Thursday, February 26, 2009

Coming Along

Where do I start... I bought a crayfish and sucking fish Saturday to help keep the tank clean and keep the algae level down. Need to buy a few more. I was able to go fishing yesterday at a lake and caught 17 fingerlings that I thought were Tilapia. I was so excited when I thought they were, but had a closer look at one that died. Crazy me through the fish directly in the tank when I bought them home and the goldfish had an early dinner. So I quickly had to catch the goldfish out the system to give me time to catch the smaller fish to separate them. I placed a net hanging over in the water to keep the baby fish. Got new seedlings on the raise. Sweet corn, sweet basil, tomato and lettuce.





Monday, February 16, 2009

Pause

Well went outside this morning to see how the system would flow. Found out that the shipping peanuts are not going to work. I placed them at the bottom and was hoping that the hydroton would be heavy enough to hold them down. It didn't work. So I'll have to buy some river rocks to replace them with. Here is the video ....

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Full Blast Ahead!

I got my hydroton today. I'm all ready to go. After I came from church I went straight in the back yard and wash them out and put it in the system. I used the peanuts that was shipped with the supplies at the bottom because I only had one bag of hydroton. Well here it is all setup.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

First Water Test

Did my first water test tonight. Don't have any plants in the system so just wanted to make sure that the ammonia level wasn't building up to high. There is 6 goldfish in a 28 gallon tank. Here are the results.
pH 8.0/Ammonia 0.25

Nitrate 0/ Nitrate 0.1

Friday, February 13, 2009

Almost Finished

The system is almost up and running fully. I connected everything up together and working on the water flow to the grow beds. The only thing that is missing form the system is my hydroton (clay balls). Customs still has them. I also made some filters to clean out the rain water I collected and had sitting around.

Drilled holes in the drain to the fish tank to add more air to the water.


Hose added to the growbed
Hose added to the fish tankFull view of system. Need to tidy up a bit. And as u see NO HYDROTON
Reservoir with water pump inside

Plants in grow bed with perlite


Filter made with cloth and PVC pipe

6 Goldfish, Sponsored by CL aka ѕнєяяєℓℓ

Fish Tank


Opened for questions and comments



Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Auto Siphon Tested With A Bottle

Just wanted to test the auto siphon setup. I'm going to use this concept to empty the plant growbeds. When I set it up on the grow beds I'll have to figure out how long it takes to fill up and empty so I can adjust the timer for the pumps.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Time To Get The Ball Rolling, Supplies Are HERE

Got my supplies yesterday. Was excited so I opened up everything to check it out. I'll be setting things up until I get my hydroton from Customs, simple minded people, not too smart. Anyhow here are the stuff.





Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Getting A Head Start

I want my system to kick ASAP, so I decided to transfer some plants I have growing in pots into my growbeds. Additional to that I will also be plants seeds to start in the AP system. I think I may need alot more barrels. Here are some pics of the plants.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Let It Rain!

Well it was raining all day. Just stepped outside and found my 2 growbeds (55 gallon dump cut in half length ways) was filled with rain water. I'm going to use this rain water in my system because there is too much chlorine in the city water. Need system to be as safe as possible for the fish.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Celery On The Rise!!!

This is a photo of a 2 weeks old celery plant from a 3 inch cutting.

Top View

This is another celery plant that is growing. 1 week old.