Here’s our barrelponics system!
The Vision
Jeff and Rodney at the future build site of our first large-scale aquaponics project.
We sure are enjoying our small aquaponics system. It has been just two months, but everything is growing super well, and has mostly weathered the initial set-up and experimentation with pests, watering, etc. In a week, we’re going to plant up our second round of seedlings, and in less than a month, the tomato plants will start producing.
That’s not enough.
You see, the whole reason that we began this little experiment wasn’t just so that we could have organic food to eat. Rather, we saw that this could be (perhaps) one of the helping factors for our friends that don’t have enough food here in México.
Some of these friends live at the Hope House in Ixtlahuacan de los Membrillos, Jalisco, México. They house, feed, and care for around twenty boys who have been abused, neglected, and abandoned.
While the boys are in the home, they have chores and responsibilities around the home. They work in the workshop and around the home, gaining valuable skills that will serve them far in to the future.
They feed the boys largely off of food donations made by stores like Wal Mart, who will donate food that they can’t sell in the stores. While this help is greatly appreciated and up to this point has been vitally important to the Hope House, the nutritional value and variety of the food leaves much to be desired.
We think that an aquaponics system is a perfect fit for two reasons:
First - it will create a system that provides the kids and workers with a sustainable source for organic food. We anticipate that the system will produce enough food to feed the boys and the workers properly, and the abundance can be sold in the markets in nearby Lake Chapala to provide the home with an extra source of income.
Second - the kids will be able to learn about growing their own food, and how sustainable systems work, which will provide them with tools to exact change in the places where they end up as adults.
Our target dates to begin the project are from October 14th, 2011 to October 30th. We’ll certainly be updating the blog as we progress.
If you would like to be a part of this work, lending a hand financially or physically, please use the contact form or visit our Facebook page and drop a note that you’d like to help!
Growth progress update. Really happy with the results so far.
Woes about Flow
In my first post I promised to share stories about our failures right along with our successes, and I’ve encountered my first failure - water flow.
We initially built the system with black 1/2” flexible tubing, which you can see in the photo on the left. The reasons for this were sound - the tubing was readily available, reasonably priced, and was made to sit in the sun and endure the elements better than standard PVC. After letting the system balance for a few weeks I planted up the grow beds, and a week later, put thirty tilapia fingerlings into the system.
For a few weeks, there was nothing but success! I went on vacation for about a week, and when I returned, the plants (and especially the cherry tomatoes) had quadrupled in size! Unfortunately, it was around this time that I started to notice that my bell siphons* wouldn’t seem to fully dump, which would indicate a lack of water flow.
Sure enough after inspecting the pipes, I discovered the culprit (and learned something new). Take a look at the picture on the right and see for yourself.
The brown nastiness? That’s called Bio film, which builds-up from the breakdown of the solids in the system, and coats the inside of the pipes with pretty incredible (if not fairly annoying) consistency. This happens in a normally running system, and is not usually cause for alarm. Unfortunately for me, I chose a smaller pipe diameter to build my system with, and the addition of biofilm reduced the water flow to an unusable level. So what’s left to do?
I didn’t know this at the time, but people like Australian aquaponics guru Murray Hallem recommend using a pipe diameter no smaller than one inch. Well, isn’t that good to know! Thankfully, the fix is simple, and I only needed to purchase a couple of fittings to make the transition to standard one inch PVC.
The end result isn’t nearly as pretty (see the photo on the left) as the black piping, but the difference in flow is incredible. I’ll be quite interested to see if the flow slows down to a degree with the bigger pipes after a time, and will be sure to post updates as we go along.
Happy Growing,
The OK, Feed Me Team
* For those new to aquaponics - bell siphons are non-mechanical contraptions that use the flow of the water and a naturally occurring vacuum to periodically dump the water from the grow beds, back into the fish tank. In my opinion, the bell siphon is one of the coolest aspects of aquaponics, but they can be quite finicky when setting up a new system. We’ll be writing more about siphons in greater detail over the next few weeks.
It’s been just three weeks. The plants are really growing quite rapidly!
Here’s a quick overview of our first aquaponics system! We will be going over the building of this system right here over the next month.
It all starts with a seed…
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant. - R.L. Stevenson
Well, hello there.
Welcome to OK, Feed Me. We’re a group of guys interested in changing the world through experimentation with all sorts sustainable systems including hydroponics, aquaculture, aquaponics, and more.
Systems like this are really interesting, and have been gaining serious popularity over the last few years. In addition to being interesting, we think that they can be serious tools in fighting poverty and helping the less fortunate.
With that in mind, today we’re planting a seed. We’ll begin this journey by describing the progress that we have made in the last few months, including a step-by-step rebuild of our pilot aquaponics system along with articles about why we think aquaponics is worth looking in to. We’ll be sharing our failures along with our successes, in hopes that someone (or several someones) with the same idea will pick up where we’ve left off and do something better.
Feel free to connect with us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our RSS feed, or contact us through the site. We’d love to hear from you!
Happy Planting,
The OK, Feed Me Team
