Building an aquaponic raft bed, the finish.

Finally finished up building my aquaponic raft bed, it pretty much started working without a hitch.
Tuning the fill and drain portion was remarkably  smooth and easy, I only had a problem with the swirl filter getting clogged pretty quick.

Installing layer of plastic cover sheeting, I used 2x4s to hold down the insides of the sheets for a tighter fit.

Installed uniseal pipe fittings, these units are pretty awesome and cheap to use.

However in this case, it was a little difficult. I drilled the recommended size hole for a 1 inch uniseal, unfortunately being that wood is not at all flexible,  the intended one inch pipe could not be inserted  as the seal could not expand to let the pipe through. I ended up inserting a 3/4 pipe which worked just fine.

Added water checked for leaks. None!.

Added the rafts and planted some plugs with seeds. Can't wait to see them growing.

Building a Diy Aquaponic Raft tank System with Reclaimed Materials

Well it has been a while since my last post. In the time since I last posted the raft bed we had installed  went down hill, the crayfish in the tank died and the plants started going bad regardless of any effort to turn them around, on top of that the tank itself began to leak in various places.  Granted the system was not exactly perfect, but it did the job for a while.

First raft tanks and plants.

Anyhow, I decided to rip the bed apart and build a new tank that would hold at least three 2'X4' rafts.

I priced the material at home depot and came up with a $180 cost estimate. I just don't have that kind of money to spare so I started looking for materials I could reclaim which was surprisingly easy. Within a month I had everything I figured I would need.  Of my own money I've so far spent only $13.00 for some project board, Uniseals, and black plastic sheeting.

I'm half way done as of today and to have it working by this tuesday. Anyhow here's how it's going so  

far.

Step one:

I should first note that this is most likely not the best way to build a raft tank, but as we just might have to move in the next few months I wanted to build something that could be easily taken apart and reassembled somewhere else without to much effort. This is what I came up with.

I first cleared out a place, leveled the ground and built a base frame on some cinder blocks 51 7/8" wide by 75 7/8 long. (I got most the boards for this on freecycle.org try it, it's awesome!)

Step: Two

Added some beams 

Added a 4'x4' and 2'x4' project board for the floor of the tank. As you can see the board are on the inside of the frame. The tank  frame itself will over lap the project board, and site directly on to the bottom frame.

Step Three:

I next covered the project with a thick rubber sheet that was laying around, I had just enough to cover the project boards and frame. If I had  twice more of this material I would have gone another route entirely.

Step Seven:

Next I built the tank frame itself,  the inside dimensions are 6 1/6" X 72 1/4" allowing inside space some the plastic lining and rafts to move around easily.

This whole thing come apart in 4 pieces for easy transport.

Well that's todays work, I'll post the final finished job asap.

When it goes south.

Since my last post a few things have gone wrong. First we lost a lot fish do to ich disease , and unfortunately we didn't act quick enough to treat the fish properly and save them. As result, we lost 22 of 26 tilapia. The following week 19 of 20 small koi also kicked the bucket. We were then promised 40 new koi from local koi pond owner whom suddenly found herself with hundreds of newly born koi. After two months of waiting she finally decided she didn't want to give them up. In the mean time we added 40 goldfish to the sump tank and  main tank with the remaining four tilapia.

The result of all this was still not enough fish to produce adequate fertilizer for the plants which very quickly went from beautiful vibrant healthy looking plants to sad unhealthy plants, with that came a massive infestation of Black aphids and thrips. So I decided to rip everything out, fix all the initial construction and pluming errors, and also tear down the DWC tough and replace it with a more efficient design.

Thrips

Aphids

Month 4 progress photos

We are now entering our forth month in our aquaponics experiment, and wanted to share some progress photos. We've learned a lot but still have much to learn. At this time we're looking at constructing a much larger semi-commercial greenhouse that would produce enough to feed ourselves and enough to sell at local farmers and flea markets.

More on that later. 

Beans plants just 2 weeks ago, wow!

Wwoofing at Viridis Aquaponic Growers

Two weeks ago I begun to volunteer as a WWOOFER(Willing Worker on Organic Farms) at  Viridis Aquaponic Growers  In Watsonville. Viridis offered a volunteer labor program with an aquaponics class and Q & A session at the end of the work day, awesome!, the best place to learn is working hands on at real commercial aquaponics facility.

Viridis Aquaponic Growers began operating in Watsonville Ca, in August of 2013 and at 8 acres is now the largest commercial aquaponics farm in the world.

The first day was real learning experience as I was put right to work destroying lettuce that acquired a mildew due to over heating in the greenhouse over the previous weekend. This of course made me extra conscious of temperature and humidity in our greenhouse.

Cart full of unusable lettuce.

Empty raft units after mildewed lettuce was pulled.

Replanting: This process is very quick, inserting seedling
plugs into the rafts then setting them afloat in the raft tank.

Catching loose fish in the raft tank.

Aside from removing and destroying lettuce all day it was great to be able to see how how a commercial aquaponics greenhouse works and what systems they use.

Aquaponics fish tank and filter system

100ft long aquaponic raft system.

Yup , pretty amazing. 

Grow Bed Zones

Well we're two months into our aquaponics experiement. We've learned a number of things though trail and error, I am sure there is still a great deal to learn. One of the most important things we've learned is aboue grow bed zones, also keeping the water level at least 2inched below the surface of the grow bed to prevent algae growth on the surface of the grow beds.

Zone one

Also called the dry zone. Is the about 2 inches in depth, this area should be keep dry, your  bell siphon should begin siphon at least 1-2inches from the surface. Doing this will prevent algae from occurring on the surfuce, protects against collar rot, along with mildew.

Zone Two

This zone is between 6 and 8 inches. This area allows for the delievery of oxygen during the drain part of the flood and drain cycle. This is where nitrification occurs creating and releasing the nutrients and minerals into the system.

Zone Three

This is the remaining space below zone two about 2inches where solids, such as, fish waste and worm castings.

We learned these lessons a bit late as we have some algae growing in sump tank and small areas of our grow beds, at this time is seems to be under control. We were going to use humic acid to darken the water but at this point simply just covering the sump tank preventing sun light from hitting is working just fine.

Algae Growth and Plants Yellowing

Over a week we started having problems with algae which continue to grow despite steps eliminate the problem. We've created shading, and reduce the water level in our grow beds, its slowed the spread but still has not disappeared. At this point I'm looking into adding some Humic acid to sump tanks in order to darken the water up so that the algae will die off.

Here's good video regarding algae and humic acid.

Hoping this will do the trick as some new algae has appeared in the new grow beds at are currently cycling.

Algae in the sump tank.

Another problem we're having is nutrient deficiency, mainly iron. I believe this due to us jumping the gun planting  before completely cycling the grow beds.

The yellowing indicates a lack of iron and other nutrients. To fix this we are adding 

Chelated powdered iron Fe-DTPA and Seaweed extract called Maxicrop which contains nitrogen potassium, phosphorus, sulphur, iron, copper, zinc, zinc, manganese, etc.

Here's a link to some good information about the best choice for Chelated Iron.

Grow Bed Errors

As noted earlier number of errors have been made despite the amount of research done prior to even starting this up. We are both learning a lot as we go along. One major but easily fixed error was planting some plants in the media without cycling for at least six weeks, so that beneficial bacteria called nitrosifying and nitrifying bacteria would colonize the media in the grow bed. These bacteria eat Nitrite and transform it into nitrate which plants need for growth.

So on the first two grow beds we left the plants in them just to see what would happen, the last two beds will be correctly cycled for six weeks. In the photos below you see the plants yellowing resulting from deficiency of nutrients.

The second mistake was making the stem pipe and bell siphons to high or tall causing water levels to raise near the very top of the media before draining. This mistake created two problems, one causing the media to float and shift  constantly, at times we would find the plants completely buried under media over night. An other result of high water levels allowed algae to form on the surface of the media. To fix this we simply reduced the hight of the stem pipe and bell siphon so that the water would begin to drain around two inches below the surface of the media keeping it dry so the algae would die.

Plants yellowing from lack of proper nutrients.

Algae forming on the media surface.

Reducing drain level to two inches below media surface in order to keep surface dry and prevent the spread of algae.

For now everything seems to working fine, regarding the grow beds at least.

Setting up the system

Setting the system is has been a challenge, there's a number of mistakes. No matter how we've read or watched on youtube there is always something we miss we missed. That's ok we learn from mistakes.
Anyhow we continued to put the system together. In October we move the fish tank from the garage and into a small shed, and added a second tank. Then we set up the media barrels in the greenhouse and  added the pumping.

Tank shed.

You can't see it, but on the roof is a solar panel running the aerators, and heaters, but the water pump.

One of the things we've learned is that with the solar panels it was costing 40-60 bucks a month to run  the heaters, pump, and aerators, so we switched to solar. The fish in the tanks are Tilapia and require a warmer warmer water temperature. Will be soon switching over to Koi as the need to kept as warm and  we can sell them at a much higher profit.

Media barrel rack made from discarded extended pallet. The sump tank is at the far corner.

One of the immediate lessons learned was to test your barrels for leaks prior to adding media, save you a lot of time. In the case of this barrel there was pinhole in the center of the bug hole cap, easy fix with some silicone. On another barrel the bug cap was completely unsealable and ended sealing with liquid nail chalking.

Due to the sump tank being at end of the barrel table instead of directly under it, a lot of pvc was used to direct the water from the bell siphons to the sump tank.

Grow bed water emptying out into sump tank.

Starting out.

Since June of 2013 my roommate Andy and I have been slowly putting together an aquaponics system in our backyard.  Andy had discovered aquaponics prior to my move in via a mutual friend of ours who is also an organic farmer.

He quickly jumped into installing an IBC tank in the garage for use in raising some Tilapia fish. Once I moved in, in  May I began reading about it and decided that  the idea of raising our own food which would be far more nutritious and less costly than anything from the supermarket got me excited, add to that the low learning curve required to put it altogether, and raise crops. I have no experience raising anything so I thought it would a great challenge to me to learn to do so.

So over the past seven months we've scraped together and or purchased what we needed to get the system up and running. We've been lucky to have able to acquire some key parts of the system for free, like this IBC tank, and a bunch of PVC pipe, recycled lumber, and other odds and ends.

This extra long reclaimed pallet become a table for our grow beds made which are from reclaimed barrels.

Reclaimed chemical barrels cut in half to make grow beds.

In August we had enough parts together to begin the build, but winter was right around the corner so we though it would be a good idea to build a green house. I found a great simple plan for a greenhouse online at this link. We bought all the parts at home depot for just under $200.00 the whole took job a total of 5 hours to build. After which we did no real work on the project until late November. 

After completing the greenhouse we set about building the barrel grow beds.

These are 55 gallon barrels cut in half that we acquired from a water treatment plant.

A one inch uniseal fitting from Alliedaqua.com was inserted into a 1.75 hole drilled

near the edge  the barrel, this is where the standpipe and bell siphon will go.

Note: This actually to close to the end of the barrel, as the angle here  forced me to shape the guard to  the curve of the barrel so that no debris would enter under it. Center of the barrel is best and or a few inches from the end works best.

Unseals are pretty awesome and easy to use, just drill the whole and plug it in, stick in your stem pipe and it's ready to go.

It's a very quick and easy alternative bulkhead fitting.

I get mine from alliedaqua.com.

Also related to that is a handy chart for drilling the right size hole for each size fitting.

Unseal Hole Sizes

Stem pipe installed. It's a tight fit, I had to lub it some dishing soap and pound it in with a rubber mallet.

After I completed the barrels I started work on making the bell siphons.

I found this simple design from the university of Hawaii.

Construction of automatic bell siphon for backyard aquaponic systems.