Homemade Indoor Hydroponic Aquaponic (Update 8)

YouTube Preview Image

Using my sparkling new JVC DV Camcorder, I managed to record this fantastic update on my little experiment!

Latest:
- A small little lady finger seems to be coming out
- I had moved the lights above the metal rack roof to make more space for the lady finger
- Tea strainer is not a problem after bi-weekly “scraping” heh

I am pretty happy with the growth progress with the lady fingers and the tea strainers does not caused much problems, anyone got their own little indoor aquaponic project such as mine? Do contact me if you have any questions :)

Popularity: 3% [?]

Homemade Indoor Hydroponic Aquaponic (Update 7)

YouTube Preview Image
18 April 2009

The video above is my latest update on my on going experiment on Indoor Aquaponic Growth System that supposedly able to grow vegetables indoor for personal consumption.

Observation is the “tea strainer” have have some problems letting the water through causing some flooding within the buckets, luckily my pump entrance is pointing upwards within the fish tank hence eliminated any kind of overflow in the above buckets.

The disappointing thing was the collapsed of multiple plants in the middle bucket that died in the “floods” and which I suspected to had melted away in the “tsunami” of water.

I had once witnessed a small dead molly fish being consumed by my “clean up crew” which are my healthy cherry shrimps within the fish tank, I think the molly fishes kept the population of the cherry shrimps in check but many of them now seems to be living happily with the fishes…weird.

I guess the molly fishes’ mouth are not wide enough to swallow an adult cherry shrimp hence leaving the shrimps alone…haha.

Next month after my reservist, I will probably move my experiments into the next level by making a MUCH more wider and Larger buckets hopefully to plant MORE vegetables enough to at least rotate the crops…and all indoors.

Pray hard, Iran won’t be attacked before I buy everything…or we can kiss our money goodbye….hyperinflation to come like “blink”…and WTF!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Homemade Indoor Hydroponic Aquaponic (Update 6)

29 March 2009

Today, the update is about the progress of my little homemade aquaponic growth vegetables.

Firstly, there had been a failure to anticipate how tall the plants can grow and the strength of the winds.

Let me show you the current photos of the vegetables.

Top Bucket 29 Mar 2009

Top Bucket 29 Mar 2009

Bottom Bucket 29 Mar 09

Bottom Bucket 29 Mar 09

You can see the Bottom Bucket had half of the vegetable was gone due to my own fault, the plants got too tall and fell sideways touching the water that is coming down from the hoses.

The end result is death to all my “kang kong” vegetables, I was devastated at first then realized the top bucket is suffering from the same problem of weak stems and need some sticks to support them individually.

I uses some old wooden chopsticks & small wire to tie them upright to prevent them from falling over, the result of the rescue is the photo above on the top bucket.

Those on the top bucket is majority are “ladyfingers” vegetable and a small number of them are “chili padi”.

I will continue to update on this project and hopefully able to harvest them…but I am not experienced enough to know if they are ripe for harvest…any advice will be helpful! :)

Popularity: 3% [?]

[Food] Easy DIY Indoor Aquaponic Growth System (Video Dairy 5)

The DIY Indoor Aquaponic Growth System status report on the growth of my vegetable garden. 1. Kang Kong is growing up pretty fast… 2. Xiao Bai Cai is spreading all over the place Let me write a small review on this setup and the problems encountered & unsolved problems. Aquaponics is a combination of hydroponics and Aquatic fish breeding to make a 90% to 100% maintenance free. The benefits of my set up is as follows

  1. Save lot’s of space
  2. Able to plant vegetables indoor
  3. The vegetables can be sheltered from extreme weather such as winter, hurricane, drought and etc.
  4. Scalable expansion depending on your building weight limits on the floors.
  5. Can be used outdoors as well
  6. Quite hassle free, just need to feed the fish…the rest is automatic. (Maybe get an auto feeder!)
  7. Almost “Free” Food
  8. Fish waste as fertilizers means it’s Organic vegetables (No pesticides or natural gas fertilizers)

The disavantages are

  1. Slightly expensive to setup initially especially during trial and error
  2. Need some knowledge on fish breeding
  3. Troublesome to build if you are unable to gather all the components.

There are some problems that I had encountered previously during the set up process and mistakes made that cost me some money to replace the “Ikea Snail Buckets” because I had drilled holes into the bucket wrongly making the set up noisy and very annoying.

First problem that I had faced was the noise, the splashing noise can be heard from the next room if there was no stone pebbles inside the buckets. After reviewing some other people’s setup such as ninamichelle77‘s video on her Aquaponics System,

I had decided to follow her hose design with slight modification. Then the second problem is the water pump sucking fishes into it’s “final destination” and end up in heaven, I managed to connect a “fish protector” from the pump to prevent small fish from premature death ^_^.

The third problem is the risk of clogging at the drainage hole (hose connector) inside the bucket from small pebbles, I managed to find a small tea strainer to cover up the hole to prevent any small stones from clogging the opening and able to cover the whole strainer with stones without clogging! :)

The fourth problem is the loud drainage noise that happens every time when the water flow is large hence I installed a valve to the setup to control the flow of water and the noise just disappeared! :)

The current pending problem is the top bucket is still not very well irrigated which probably delayed some of the growth, I am still thinking of ways to improve the water flow and currently testing if lowering the platform can slow the water flow and irrigate the top bucket better.

The plants is doing great and the molly fishes are doing rather well  in the tank :) The wild common mollies are very good jumpers hence I had to cover the top part of the fish tank using some plastic cut out cover but still 1 or 2 still jumps out occasionally at some small openings…but it’s not a serious problem for now.

The common mollies love algae wafer & flake fish food hence I have no problem breeding them but I will love to get my hands on a tilapia (Japanese fish) this weekend if possible but I know recently the weather is terribly hot causing many fishes to die in the drains…saw a few floating tilapia last weekend!

Ok, that’s all for today’s  update…stay tune for my next update probably a few more days before I post again on this project. My next project might be very interesting, it might be a project on water & sun…stay tuned!

Popularity: 3% [?]

[Food] Easy DIY Indoor Aquaponic Growth System (Video Dairy 4)

The Xiao Bai Cai (type of small version of cabbage) & kang kong are currently leading the way on the vegetable growing in my DIY Aquaponic Growth System hehe.

Those are local vegetables suitable for equatorial climate in Singapore, I bet you can grow other delicious vegetables in your location :)

Regarding the fish trap that I had designed, see below for more information :)


Building A Cheap Fish Trap (DIY) For catching fish in the wild.More DIY How To Projects

Here’s the video dairy number 4!!

Popularity: 4% [?]

[Food] Easy DIY Indoor Aquaponic Growth System (Part 03)

Today’s update is another upgrade to my hydroponic system, I had placed a tea strainer to protect the hose connector from small stones.

Tea strainer is suppose to be stainless steel or of non-rust material hence should be 100% rust free underwater.

Mesh Tea Strainer from Daiso

Mesh Tea Strainer from Daiso

Added a water flow valve to regulate the water flow so that the water won’t make so much noise lol.

Do go to the My Project page to see more of this project :)

Popularity: 2% [?]

[Food] Easy DIY Indoor Aquaponic Growth System (Part 02)

Today, I had upgraded the flow of water to using hose connectors.

This afternoon, I went to the local river (canal) near Lavender MRT to catch some Tilapia (aka Japanese fish) but unfortunately only caught some small common  molly fish instead.

I had notice 3 dead Tilapia floated past me and I find it rather weird, it seems that the water may be too hot for them or because of the industrial waste?

Anyway, below is my latest video on the upgrade to my Aquaponic system since the last video.

Popularity: 1% [?]

[Food] Easy DIY Indoor Aquaponic Growth System (Part 01)

This is a upgrade to my Aquaponic Growth System that I had posted in “My Project” page.

14 Feb 2009

Today I made a small innovation upgrade to my Aquaponic Indoor Grow System, I realized a very serious problem of small fishes or shrimps being sucked into the water pump…causing lot’s of pain both in my heart and pocket…($_$)

In order to reduce more unnecessary death I had decided to find a way to do the following requirements.

  1. Water Pump remain powerful to suck up the  fish waste as fertilizer to the plants above.
  2. No more death of small fishes or shrimps.
  3. No blockage at the water inlet.

Here’s the the update…drum roll!

Double Barrel Plastic Fish Protector

Double Barrel Plastic Fish Protector

Ta da!!!

Popularity: 2% [?]

Updates on the R&D on my "Inverse Generator" and the response from the Internet.

Today is New Year Eve and I had decided to write something on the progress of my little project to create an efficient renewable energy from “thin air” or so called “perpetual machine”. Well, I had received plenty of hate mails and serious accusation in forums that I feel previously safe to announce my plans and progress.

I had to address all the issues and questions that is great other then those flame post and accusation.

To re-announce my intension and inform the general public, this is not a “perpetual machine” and it’s not even completed yet. It’s just a demonstration that magnet can be used to repulse a wheel effectively to harvest the constant force of gravity.

The simple idea is to reset the force of gravity by use of magnetic repulsion. Imagine a heavy marble was placed on top of the slope it will naturally roll down the slope gathering kinetic energy, if the marble are able to turn a few turbines along the way it will effectively harvested gravity into usable electrical energy.

The problem now is how to reset the marble’s position back to the top of the slope without using more energy then the marble had generated? If it uses more electricity then it had converted from gravity to kinetic energy then the net energy generated will be negative hence not efficient generator or means to harvest gravity.

My wheel simply reset the weight of magnets up to the highest point by means of magnetic repulsion and harvest the gravity while it drops down. The permanent magnet have the magnetic flux or force which is constant like gravity is not a energy source too, it had to be pushed towards the wheel to repulse the wheel up.

As many people know magnets that pushes work both ways, it’ will assist your movements or go against in the opposite direction if the magnet remains in the same position. It’s crucial to move the magnet away when the wheel turns back on time.

The missing link now is the energy required to push the magnet towards the wheel, how much energy is required to push it and of course is it more or less then the electricity it can potentially generate. These are the key concerns by many forum posts and skepticism as it is unfortunately not completed yet.

The only secret I hold is the specific arrangement of the magnets at precise locations to achieve efficient repulsion. To be honest, it’s through many trial and error to achieve this speed of rotation of the wheel.

My plans now is to build the last missing link of the puzzle which is to push the big magnet towards the wheel using another renewable energy like a small solar panel. Many questioned my idea is it a redundant system, the answer should be no.

The idea is the solar power is to jump start the system and eventually the power generated from the magnetic induction of the wheel to coils connected in either single phase or 3 phase connection can potentially feed back to the small battery charged initially by the solar panels.

This can only be achieved if the power generated by the wheel is more then the battery input create a net energy gain from the harvesting of the gravity and magnetic force.

Gravity force is the basic fundamental of nature that had caused water from mountain to flow down into the oceans via rivers that had long used by hydro-electric generators to generate electricity. The reset of the whole “renewable energy” system is natural evaporation of water (by using solar energy) and condensation in clouds causing rain and the cycle continues naturally indefinitely.

Permanent Magnetic force/flux to me is an anomaly of nature as the magnetic fields can induce other solid metals that attracts magnetically to become magnet themselves, the unique thing about permanent magnet is how long remains magnetic. Unless high temperature are present, the magnetic force in the permanent magnets don’t dissipates quickly.

I am simply applying the forces of nature to this project to convert all forces of nature into usable energy such as electricity just like a hydro-electric dam.

  1. Solar created a small electric current at solar panels to charge 2 AA batteries.
  2. Batteries powered a small DC motor to run a linear actuator to push the big magnet towards the big wheel.
  3. The big wheel repulsion at the right timing will rotate upwards to “point of no return”
  4. Gravity holds the wheel and pulls it downwards rotating at the right direction
  5. Another continuous repulsion by the big magnet at the right timing.
  6. The wheel gather inertia and rotate efficiently
  7. The wheel will be used to rotate another set of smaller wheel that had many magnets attached on it and will be near a set of magnetic coils connected in either single phase or 3 phase connection.
  8. The resulted changes of magnetic flux causes induction of electricity and depending on the speed of rotation and the length of coil used per phase, the result electricity (AC) will be generated.
  9. The connection will be connected to a bridge rectifier to convert it into DC Voltage to charge a larger battery.
  10. To prevent back flow of electricity, a one way diode will be in the connection as well.
  11. When the net energy harvested had been proven to be higher then the input by the 02 x AA battery then net energy gain can be used to run the whole system.

I do not believe my design is a perpetual motion as it converts other source of renewable energy into potentially higher output.

The questions about resistance and loss is also one of the key concerns but as long as the result output of the device is MORE then the input then the loss of energy theory is irrelevant. That is to debunk windmill because there is resistance while rotating but windmill generate much more energy then it had lost hence an efficient system.

Of course all the above is part of my own believes and theory which might or might not work but as I had mentioned previously the project is currently still in progress.

It takes more time, money and effort to complete this project and it’s my personal project so no outside funding is required now. If I ever succeed in making this “inverse generator”, I will share it with the world in my own way instead of mass production in the capitalism model but instead in the “open source” system.

The fact that it’s cheap to build and once it’s easy to build by novice, it’s then harder to mass produce in manufacturing plants as it’s much more costlier when the middleman needs to earn their margins to pay for the cost of rental, utilities, manpower, deliveries and their profits and bonus. The very model of a “Open System” will generate educational jobs and people just need to buy RAW materials from key distributors at affordable prices to build their own generator(s).

The jobs I am hoping to create is educational teaching jobs to teach others on how to make this work together with other sustainable solutions to include water generation from condensation (Air 2 water), food production from indoor hydroponics to conservation of energy.

All these are essentials to all countries and regardless of races, languages or religions and should be available to all mankind. I now concentrate on electricity as without cheap electricity both food production and water condensation cannot be efficient and affordable.

Global energy crisis and water shortages comes hand in hand with food production crunch. It’s all interlinked and before we know it, we will face 1000% inflation of all cost of living regardless of your status or wealth.

Yes, climate changes does affect some of the food production but we really cannot do much about it as much of the greenhouse gases are occurring naturally even before human industrial age, yes Mother Earth did have multiple mini-ice age and warm period in the past even before human uses huge amount of fossil fuels.

According to Wikipedia:
The major greenhouse gases are water vapor, which causes about 36–70% of the greenhouse effect on Earth (not including clouds); carbon dioxide, which causes 9–26%; methane, which causes 4–9%, and ozone, which causes 3–7%. It is not possible to state that a certain gas causes a certain percentage of the greenhouse effect, because the influences of the various gases are not additive.

It’s really funny to know Hydrogen was previously heavily promoted as a “green” and clean source of fuel that “help reduce” CO2 and effects of global warming. It’s not efficient to generate Hydrogen using electricity via electrolysis or other methods and the output of the tailpipe is H2O (WATER).

The Earth’s carrying capacity of human beings is reaching it’s limit and it will force cost of living (sustainability) up to unseen levels for all types of essential products that sustains life such as water & food. Food is a source of energy for humans and it’s almost natural to condemn any use of FOOD CROPS to generate fuel for rich people to drive their cars.

Shortage of food will cause famines and mass migration of population in the worst case scenarios unless more people know how to produce their own FOOD, Water and Electricity.

The ripple effect of knowledge and DIY industry to assist the world from going into chaos and war as the natural response to starvation, oppression and slavery. Food Riots and Protest had been common in the past and when we had reach the point of no return will cause a potentially disastrous future.

A future that I want to avoid personally where no place is safe and people literally eat people just to survive. Only the strongest can survive then but those who prevails will they be on the good or evil side?

You decide, as my fate will be yours too…

Popularity: 3% [?]