The end of the road

Sadly the project died a few months ago. The aquaponics system has lay dormant for the last few months, slightly stagnating, growing some light pond scum, but otherwise doing nothing. Today I drained it in preparation for disassembly of the system. Overall the biggest issue we faced, and what I believe is the biggest barrier to wide-spread adoption of micro-hydroponics (and aquaponics especially) is the fragility of the system. Over the course of this project we've had several instances of critical leaks, and multiple pump failures. The damage these failures had to the growing plants was severe root rot, causing severely stunted growth and plant death. The regular injections of plant nutrients require constant babysitting of the system.

Overall, Micro-aquaponics in our experience is nowhere near economically competitive with large scale commercial growers. Planting stuff in the ground is harder to screw up.

Hamish

Water loss mystery: solved?

Yesterday, the fish tank ran itself extremely dry. So dry that 75% of the pump itself was exposed to the air (very bad for it). We didn't realise this until night was falling, so I put the air pump in the grow bed to oxygenate the water, and left it.

This morning, with the light of day, I searched for leaks, holes: nothing. I could see no water running out. The water in the tank appeared glassily still, it was very mysterious! Where did the water go?

A crazy theory, when tested, turned out to be correct:

- Yesterday morning I had refilled the tank a small amount with the garden hose, to replace small losses through evaporation
- The garden hose was beneath the surface, almost touching the bottom of the tank
- When I had filled it to the top, I left the garden hose in the tank, turned it off, detached the other end from the tap, and left the tap-end lying on the ground.
- The end of the hose submerged in the fish tank was slightly higher than the other end on the ground, and the hose itself was full of water having just been used, so all the water in the hose began to flow out the tap-end onto the grass; this flow created suction, which pulled water out of the tank, through the submerged end, and out the tap end.

Thus the empty tank! It explains how the water level got so low - I don't think the pump could pump it down that far.

Fun fact: when I first thought of this theory I dismissed it as the lazy part of my mind coming up with a round-a-bout excuse to not have to search for leaks.

Water loss

Today the pump has come close to running dry, not once but TWICE. I would estimate that this means that we have lost 100 litres in around 2 hours (the time between said events). However I could not find any holes in our makeshift liner, surely it couldn't be evaporation could it?

Wiki problems have been fixed

Apologies folks, Wiki should be back up again.

Theme changes, and commenting system changes

As you may have noticed, I've changed the theme, the old one was rather slow to load. Comments are of course, as always welcome. I have changed the commenting settings, to be more liberal, hopefully it should work (and not attract spammers)

Apologies for lack of updates, here's what you missed.

So we had a fairly eventful 2 weeks. Jared's left for Australia, so it is just me and Sam here at the moment. The original pump failed and couldn't be fixed. As it turns out, this is to be expected from running a bilge pump continuously. So me and Sam forked out  $140 for a submersible pump designed for continuous use. The peas have started to flower, and the plants in the grow bed have really taken off! A botched attempt to fix the sump tank necessitated a complete drainage and removal of it. It was rather tricky to find a suitable container large enough to hold the water needed to fit the water drained out of the grow bed as it cycles. Thankfully recycling had been through and as such the recycling bin was empty. Our use of the recycling bin is almost definitely against Christchurch City Council bylaws ;).

Sam attempting to fix the original pump

The state of the peas

The state of the lettuce

The state of the tomatoes

Attempting repairs on liner

The recycle bin being used temporarily as a sump tank while we fixed the liner

New domains, a new wiki, and a jammed pump

This morning when I checked the grow bed, I found the pump was not pumping! I disassembled the pump, and removed the blockage.

The blockage

By this time alas, the plants were looking pretty displeased by the situation.

Displeased plants

However, after restoring water supply, and flooding the bed by inhibiting the flushing mechanism, The plants appeared to come right.

Today I also set up the new aquaponics wiki (wiki.aquaponatronics.org) in order to document our efforts in more detail. At the same time I set up a slightly shorter domain for accessing this blog : blog.aquaponatronics.org .

PS:
If any of our lovely readers would like to edit or contribute to the wiki, send me an email at:
<my name>@ehmish.net