Aquaponics..

sump tank on the left and our soon to be fish tank on the right

 We have massive plans for the greenhouse, just got a few more shelves to install and then the irrigation. Still deciding on the type of system I will use to water the plants but will mostly be using 'flood and drain' systems with a bell syphon. When we are installing all of this and making our syphons i will put up some photos and instructions. We have tried making a small scale system before and made a few mistakes, but now we have the hang of it we are ready to make something awesome.

Aquatic Plants.. update

The lid of the CO2 reactor bottle, cut the tube on an angle to get it through the hole

 I learnt from my first try that everything has to be really, reallllly airtight. Im using iced tea bottles now with the rubber seals inside the caps which helps a whole lot. The yellow lid is the CO2 reactor lid, the airtube needs to be above the level of the yeast mixture in the bottle.

The CO2 tube needs to be deep enough in the bubble counter to be under water

The orange lid is the bubble counter, it is basically used to see how much CO2 is being created in your reaction and helps remove any yeast mixture before the final tube collects the gas and takes it into the tank. I used silicone to seal the holes.

CO2 reactor with the yellow lid, bubble counter is orange

 I used a more potent yeast mixture this time, the reaction will not last as long but it will create more CO2. The sugar, water and bi-carb remained the same and 8g yeast... (2 cups sugar, a pinch of bi-carb and 3/4 of the bottle filled with warm water)

the bubble counter produces about 3 bubbles per second and is diffused into the aquatic tank via airstone

Aquatic Plants

The Aquarium

We love our fish tank, we have a mixture of guppies, bristle-nose (peppermint and albino), cherry shrimp and ......... Unfortunately the fish also destroy all the plants we put in there, not that we mind.. thats what they're there for, but they don't come cheap. The breeding tanks floating on either side are also full of baby guppies and pregnant cherry shrimp (another hundred mouths to feed) so instead of buying new plants every few weeks we're going to have a go at growing our own.

For the growing medium in the tank we have decided to use an equal part mixture of aquarium gravel, vermiculite (which we have soaked and squeezed the air from) and aquarium sand. We wanted something nice and loose to allow us to easily push the roots into place.. if that fails we will change change over to expanded clay and root the cuttings in rockwool.

With the exception of some parasite plants (that feed on others sugars/starches) all plants need CO2 to survive. Besides water, plants are mostly made up of carbon compounds. They feed on the CO2 in the air in a process called photosynthesis to produce energy for themselves and oxygen as a waste product. The amount of CO2 found naturally in our water is very low, and to speed up the growing process we made a cheap homemade CO2 injector. 

Using a 2L airtight container (it really does need to be airtight) as our CO2 reactor we drilled a hole through the lid and inserted some air-tube. Use silicone to reseal around the tubing. The tube then goes into our 'bubble counter' submerged in water... This helps us keep track of how much CO2 is being produced and  helps remove any yeast that might get out of the reactor. The next tube stays above the water level in the bubble counter and heads into our tank to be dispersed by an airstone.

To create the CO2 put 2 cups of sugar and about 1/2 tsp of yeast in the reactor then fill to about 3" from the top with luke warm water (too hot and you will kill the yeast).. put your hand over the top and give it a good shake then put on your lid with the air-tube (remember this is producing CO2 and with nowhere to go you will have yourself a pretty big mess, let alone its probably pretty dangerous). The CO2 is created as a byproduct when the yeast eats the sugar and will take a few hours to start producing some decent bubbles!!

If you are going to try this please research a little more.. plants do not photosynthesize without the sun, therefor will not be removing the CO2 from the water during the night, if you are keeping fish in your tank you will need to swap the reactor for an air pump at night.