Monday, October 29, 2012
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
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 you can see the pump.
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.
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