User talk:VerdammtAnzeige

Open Source Aquaculture

Aquaculture, by definition from wikipedia, is "the farming of freshwater and saltwater organisms including molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants. Unlike fishing, aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, implies the cultivation of aquatic populations under controlled conditions. [1] Mariculture refers to aquaculture practiced in marine environments. Particular kinds of aquaculture include algaculture (the production of kelp/seaweed and other algae), fish farming, shrimp farming, oyster farming, and the growing of cultured pearls. Particular methods include aquaponics, which integrates fish farming and plant farming."1

Now, more specifically, Aquaponics is the symbiotic cultivation of plants and aquatic animals in a recirculating environment[;]2 however it should be added that it can be used as a season-less, & symbiotic alternative/relief to Permaculture

Introduction to Project

I have taken it upon myself to come up with a complete design that is scalable, and that can be applied to a broad amount of species of both plant and fish. The realization of vertical farming is utilized (many horizontal planes of growth, stacked vertically), and if so applied, farming in layers (similar to permaculture) can be applied to growth techniques. However, this project solely discusses the application in detail of growing plants in symbiosis with fish, with efficiency, and a small discussion of the processes behind some of the reasons for efficiency.

This will examing the process of how to determine the size of the tanks, and system you will require from just having a SINGLE growbed to start, however is scaleable easily. System suggestions and key considerations are offered, as well as an example system, with calculations present.

Benefits of the System

Any and all considerations as to the efficiency of the system have been made, The objective is to provide abundance, not a scaracity of goods. This benefits the public in many ways, including stability and ease of mind, financial ease, as well as a healthy replacement for common everyday products.

The lighting, the filtration systems, even how the temperature is maintained, has all been configured to be the least polluting(possibly remediative), sustainable, and maintenance free. This may lead one to think that this would mean that only a small work force is required, however this is in part true, it is also not. Man power will still be required to apply logic and reasoning, pattern recognition, etc. however the workforce is giving way to automation, cybernation, and the freeing of humanity from it's position as the 'workhorse,' ever since they were replaced by tractors. This is just the initial recognition of that step.

Since we avoid the use of dangerous fossil fuels in the process for nutrients, cleaning, etc, the products are organic. Organically grown Construction Materials, Foods, Fuels, Plastics, Electonics, etc...

Key Considerations

Without having a way to bring outside nitrogen into the system you will have to feed the fish food that is grown from an outside source, can't have none of that confounded perpetual motion, so possibly use in combination with biomass producers that take nitrogen from the air, something the fish will consume, instead of taking it in through the system, and grow it in seperate area, perhaps permaculture could be incororated... If possible, an algea crop could prove successful if cultivated and fed to the fish, they are great biomass producers, and fish do eat algea...

The same effect could be achieved with plants, however they should really be grown in an outside system to ensure that their ntirogen comes from an outside source, as long as they mainly get nitrogen from their leaves or stalks it shouldnt be an issue, however, any additional nitrogen will help compensate for losses.

So use the time that you are setting up your system to see with the conditions you have, what plants or organisms you can grow with abundance in an outside system, with minimal energy consumption, that can be added to the diet of the fish.

It is Important to monitor the system in these ways:

a) Ensure proper levels of chemicals (ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate), the ph value of the water, and the levels of CO2 in ppm.

b) Check lines for blockage, are all plants/growbeds getting sufficient water? Are they draining?

c) Temperature of Growroom.

d) Intensity of light in growroom (also if all lights are still functioning).

e) Spread / Dissipation of light throughout growroom, plants getting even light?

f) Fish population & Growth rate of Plant & Fish populations.

g) Health of Plant & Fish population; Infestations, Pests, Disease, etc.

There should be work initiated to catalog the visual qualities of any and all angles of plant genus, as well as their illnesses, their natural predators, symbiotic plant speciese, The usefulness of this rises out of new technology, technology that enables us to go and completely automate the remaining tedious maintenance, processing, and transportation jobs that usually go hand in hand with the system. Once additional human input is reduced to next to nothing, cybernation of the system will be almost complete, and efforts of indefinite expansion could then be made. Profit should not be sought, as it is an absolute byproduct of the system, in turn, it should be used to benefit communities. (Feed the starving)

Suggestions for Growbeds:

- Depth of growth medium should exceed 12 inches, this will help the bacteria, that are essential to the process, cultivate. I have no problems with 13 inches of medium, & 3 inches of lip to prevent drainage.

- Clay "rocks" or bricketts should be used instead of regular stones, if available. This will help to maintain the alkalinity of the water, naturally (can also be achieved with oyster shells), as well, clay bricketts maintain moisture longer. If clay is used, be sure to monitor the water level until they become saturated with water.

- Use Siphon Drain system with a continuous flow - Flood & Drain hydroponic setup.

- Have the high water mark 2 inches above the grow medium, with plenty of room (3 inches) to prevent flooding.

Designing The System

1; General Rules of Thumb for Calculating Required Dimensions:

Calculate the volume of the growbeds, per bed, then in total. However maintain the seperate values for later calculations; we only need the total at the moment, though. By calculating the total, you get the approximate size requirements for the fish tank, as the ratio (by volume) should be 1:1, or 2:1, with the size favoring the fish tanks.

2; General Rules of Thumb for Determining Fish Population Densities:

By determining the amount of space required for the fish tank, we now have an idea of how many fish we can produce, as a general ratio should be 10L to every 1 fish at MAXIMUM population densities for larger fish, fingerlings and minnoe populations can be much higher, however. The starting population density should be around 20L to every fish, and arguably the more space per fish, the happier they will be. For really dense populations of fish, proper aeration is required.

3; Providing Proper Aeration to the Fish Tank(s):

Aeration is a fundamental requirement to having dense populations of fish, air stones and bubble tubes don't work as well as some of you might think. For proper aeration, take the total volume of your fish tank, and multiply that number by 2. This is the amount of air [your pump] should move / hour. (The air pump should have a tube running parallel to the surface of the water, then have an angled nozzle that blows the air into the water, the tirbulence will help dissipate more of the air into the water, and the injection should happen at 15 PSI or higher.)

4; Providing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) to the system:

By growing and harvesting biomass that can be fermented into beer, you can leech off the carbon dioxide into the environment, and as long as a steady fermentation was kept in process then you could provide a CO2 saturated environment to the plants (making use of your waste), and then Alcohol can be distilled from the beer to put into drinks, be used as a fuel source/solvent, etc.

5; Providing Light to the Plants:

Lots of work has been done to LEDs and to study them and their effectiveness in growing plants. Since plants only use light in the 400-700 nm range, which is Infared, Red, and Blue light, a very high efficiency can be attained when using these lights in combination with one another.

A Ratio of 3:2 of Red to Blue should be used for growth, Blue light seems to be more effective for vegetative growth, while red is more effective for flowering, and Infared (often referred to as fared) seems to be what causes a majority of stretching, however also plays a roll in the process of flowering. I suggest systems that provide omnidirectional fared light from under the plants, assisting in making their stalks grow thick.

All the LEDs except the fareds should have lenses on them, to help concentrate the light towards the plants, otherwise your efforts will be in vain, without the proper light intensity the plants will not grow. Keep in mind light intensity cannot, and is not measured in lumens as lumens is a measure of more yellow-white light, visible light to humans, not to photosynthesis sympathetic lightwave patterns.

While this is true that you will have much more efficient lighting while utilizing infared lighting, it is still important to even the spread of light, the total spectrum, so pipe in some light with some home made fiber optic cable, make use of the light that is there and next to free. (may need to concentrate with a lense runnign east to west, with the focal point aimed at the optical cable.) It is possible to direct the light (via the end of the cable, or strip it and have omnidirectional light. (same effect can be achieved with minimal power consumption with use of CFL bulbs)

Using LEDs prevents heat issues, so we can have the lights basically on top of the plants indefinitly. Suggested amount per plant of LEDs: 2 blue, 3 red, 0.10 fared. By splitting up the dispertion of the fared lights, and keeping the light on the bottom of the leaves we help to minimize stretching.

Building the System

This is when you construct your system, you should always build with modularity, meaning having the ability to disassemble, and reassemble, in whichever configuration you require... Modularity will give you the freedom to build upon your system, and increase it as you become more comfortable with the whole process.

Preparing the System for Live Organisms

Bacteria Required for Nutrient Conversion:

Nitrosomanas3 - Converts Ammonia4 into Nitrite5

Nitrobacter6 - Converts Nitrite to Nitrate7 (plant food)

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How to Culture Essential Bacteria for Nutrient Delivery:

Required Tools:

* Aquarium Test Kit; (needs tests for Ammonia, PH, Nitrite, and Nitrate)

* Ammonia

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Process:

1: Inject ammonia into the system with no living organisms, set the ph to 6.5-7 (preferrably 6.8), and with the ammonia in the system, it will cause Nitrosomanas to culture inside the grow medium. Test the ammonia levels every day, it should go up to 5ppm, then fall off to 0ppm.

2: As the ammonia levels begin to fall off, start to test for Nitrite levels, they too should rise to about 5ppm, and then go down to 0ppm. Remember, continue to test daily, and when it starts to go down in Nitrite levels, begin to watch Nitrate levels.

3: As soon as Nitrate becomes present in the system you are able to plant seedlings, infact this is probably a superior time to plant them in the system, as they will be nursed onto the nutrient feed. Also you will only want to plant with 50% the density of a fully established system, so only plant 1/2 of what it says to on the packages.

This is also the time to introduce the fish to the system, as long as all the systems are within reasonable boundaries, then feel free to introduce your fish. You dont want your plants to run out of nutrients due to the inherient biofiltration, caused by the bacteria in the growbeds, essentially each growbed acts as a digester, and processes the fish waste into composte that the plants then use.

Here on out: Even though you have plants in the system, it doesn't mean you're home free yet. You have to continue to monitor levels of ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate every day, while checking the ph once a week or so.

The levels of ammonia, nitrite, and thus nitrate, will fluctuate in new systems as the bacteria are setting in, it is normal, however if Nitrite levels are higher than 5ppm there is a problem if it maintains this, and can indicate a problem. Move to correct (by injecting nitrobacter into the growbeds) immediately, or fish will suffer.

Also if Nitrate levels exceed 20 ppm, this can be tolerated for the short term however should not be allowed to persist more than a few days. If this is a problem, a solution could be to dump one third the contents of the tank, and refill with fresh water.

Remember PH is important for plant growth, most plants like a PH of 6.5-7 (6.8 is a good setting as a rule of thumb, however research what your crop prefers.)

An Example System

(What I'm building, and to be expanded on as the fish mature;)

63 growbeds, inner dimensions of growbeds is a total, combined, of 3.5' x 5' x 9', so this is also the size of my fish tank, but instead of one tank, I'm going to have three tanks, (3.5' deep x 3.5' wide x 5' long), totalling slightly larger in volume than my calculations call for but no big deal. They will contain the minnoes of Tilapia, well, the tanks will be Tilapia. One as a foodstock for more fish to be introduced at a later time, Trout and Salmon, and others to be allowed to age as a foodstock for humans.

With this system, and if I am correct and 1' x 1' x 1' = 28.3168466L, then I can have 223 fish easily in the beginning, moving up to densities of 445/446... and this is before the system expands, and is considering from adult size fish, which these tanks will not be for, but will for minnoes.

Considering my system is for an "incubator" of sorts (for plants), it is perfect to start with while a larger complex is build to contain the vegetative growth rooms, as well as the flowering rooms.

the total inner dimensions of the space required (inside a building) for my system to grow these seedlings is (9' high x 21' wide x 10' across), while additional space is required to maintain the fish tanks. Proving a small facility can have very large turnover.

Planned Products / Services

- Fresh / Frozen / Canned Fish

* Tilapia
* Trout
* Salmon
* Etc?

- Fresh & Frozen Produce

* Nuts & Berries
* Apples
* Potatoes
* Carrots
* Beans
* Peas
* Baby Corn
* Tomatos
* Pumpkin
* Squash
* Cucumber
* Etc?

- Condements

* Honey
* Organic Ketchup
* Mustards
* Rellish
* Jams / Jellies
* Etc?

- Vegetable Oils

- Soaps & other Toiletries

- Ethyl Alcohol

* Beer
* Meade
* Wine
* 98% Alcohol
* Etc?

- Herbs & Spices

* Oregano
* Parsley
* Paprika
* Basil
* Thyme
* Garlic
* Wasabe
* Etc?

- Flowers

* Roses
* Dandelions
* Tulips
* Clover
* Etc?

- Medecine

* Aloepathy
* Homeopathy

- Fuel & Experimental Crops * Hemp

* Biodiesel
* Pyrolysis Fuel
* Plastics
* Etc?

- Hydroponics Supplies & Equipment

- Aquaculture Supplies & Equipment

- Hydroponic System Consulting

* System Design
* Construction
* Maintenance
* Etc?

- Aquacultural System Consulting

* System Design
* Construction
* Maintenance
* Etc?

- Independant(Individual) Shops / Kiosks to market similar products. as an alternative income source.

--VerdammtAnzeige Trevor E Kelly 21:11, 7 May 2009 (UTC)