Homemade Indoor Hydroponic Aquaponic

Homemade Indoor Hydroponic Aquaponic

9th Feb 2009

Today I will begin to set up an very simple DIY Indoor Aquaponic using a slightly modified design from garden girl tv version.

Firstly, I had mentally drawn up a plan and decide what items to purchase and the current design is to have a pump to pump water from the fish tank below up 2 meters to the highest point and let the water flow from right to left in a plastic grow tank before draining to another grow tank and down back to the fish tank.

This is what I had set up in 2 hours time for today

The following is the list of items that I had bought for this project

1. Metal rack that I had bought at SGD $148


Metal Racks that I need to install myself hee

2. Water pump motor and accessories with tubes and connectors at SGD $135.


Energy Saving Water Pump

3. Two IKEA Snail box at SGD $12 each


IKEA Snail Box

4. Two 55 Watt PL Lights for fish tank

I already have 3 x 2 feet fish tanks at home so I can re-use one of the fish tank for this project

The task for tomorrow is to drain my existing fish tank and catch the shrimps to migrate them to another fish tank which will take about forever haha!.

12 Feb 2009

I had finally finished catching all the cherry shrimps (hundreds of them) and migrated them to another fish tank.

Draining the tank makes the tank lighter for me to carry but it’s still straining my back slightly!

Adding the water must add a few drops of anti-chlorine solution to remove the chlorine from our tap water, using some “crystal clear” solution to make the dust settle down in the water I started to drill some holes at the bottom of the IKEA Snail Boxes.

Tied some raffia strings to the new 55 Watt Lights to the metal racks on top of the 2 snail buckets for growing the vegetables.

I will be catching some Tilapia fish (aka Japanese fish) that shit a lot and put in the fish tank so I can use it’s fish waste as fertilizer for my vegetable plants.

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!

Ta da!!!

15 Feb 2009 (early morning)

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.

15 Feb 2009

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.

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

17 Feb 2009

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!!

20 Feb 2009

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.

21 Feb 2009

Photographs of my vegetable growth

26 Feb 2009

2 Mar 2009 Updates

All the vegetables are growing really well!

I had modified the double barrel fish protector filter for my water pump to point upwards instead so that there won’t have any possible chance of over flowing anywhere since the amount of water are limited to the water level above the barrels.

My molly fishes had actually given birth to many small babies!! ^_^
I fed them 2 times daily with algae wafer and they seems to be flourishing well

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.

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”.

By the way, one of my molly fishes grew so fat that I thought one of them had became a Gold Fish instead!!

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!

18 April 2009

The video below 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!

June 27 2010:

I had faced with lot’s of problems with the above design & thought of a new one.
The cost of set up depends on how much troubleshooting you do & what kinds of materials you use.

I realized that the plastic tub are so costly that adding a few bucks I can get a full 2 litres fish tank & use a overflow pipes system to flow the water out.

Using overflow system, I can use floating styrofoam to float multiple pots of plants instead of growing on stones which I experience high death rates due to rushing water.

This new system should be able to sustain both fish & plants provided that the fish don’t mix directly to the plants’ roots.

The bottom tank can be the fish tank & sump tanks where water pass through layers of filter to reach the bottom fish tanks easily made with multiple pails with holes at the bottom filled with filter medium on each layer.

The pumps must not be directly exposed to the fishes but divided with a divider so that no fishes can be harmed in the process.

This means the bottom fish tank will be divided into 2 parts, one part with the fishes and the 2nd partition the pump & filter sump.

The top part will be a fish tank with floating styrofoam with holes & pots of plants, with a overflow piping system.

What’s next is to take action and build it, that will take some time, money & motivation. Wish me luck!

Login

Username:

Password:

Remember me

• Register
• Lost your password?

  |   Comments RSS

• 
• 
• 
•