Aquaponic Greenhouse Log

Tue April 19, 2016

Outbreak of fungus gnats. They eat roots if there is no fungus. Compost tea - they eat it instead of roots. Sprayed today with 780 ml of 1% Bronner's soap solution. Ron Whitehurst is sending beneficial nematodes, and hypoapsis. Immediate hit is the soap solution. Visibly, gnat adults appear to die off in seconds upon contact.

Wed Apr 13, 2016

March and April are such that the greenhouse beat obviates need for running the stove. However, the pond temperature goes down to 60F, in which case we ran the stove - about once a week. Now Apr 13, water is 72 after heating 2 days ago - so maybe now with hot days water temp never goes below 70. Fish are active above 70, below 70 they hardly want to eat. So essentially - March to begin of April is the period when we don't have to run the stove, except to heat the ponds. Temp on average in the house is 60 and above without heat in Mar- early April. Now it appears the temp will just keep going up.

Tue April 12, 2016

Seeded 3 trays of Aquaponic Greenhouse Planting.

Mar 23, 2016

This is how the aquaponic greenhouse plant wall of hanging towers looks like with bok choi going to flower and plants at the end of their cycle. This planting is from Nov. 11, 2015 in the temperate zone - minimum winter temperatures were -10F and it got down to freezing in the greenhouse on a couple of nights. Plants have been picked through many times. Ready to install second wall like this, for a total of 48 towers. IPM is going well with ladybugs which were originally natively in the house and which propagated to feed on the aphid population. Total of 48 towers produces 1056 plants, or about 170 per week assuming 6 week complete growout cycle - but this cycle in the towers would be more like 4 weeks if starts are done in perlite for 2 weeks prior to the towers - so more like 250 plants per week. Fish water without heating now remains at 62F, which means largely inactive fish. We still run the hydronic heat once in a while to get the pond temperature up to 72F, in which case the fish are very active. Next step is putting the nut seedlings shown in trays on the ground - onto bottom-watered shelves at the front and sides of greenhouse, as being developed at http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Aquaponic_Greenhouse_Workshop.

Greenhouse on March 23, 2016.

Mar 2, 2016

See bok choi picture on the right. Fry is numerous, and so are intermediate 1.5" size fish in pond. Population of fish is exploding, and will be ready for expansion to second pond soon.

Bok choi leaf pigmentless - but new growth appears healthy. March 2, 2016 growth from Nov. 11 planting in 24 original hanging towers x 22 plants per tower or 528 total.

Feb 25, 2016

See Egg CSA for $64/hour earning potential.

Feb 20,2016

See Mushroom Log to graph the growth of mushrooms over time. Mushrooms are done after 3 months of fruiting.

Feb 18, 2016

Check out this aquaponics madness of civilization under construction. These are the results to date of growing plants in towers using foam growing medium watered by fish tanks that are below the towers.The fish have increased to hundreds in the pond below, with about 10 lb of fish mass total feeding these plants in foam-filled open source g-towers by Larry Athey. We are considering a follow-up workshop for doing another aquaponics build, taking our experience further. We are still installing systems, where the duckweed/azolla, aquatic worms, spirulina, sand beds, biochar beds, and more compost beds are to be installed. In the meantime, we are starting 10,000 nut seeds next week. We are considering an Entrepreneur-in-Residence position to work out the full open source economic model for the aquaponic greenhouse. Initial results are promising, in that doubling the hanging towers has a yield estimate of 160 mature plants harvested per week, clearly showing the advantage of using vertical space: 22 plants instead of 1 plant per square foot. Systems description: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Aquaponic_Greenhouse_Workshop

Aquaponics on Feb 18, 2016

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Mon Feb 1, 2016

• Indicator fry in small gallon container are still dying. Since Friday, nitrite has gone down slightly. I was hoping filter would eat it all up by now. May be instructive to do a calculation on abatement time given the filter volume, to know what to expect.
• Nitrate level is about 20 ppm.

Fri Jan 29, 2016

Ammonia and nitrite spike. Several of the fish caught in a gallon separate container died. Took measures by reducing feed, and running plant tower filters through the night.

Sat Jan 23, 2016

• Sent inquiry to Ron on what appeared to be amblyseius (thrips eliminator insect) on the towers - but I suspected it may actually be aphids.
• Started 5 gallon compost tea bucket fd by a teabag of composted cow manure for additional fertility on growing towers.
• Floating Fish Food - started on a 50 lb bag of Floating Fish Food from Orscheln's - [1].
• Caught about one more dozen fry from the big pond, considering setting up another 55 gallon drum for the fry in the pond, but something easier to catch would be nice if we want to catch the fish for market more easily. A smaller floating cage would be a good idea - with free exchange of nutrients and water with the larger pond. This is a great 3D printing opportunity - one cubic foot open water cages for fry. Having a number of these set up would allow easy grading and harvest for sale.
• One good idea that emerges on economics is taking 6 towers to market (out of 50 total towers, where we now have only 24 set up) - assuming total 6 week growth time, a conservative time. At $1-$3 per plant - that would be $160-$480 per week revenue just from greens that grow in the towers. Total of about 1000 plants in the towers means planting out one tower (22 plants) per day - which would be a pleasant 15 minute task. If packaging means taking entire towers to market - so time requirement is essentially the seeding time. At about 1 plant planted per minute - that comes out to $1-$3/minute - or $60-180 revenue from that hour of planting - plus a trip to market - which is another 4 hours or so. Thus, earning potential is about $12-36 per hour, given negligible cost of fuel, water, and electricity to run pumps. This assumes water is harvested locally from ponds or catchment, and electricity is solar, and we go to market on pelletized charcoal gasification.

Fri Jan 22, 2016

Noticed first aphids - on several plants out of 500 in the towers. Also, the plants planted in the second batch did not do as well. Once could be poor placement of Net Pots, where I just put them in without snugging them up for good contact with the filter medium. Leaned out fish water could be another issue: just 7 adult fish + few small ones plus hundreds of babies. Also noticed minor yellowing in one or 2 bok choi plants (of 100), implying nutrient deficiency.

Thu Jan 21, 2016

School of hundreds of tiny fish appeared in pond 1. I also saw the first small school of 20 or so one week earlier, and yesterday, an intermediate size appeared - implying at least 3 generations of babies born.

Jan 27, 2016

Installed more towers for a total of 24 with 22 plants in each tower.

Dec 23, 2016

First compost bed thriving. Bok Choi etc are doing well in the Aquaponics greenhouse, a psychology boost compared to the cold outside.

Greenhouse, December 23, 2016

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Sun Dec 14, 2015

10 double towers are now installed, and planted with small plants. This is our bio filter. Goal is to see the production levels from 50-100 towers - can it really be 50-100 plants per day harvest? What fish population is required to sustain it so that the biofuel tee is effective, and is the bio filter sufficient without the plants in place?

Sun dec 7, 2015

Fed some, of the last apples from orchard to the chickens, maybe a week of apples left for an apple per day. Should invest in walk-in cooler to extend apples - a lot have rotted, maybe 25% total.

Mon Nov 30, 2015

First flush of mushrooms. 2.25 lb in one bucket. Harvested over 3 days.

Nov 23, 2015

Seedlings almost ready for transplanting into towers.

Seedlings of lettuce, bok choi, and kale after 12 days in perlite.

Sun Nov 22, 2015

Released aphidoletes, planted beans as indicator plants for pests. Small fish are very vigorous, large ones are looking good. Kale, lettuce, and bok choi is almost getting second leaves. Few strawberries are coming into fruit. Duckweed and azolla appears to be propagating.

Sun Nov 15, 2015

Cleaned out blackworms.

Mon Nov 16, 2015

Released predatory mites and thrips eliminator from Ron Whitehurst's Rincon-Vitova Insectaries.

Nov 5, 2015

Greenhouse panels arrive.

Greenhouse polycarbonate glazing arriving

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