Aquaponics walkthrough late Winter 2018
Our aquaponics system has been providing leafy greens for us throughout Winter. We’ve purposefully left it uncovered to the elements and with no artificial light to see if it would still produce.
We’re happy to say that it has. Things slowed right down, of course but life still continued and even the Kangkong still has little new leaves popping out now and again even though its a tropical plant.
To help us through, I’ve changed the bed that was supposed to have just water and floating veggies into a media bed. The aquatic plants didn’t grow fast enough and a lot of unwanted algae was growing. Now, I want algae to grow in its own tanks later, but not in the main system.
Four Dutch Buckets have been added. They’re for the Sweet Potato when the warm gets here. If you remember, Sweet Potato just loved its aquaponics bed, loved it so much that we had problems getting it out of the media. Dividing it into smaller lots should let it grow and be harvested in an easier way.
The system has reached the capacity of the pump to circulate water, so we won’t be extending it any more, it’s getting pretty big too. I added a timer to the inverter to cut down the time the pump was running so that the small solar system is better able to provide power.
I had to compromise a little on the design too as there isn’t quite enough grunt in the pump on these cloudy days to get enough of a flow to make the Bell siphons work in all the media beds, so the newest two are pretty much constant flow. I put Water Parsley (Oenanthe javanica) into one and transferred the Kangkong into the other. Both appreciate wet feet.
Anyway, enjoy the quick walkthrough...
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