process of developing enough bacteria to transform the fish ammonia into usable nitrates within the aquaponics system is called cycling. I’m about two thirds of the way through the process. Once complete, the water will no longer be toxic to my fish and my plants will get some tasty nutrients. I will get some tasty plants and fish. 

It’s Good in the Neighborhood!



It's Alive!



PH, Nitrite, and Nitrate test are so colorful!

I have nitrites in my aquaponics system! They finally showed up after my last daily water test. Reactive solutions, vials of water, and colorful results do add a bit of intrigue to this whole gardening experiment. Detecting nitrites in my fish water is exciting and terrifying all at the same time. It's exciting because it means that my system is alive and running, but not fully operational. My aquaponics success is contingent upon bacteria. I need nitrification bacteria to eat up all the ammonia my fish are pumping out. Currently my ammonia levels are off the charts. Ammonia is toxic to fish. Since I have detected nitrites in my system it means I have bacteria eating up the ammonia, but they produce nitrites. Nitrites are extremely toxic to fish. What I really need is nitrates to feed my plants. According to my book knowledge, nitrate producing bacteria will soon flock from the air and multiply in my system and in the process eat up all my nitrites. This is a good thing. All I need to do is keep a constant temperature above 70 degrees while keeping a constant water ph at 7.0. My water is so hard here in Minnesota that I had to pour half of a bottle of acid into my tank to even things out in my amazingly alkalinized water. I did pour it in over a number of days. I like my fish in the alive category. I currently have $30.00 worth of Koi fertilizing my raspberry bushes and I would not like to repeat that mistake.

Lettuce!

I have a fish tank full of toxic water containing ammonia and nitrites. I need nitrates for my plants. I also need my plants to filter out the nitrates from the water to keep my fish from going belly up. I'm worried.

A Fear of Vegetables

A Forest of Celery

While working through this gardening endeavor and attempting to keep everything alive, I’ve definitely experienced subtle waves of anxiety. I imagine that this uneasy feeling arises from my naivety in gardening, but it surprising to me. It’s not like this is the first living thing that has fallen under my care and supervision. I have a rambunctious Labrador mix who likes to pin unsuspecting flies against our living room window and eat them. I could not imagine a more terrible fate. Being so small and attempting to escape to the outside world, yet barred by a translucent barrier. The horror of 

Blurry Fish

being snatched out of the air by a set of slobbery jowls rivals the fate of Faustus. Even with my dog’s ravenous nature towards flies, I do consider myself a responsible pet owner. Yet, I do not understand why plants have me on edge. If I fail completely I can easily replace the lost crop with specimens from the farmers market. It doesn’t make sense and I would like to know if this is just another form my own neuroses have taken, or if it is a common phenomenon. I hope it is the latter. I do have a certain zeal for success and crispy bell peppers.  

Crazy Bean

In addition to my green fears I have also observed that bean seedling do make a frightening spectacle to behold. After watching my own hatch the last few days I think they would look more at home on a neon purple planet. I’m growing my own little shop of horrors Audrey II. Thankfully my fish do bring a sense of normalcy to this experiment and I do believe they are well contented with swimming about their 50 gallon tank. I also have an 80 gallon tank connected with an automatic syphon to balance the water levels. One of my fears is that one of my fish will get adventurous and possible trapped in the pipe between the tanks. Gardening is a risky business.

NFT Angles



NFT Pipe

Cucumbers in hydroton

Today I am attempting to set up seven PVC pipes that will be connected in a NFT system. NFT stands for Nutrient Film Technique wherein large diameter piping is angled at a specific slope and nutrient rich water is pumped through these pipes. In my system I will be pumping water from my aquaponics system to provide the plants nutrients. At a spacing of 14” to 18” modest holes are cut into the pipe to provide a place for plants to be suspended above the water in net pots. The roots will sit in the nutrient flow while the plants get lots of sunshine and fresh air.

I am currently in the construction phase of this process and am finding it a bit challenging to get the angles right. I purchased a larger water pump to feed these tubes, but it will only pump water at a maximum height of 7.28 feet… This posed a problem since the height of my first PVC tube was at 8 feet. I had to lower the piping and then install more 90 degree bends. The local hardware store is making a killing off me in PVC elbows.

Net Pot with tiny lettuce!

If you were wondering what the little clay balls were in the pictures, it’s called hydroton and that’s what keeps my plants from falling over. It’s also very porous and allows for lots of surface area for all the helpful nitrification bacteria. I need to get busy!

Plants and Fish: An Introduction

When people ask what I do with my free time now that I’ve completed my degree, aquaponics isn’t the last thing they’d think of, it’s something they have never heard of. A little over two months ago neither did I. Curiosity led me to where I am now, sitting in front of a rather odd compilation of wood, glass, PVC pipe, water, fish, and vegetable plants that I call my aquaponics system: construction in progress. The term "aquaponics" refers to the coupling of aquaculture (fish farming), and hydroponics (growing plants in water). On April 26, 2012 Merriam Webster listed this term in the "New Words & Slang" category of their dictionary, but doesn't specify which one it is. Within an aquaponics system, the waste from fish is transformed by bacteria into useful nutrients for plants and is then pumped into soilless containers where the plants filter out the nutrients. The  cleaned water is returned to the fish. Feed the fish and the cycle repeats; that’s the basics of it. Presently seven gold fish and three dozen vegetable plants are hoping I get this right. Five Koi fish wished I had done things differently.

                When I first started finding information on aquaponics it originated from my search for 55 gallon plastic barrels on craigslist. I had recently completed a rain barrel system that holds 180 gallons of delicious precipitation.  Rain barrels fill up very quickly. I utilized a large amount of 2 inch PVC piping to connect all three barrels together and to attach a spigot. My excitement that emerged from melding various combinations of plastic and glue led me to look for other useful variations that employed a similar set of materials. It turns out that a lot of people use 55 gallon barrels for aquaponics fish tanks.

                I am not a carpenter, builder, or in any other way a construction oriented individual, but glue, saws and hammers do have a certain appeal to me. I am not a green-thumbed gardening genius. I can keep orchids alive, the phalaenopsis variety, since mine seem to enjoy being neglected and forgotten. They tend to bloom after a particularly long period of intermittent watering. I take it as a sign that they want attention. I place them in a prominent spot on the coffee table for the time their blooms are full and then send them back to my office desk once the blooms have fallen off. It’s not a perfect relationship, but I am hoping to expand my gardening knowledge with this foray into aquaponics.

                I am 25 years old with a degree in English. I know vastly more about Chaucer than I do about growing spinach or eggplants. However, my spinach seedlings seem to be growing just fine right now! I don’t really know why I’ve forsaken dirt for water except that I’m hoping to raise some tilapia and end the growing season with a nice fillet or two. The success of aquaponics originates in the waste the fish deposit in their tank. The ammonia that fish create will attract bacteria to the tank called nitrosomonas. The job of this critter is to change the toxic ammonia into nitrites, which is even more toxic to the fish. The presence of nitrites will then attract another microscopic friend, nitrospira which is a nitrobacter. These bacteria will transform the toxic nitrites into harmless nitrates that plants love and devour.  This is clearly book/Internet knowledge that I am attempting to put into practical application. In the process, I figured I’d write about my triumphs and learning experiences.