2015 Articles

The 2015 entries have been minimized and consolidated to the text on this page. If you are interested in the photos during this period, they are available, in reverse chronological order, on our website construction page: PICS HERE

November 18th: Nutes are slowly increasing. I measured 1ppm on the 11th, 2-3ppm today.

I've started using the new potable water epoxy coated rafts. I have transplanted about 400 seedlings into the rafts so far.

Novenber 5th: I am continuing starting seeds in the foamed glass beads and it is working well. I've started losing sunfish each day from the new batch that arrived a short time ago. I gave them a salt bath today. We are currently repainting new rafts and parts of the walk-in cooler with the potable water epoxy paint.

October 18th: Removed most of the sediment (coir/vermiculite) from the bottom of the troughs. Cleaned out most of the remaining plants from the aqua house as they were stunted from lack of nutrients and starting to attract too many bugs.

October 11th: Finished the pipe connector to the 4th fish tank.

After changing from gravel to pumice for a medium to start new seedlings, I've now transitioned to foamed glass beads. They seem to be working very well. Their mass is very close to water, so a portion of them actually float in water. This seems to be the lightest medium I can find that will still support the seedlings while being relatively easy to wash out of the delicate roots to allow them to be transplanted.

We purchased approximately 275 new fish that included 127 Blue Gill, 72 Pumpkinseed, and 77 Large Mouth Bass.

We ordered a potable water epoxy paint from Sherwin-Williams (Macropoxy 646 PW) to use on the rafts and any other water contact surfaces.

September 15th: Still working on the walk-in cooler and still researching possible potable water coatings for the rafts.

August 10th: Spent some time with the tractor and backhoe to clean up the seasonal vehicle crossing area further down the creek. That had not been attended to for a number of years and the bed was covered with copious amounts of sand and dirt with much of the rock bed washed away.

July 16th: I am slowly building up the walk-in cooler door frame and door, using construction adhesive and sealing everything. Also doing some painting on rails of the new person bridge to cross the creek.

July 15th: I had problems with the new foam rafts. I had purchased and used a new latex paint (Miller) as opposed to the original latex paint (Ben Moore) suggested by Friendly Aquaponics that I had used for all of the earlier rafts.

It may have been a coincidence, but all of my catfish died off within a week of using the new rafts. I then also noticed that the new rafts cause the water to get suds when spraying with a jet stream with the hose when cleaning them. The old rafts don't exhibit this behavior. I assume some type of surfactant is leaching out of the paint. I pulled all of the rafts and went back to the original two-inch foam rafts.

The new paint continues to suds after curing for over three weeks in the sun and getting thoroughly washed several times with high volumes of water. So I'm now looking into a couple of two part epoxy paints (I used epoxy on the inside of the fish tanks and it is pretty inert once cured), some with NSF-61 ratings (although they are all rated for much larger water volumes).

In the meantime I flushed the system with new water over several weeks which decimated the existing nutrients. All of the sunfish seem fine, so it will just take some time for the bacteria to replenish the nutrients ... more slow growth. I'm thinking that it might be wise to vacuum up the layer of coir on the bottom of the troughs as well.

On a brighter note, the seedlings germinating in rocks are growing much, much faster than they ever did in the coir and vermiculite mixture ... go figure.

July 5th: So far the GrowGrips seem to be doing well, so I'm transitioning everything to use them. Goodbye net pots and coir!

Still building new one-inch foam rafts to replace the two inch thick rafts used for the net pots.

As far as the rock germination trials, I started with road rock (screened to about 1/8" to 1/4" size) for germination but have transitioned to pumice as it is substantially lighter so it is easier to lift the delicate roots out when transplanting.

June 11th: We started rock germination trials of seedlings. Basically, the process consists of sprinkling seeds over a tray of gravel and keeping them moist as they germinate. Reading about this system, it allows a great number of seeds to germinate in a very small area. With no soil, it also makes it easier to lift the seedling to transplant them.

I also started my second trials with GrowGrips. No conclusions as yet.

New construction is still on hold as the vertical towers did not work well for me. It seems there is a few critical systems at play. The amount of water entering the towers cannot be too great (dumps out the front of the tower) or too small (some plants do not get enough water and wilt). My biggest problem was too much water at the front face of the tower that caused the plants to start rotting near the stem. This could probably be fixed by adjusting the wicking cloth further from t eh front of the tower and adjusting the water flow more accurately. They still hold promise and I will probably try again in the future, but for now, I will likely stay with deep water troughs. The vertical towers are a little too delicate in the setup.

I started building new Dow Blue, one-inch rafts. They seem like a better choice for the net pots and are also needed for the GrowGrips because the GrowGrips don't work as well in the two inch thick rafts. Often the seedling tops are down in a hole or the roots are up in the air.

May 4th: The bottom rails, the bows and the purlins have been assembled on the second fifty-two-foot hoop house. I won't cover the framework until the endof the growing season.

April 25th: Started installing the anchor posts that will hold the bows for the new hoop house. I also set up first four ZipGrow vertical towers to trial in the Aqua house along with assembling an insulated lower vent door.

April 16th: Bent and put together the twenty-eight pipes top rail pipes (14 bows) for the second fifty-two-foot hoop house to be placed in the orchard. The bending tool is holder up adequately, although the extender to bend the ends of the pipe could be a bit more robust.

April 15th: Every crack and crevice in the interior shell of the walk-in cooler has been filled and sealed. In the process of painting the interior with four to six coats of the food grade epoxy paint.

March 22nd: Finished the second layer of plywood flooring. Ran some of the wiring and installed interior and exterior lights.

March 15th: The new LED lights only provide about one mole per day at ten feet. For the plants the light can reach, the current distance varies from about six to ten feet. Three LED lights are now installed and set to come on from 4AM to 10AM and from 6PM to 10PM.

January 15th: Currently designing a new Aqua house that will be totally enclosed (to hopefully eliminate pests) and will be using only artificial LED light.

January 11th: Bought an LED light to try in the Aquahouse from Lumigrow. Installed the Lumigrow LED in the Aquahouse and set it to run about fourteen hours per day.

The plants seemed to perk up rather quickly with the extra light. Placed the PAR meter below the light to try to measure the difference between ambient light and the added PAR LED light. Had a few problems with the sensor falling in the trough so it's still in the measuring stage :-).