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
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!
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
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!
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
More updates will be found in my project page of this blog!
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
Save lot’s of space
Able to plant vegetables indoor
The vegetables can be sheltered from extreme weather such as winter, hurricane, drought and etc.
Scalable expansion depending on your building weight limits on the floors.
Can be used outdoors as well
Quite hassle free, just need to feed the fish…the rest is automatic. (Maybe get an auto feeder!)
Almost “Free” Food
Fish waste as fertilizers means it’s Organic vegetables (No pesticides or natural gas fertilizers)
The disavantages are
Slightly expensive to setup initially especially during trial and error
Need some knowledge on fish breeding
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!
