Pat's System - Ontario, Canada

[Patrick_L]

Well the greenhouse is done and my tanks have arrived.
I will start putting things together in the next few days.

Here are some pics of the greenhouse.
Pat

[bunya boy]

Pat,
My wife and I are coming to spend the week in that cosy "greenhouse motel room". Do you supply room service as well?

Cheers IanK

[Dufflight]

I was thinking along the same line. Nice place to hide in winter.

[Patrick_L]

Thanks,
It’s my backup plan, if AP doesn’t work out it will become my new dog house.
Beer fridge, TV and couch and I’m all set.
Pat

[Patrick_L]

When the tanks arrived today I noticed one of them was a 1200 litre (bonus, I ordered 2- 1000 litre tanks).

The other one I’m chopping the top and bottom for grow beds. I was originally going to use the bottom for my sump but because of its large surface area the pump would not start unless there was a lot of water in it.
I’ve decided to use a barrel or something similar.

This weekend I will attempt to construct my first bell siphon.
I’ve been looking around the local hardware stores and I’m having problem finding some of the parts. Can I use ABS? Does ABS leech or is it just because of the glue?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Pat

[Patrick_L]

Hey guys,
Well I built my first bell siphon today and using information from this site I got going first try.
I do have a couple questions.
What dictates the size of the outflow pipe?
Is it the size of the grow bed?
If so what would be the right size for a 100 gallon grow bed?

Also was thinking in when it comes to starting to cycle my system could I not just add a few goldfish to my 300 gallon tank to get the nitrogen cycle started? Seems like a few gold fish could not raise the ammonia that high in such a large tank?

Pat

[jpcw]

I cycled my tank by using a few gold fish and by adding water from my inside fish tank plus rinsing my filters from the fish tanks in to the grow beds.

EDIT - Remember to take out the goldfish before adding your real fish unless you want the goldies to end up as food.

[GaryD]

Hi Pat,

Also was thinking in when it comes to starting to cycle my system could I not just add a few goldfish to my 300 gallon tank to get the nitrogen cycle started? Seems like a few gold fish could not raise the ammonia that high in such a large tank?

And that might be a problem. To get your tank cycling decisively, you need to generate some ammonia (ideally I'd suggest 2 - 5ppm) to get the nitrites happening (ideally 2 - 5ppm)......which then leads to nitrate production.

You can achieve this by obtaining a source of ammonia like ammonia sulphate or urea from your garden store....or (better still) some pure ammonia from your local pharmacy.

An even better (and faster) way to cycle your system is to obtain a good quantity of water (25 gallons would be good) from the fish tank of a fellow aquaponicist if you have one living nearby.

Gary

[Patrick_L]

Thanks for the information, I will post some pictures soon of the progress.

With regards to the size of the outflow pipe is there a thread with details ?
I looked but could not find what i was looking for.

I'm having trouble finding some seasol to give to my plants until the system is running, if there an alternative? i would like to try and keep it organic if possible.


Pat

[Patrick_L]

Progress

Well things are moving along, I got the first grow bed going and I added a dozen gold fish to get the cycle started. The plants I have in there are not doing so well. I can not find seasol in my area so I purchased a similar organic product. I hope it helps. The plant leaves are still green but seem to be curling inwards. I checked the water and the only reading I got was a ph of 6. Everything else is zero because I just added the gold fish a few min`s ago.

Here are some updated pics.