It has bee a long time ago I have dreamed to start my own aquaponics set. Finally, during the last semester break of my teaching course, I have stepped for the first time into this green endeavor.
I made the setup simple. Grow bed from plastic basin and sea shell obtained for free, PVC pipe, Mr. Affnan's Siphon Principle using recycled bottle, aquarium pump (though the flow rate insufficient creating problem in producing siphon effect), and lastly, our old dormant brick fish pond which has been brought back to life.
All of these things were incorporated and this is the result. Take a look and enjoy :)
There are Kangkong, Lemon Grass, Ulam Raja, Tomato, Sawi, Long Bean and Onion
Sawi, just come out
Tomato
Long Bean
Onoin
Water inlet
Water outlet
Fish pond
Overall view of the set
Ikhwan, nice work on the setup and welcome to the world of aquaponics! While I'm struggling and feeling down with my brothers losing interest on our system (my system is setup at his house, I'm yet to move into mine. Thus the fishes are now rarely being fed and I faced a disaster of almost losing all my fishes due to negligence which caused the tank to lose all water due to some leakage), the birth of yours cheers me up. It is a dream worthwhile to be achieved. I wish you the best for your system!
ReplyDeleteI noticed that you use coral bits and shells for the system. Bear in mind that these are alkaline in nature. As you may have read, the nutrient availability pH range is around 5.5-6.5 to make nutrients available for the plants and not precipitated in insoluble form. I know that aquarium keepers use this in the filter to govern the pH but your excess shells calls for me to worry. Keep us posted on the outcome!
Also, if you can do get some more elbows and make the water inlet buried into the gravel, this will avoid algae blooms on the wet rocks at the inlets of the growbeds. You may also tumble around the gravel if the algae has started (no light no algae, another easy way to manage). The gravel level also seem a bit too high, filled it to the brim eh? Might wanna back off an inch or two of the gravel height.
Anyway, I'm honored to have the first comment here! Cheers!
thank you mr. Mahfduz.. i am really honored to get some invaluable advises and comment from one of (for me) aquaponic guru in this country :)
ReplyDeletethose shells were from my brother's aquaponics set that has damaged.. since it has been colonized by some worms, so i decided to use it as part of the grow media (with the hope it will make the river stone to have sufficient bacteria colony quickly), the bottom half of the grow media actually is filled by river stones and i wish to obtain some more river stone which i think is less alkaline to replace the shells soon. and really, i realized shells is not really effective media since it is too small and easily clogged.
as for the elbow, i had no idea about it before, this is really the things that i can only obtained from the experienced aquaponist :)
the shells suck the water higher, so i intentionally made the media a bit higher. however, soon when i replaced those shells with river stone, i will lower it down. thank you very much for the advice mr. Mahfudz :)
Keep it up.. :)
ReplyDeleteThanks sifu Affnan :)
ReplyDeleteI see, just a bit of corals and shells should be fine. Aquarium keepers use them as a pH buffer so you may want to hang some in net sacks in the fish tank when you decide to change them to river rocks.
ReplyDeleteBtw, I'm no where near guru level ba, just a bit experienced.
Thanks for adding my blog to your list!
Thanks. So that is the way to make use of those shell after all. It is pretty good suggestion, i will try it in my future new set.
ReplyDeleteactually, not a bit, a lot for newbie like me :)
thanks too mr. mahfudz :D
wow best wan, ini liputan akuaponik yg ada aura2 ke'pro'an..
ReplyDeleteI never imagined that we get the review from the sifu himself. Thanks for the comments. :) We are really interested in this whole thing and look forward to keep getting better.
ReplyDeleteYa, next time we will do it better. due to time and cost constraint we cannot do it properly, but next time for sure it will be even better :)
ReplyDelete