keewana coop. non profit aquaponics hookup

Update

Update

The pepper plant is showing new life. Finally after nearly two months, there are signs of life from this thing.

Brainwave Outline

Aquaponics Update

Everything is planted!!

IBC Aquaponics Update

The nitrite levels have completely disappeared. The spike lasted a couple weeks but just dropped to zero in a matter of a day or two. And the nitrates are staying at a good level. Not spiking as I thought they would.

So I have begun feeding the fish much more food than we have during the cycling process. They are hungry fellows. I will let them gorge for a few days until the nitrate levels begin to rise, then slow down a bit.

I have more pictures of the planted radishes and will update asap.

IBC Tote Aquaponics Video Journal. Entry #1

Got the lighting kit a couple days ago and got it put up today.

Picked a pepper and will eat it tomorrow. That pepper was the first from the plant, and it was grown with soil.

Small to medium sized pepper.

Aquaponics Tank

The first plant has been planted. The fish are thriving. We have yet to find a casualty floating after a long day of work away from the tank.

Things seem to be going well and we will have a grow light, donated from our good friend Clancy soon.

The light will cover both spectrums, blue and red, for full growth potential. It comes with a timer which we will set for 18 hours on, 6 hours off to simulate summer, which tricks the plant into believing it is summer time and it needs to forget about dormancy of any kind and grow as fast and strong as it can.

Water levels are nearing the toxicity levels to the fish so it is important we get a few plants to absorb the nitrates and ammonia as soon as possible.


We are working on the control board. We will be using a Raspberry Pi for full control of the system, and an Arduino board to execute commands.

As of now we are only using the Arduino board to control the timer on the pump. 10 minutes on to fill the grow bed, and 10 minutes off to drain.

Here is the aquaponics system.

It was built with a 330 gallon IBC Tote and is run by 1 400gph pump.

It is a fill and drain system. 10 minutes to fill, 10 minutes to drain... actually more like 9 minutes and 10 seconds to fill, 10 minutes and 40 seconds to drain, but the pump runs for 10/10.

A plant has been added today. It is a sickly looking and dying jalapeño pepper plant which has pushed out, in its last ditch effort, to produce a single average size pepper.

We can't wait to see the development of this plant in its new environment.

There still has not been a need to replace ANY water from evaporation or toxicity levels. And that water has been circulating in the system for about a month now.

Here are the fish. Pretty much.... well fish.

                                                     

                                                          Here you can see the pump.