Construction - Week 2

I got a waterproof box for the garden, which will contain the electronic monitoring system and ran some Ethernet UTP cable and a mains cable.

The frame will support the growing bed, which will contain gravel.

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We also started construction of the grow bed

Grow bed construction

Jared standing on the grow bed in order to test it's strength

We're now starting on the grow bed. This will be where the plants will be growing, fed by the nutrients in the fish tank. Our estimates of the weight of the grow bed once full are around the 1 tonne range. Later we took the bed off the stands and back onto the ground where we're going to build up the walls and line it with HDPE ( the stuff we used the the tank) to waterproof it.

Fish Tank 1.0

Our first attempt at a fish tank failed miserably

Construction - Week 1

We found the perfect place for the fish tank, it's an old coal bunker that was filled with dirt.

After digging it out and finding a whole buckets worth of bones (!!!) we lined it with HDPE plastic sheeting and anchored it with a wooden frame.

On our first fill up, we encountered a problem; the hole in the bottom right corner was bulging, and as we tried to fix it, we punctured it and had to empty it (see Hamish's video in an earlier blog post).

Once it was empty, we patched it with duct tape and refilled it.

Here's the fish tank after properly filling, with a wire mesh screen to keep the cats out:

Introduction

Welcome!

This blog is here to document our progress of an aquaponics setup. Aquaponics is similar to Hydroponics, except instead of using chemicals to feed the plants, the natural bacteria in the system break down fish poo into nutrients for the plants.

In addition, I'll be adding an electronic monitoring system that monitors the garden's health, as a side project.

All our efforts will be documented here.

Members:
Hamish Farrant
Sam Fursdon
Jared Sanson