Modified farm design with aquaponic nutrient source
7:49 pm in electronic components, How-Tos, posts with pitcures!, Projects in Process by Nathan Trowbridge
Here is a recent photo. All of the components are together and working well finally.
It’s powered with an 8 outlet air pump (I’m only using 6).
http://www.hydroasis.com/hy/productdetail.aspx?id=1183#
Here is my spin in the basic window farm design, with additional lighting added due to the lack of sunny days in Portland Oregon this time of year.
The water/nutrient source is from an already established planted aquarium that is also my coffee table.
Indoor aquaponic window farm
I’ll be adding 4 more columns, 2 in each of the side windows. The water supply line is extra high above the pots to allow room for additional pots later. The completed system allows for 24-30 pots.
Custom hanging design
I used alligator clips with S hooks to hang the pots. I went with white nylon cord to match the white pots. The cord can be found at general Walmart type stores for really cheap, it’s more expensive at hardware stores.
Close up of pot and drip tube.
I went with an open pot design for aesthetic reasons. I shopped around for something better looking than bottles, but I couldn’t find anything I liked that wasn’t overly expensive. To take care of the splashing issue of water dropping from pot to pot, I added air tubing to guide the water flow. This also allows me to place seedlings in the center of the pot, and place the water outlet to the side, to keep the seedlings from getting beaten up from the impact of the dripping water.
Closeup of how I added a reflector to the fluorescent light.
For an extra kick of light during the fall/winter session I added a T5 florescent light. To keep the light from lighting up my entire place, I added a reflector to direct the light out sideways which also pushes more light towards the plants. Using 2 elbow brackets, and a piece of roof flashing from the hardware store, it was easy to put together. I’m going to spray paint the reflector with white primer to match the rest of the design.
More info coming soon….
i like your setup. what kind of animals do you keep in your aquarium? any plans for plants?
Right now I just have some guppies that were born in the tank, 2 pygmy cory cats, 2 Chinese algae eaters, and a few different species of snails. With the amount of plants in the tank, I actually don’t need to feed the fish. It’s a trick a learned years ago. It’s a self contained ecosystem. All I do it top it off with water and trim the plants every few months. Now that it’s the nutrient source for the window farm, I’m going to move lot of plants and fish to another tank, and add some catfish, maybe something else and setup an auto-feeder for the fish. This way more waste is created and sent up to the farm.
As far as plants in the farm, I have Italian Basil, Sugar Snap Peas, and Leaf Lettuce that have sprouted. I’m going to try egg plant for the amusement of it, and a handful of other kitchen herbs.
That’s a really cool idea! You’ll have to post an update about how your plants do in the long term. Hope it works out!
What method are you using to get the water up? T-valve? Needle? What does it look like? Does it need that “U”-bend? I’m starting a build with an aquarium as reservoir but the part about what’s going on inside the aquarium is confusing me.
It took me a lot of experimenting to finally figure it out. Since my tank is so shallow and the lift tube is so tall, the weight of the water in the lift tube was more than the back pressure from the air and the water intake. I ended up having to split the output of a powerhead (water pump) to each lift tube to provide the needed water pressure to get the system to work.
So take a T splitter with the middle connection pointing to the side. Lift tube attaches to the top of the connector, the water output from the pump connects to the side connector, the air pump connects to the bottom connector. This way the water gets pushed into the tube above the air, the air then pushes the water up the tube. With the air pump and water pump both pushing in, the water is forced to up go. If you have a deeper tank, just remember the weight of the water in the lift tube can not be greater than the back pressure of the water intake tube in the tank. One way to increase the back pressure is to extend the length of the water intake tube.
To be honest, I’ve taken my entire system down. With aquaponics it produced to many solids, tubes got clogged constantly, leaks happened all the time. I replaced my window system with a ebb n flow bed system, and it works way better, and looks better. Simpler, cheaper, easier, more grow beds.
I don’t live in a sunny area, so I had to provide additional artificial lighting, so switching to the bed system was fine for me.
I copied this guy’s system and I love it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G4m-4U2fsY
-Nathan
Just wondering if you would have had better luck with a Hamburg filter in your fish tank so that you were getting water that was clear of solids. Also use green air line tubing instead of clear as the clear stuff eventually clogs up with algae growth. Dunno if you can get black airline tubing. And wouldn’t the plants in your planted tank be competing with the ones you are attempting to grow for nutrients?