New 4 x 8' growbed

[bsfman]

Just added a third growbed (this one 4 X 8') which doubled my GB capacity. Recent rains have dropped my pH and that, coupled with an increasing fish weight load, has caused a few ammonia spikes. The new GB should alleviate that.

I put together a video - mainly for my non-aquaponics friends who wanted to know more about aquaponics and what I was doing with it. It will be pretty basic for everyone here, but I'll post the link anyhow. I added another pump to my system with this expansion. Yes, I know I could do it all with one pump, but I like having redundancy -especially given our Florida thunderstorms and the frequency of power surges which tend to trip the GFCI built in to one of my pumps. That, coupled with the re-plumbing required made me decide to just add another (third) pump with my GB expansion. I have extra pumps and had enough supplies on hand to add them - but a bigger pump and more PVC to re-plumb everything wasn't something I wanted to tackle right now.

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pOTVqoqZQ0&feature=plcp

[davidstcldfl]

OK guys ...for the following to make sense....you have to watch BSFmans video.....

As I formerly stated, it's a "Photo-kinetic solar assisted electro-powered hydraulic bio-chemical reactor and waste converter."....

So, did she get anything good from the store ? .....

[bsfman]

OK guys ...for the following to make sense....you have to watch BSFmans video.....

As I formerly stated, it's a "Photo-kinetic solar assisted electro-powered hydraulic bio-chemical reactor and waste converter."....

So, did she get anything good from the store ? .....

Yeah. She seems to do okay at whatever store she decides warrants her attention

[bsfman]

Here's some pics taken this morning. The two older growbeds were completely cleaned out at the end of August and reseeded. Doing pretty good in just a month.

This one has corn, cukes and a couple tomato plants going:



Second growbed has Abe Lincoln tomatos grown from seed in late August and radishes seeded two weeks ago (the Papaya tree in the background was a volunteer that sprouted from the residue remaining when I mucked out one of my Black Soldier Fly bins):



The newest growbed was seeded last week. Broccoli, crook neck squash, cukes and okra are all sprouting now:



This is another view of the new growbed with the two older and smaller ones in the background:



Radishes planted about 10 days ago (thery make a good companion crop with the tomatos:



My little poly filled pre-filters, a separate mechanical filter, and the growbeds are doing a pretty good job keeping the water clear for the tilapia. I have roughly 100 pounds of fish weight in a 650 gallon wading pool fish tank. Total system water is about 850 gallons.

[urbanfarmer]

Very nice! Those radish look like they want some iron foilar spray!

[bsfman]

Very nice! Those radish look like they want some iron foilar spray!

I added a quart of Maxicrop Plus iron late last week. They've started greening up already. Might have to add a bit more this week.

[davidstcldfl]

The new bed is looking nice....

Nice looking papaya tree BSF. I find papaya seeds sprout 'real easy' in media beds...and boy do they grow fast...

[FreyaFL]

Great video and setup! Thank you for posting this. (I love how you painted the cinderblocks, I'm going to have to do that with mine.)

Also, thank you for having my daughter, my friends and myself out to see your setup. You were a great host! (Though, I suppose you could have done without my daughter passing out from the heat. )

[alex281]

That looks amazing!

[bsfman]

Great video and setup! Thank you for posting this. (I love how you painted the cinderblocks, I'm going to have to do that with mine.)

Also, thank you for having my daughter, my friends and myself out to see your setup. You were a great host! (Though, I suppose you could have done without my daughter passing out from the heat. )

Yeah, I gotta admit it freaked me out when your daughter passed out! Glad you were next to her to catch her before she clunked her head! Thankfully she rallied pretty quick once she had a glass of sweet tea and was inside in the A/C!

About painting the blocks - I used Rustoleum spray paint from Home Depot. And just for planning purposes... each can of spray paint covers about 16 square feet and each block painted on four sides is 2 2/3rds square feet. So it takes one can of spray to paint 6 blocks. You can figure how many cans of paint you need based on the number of blocks you are painting and add one more for touch-up work and you'll be good to go!

And post pics of your work in progress too! I'm jonesing to see what you have underway!