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  1. #11
    Moderator stucco's Avatar
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    Re: AP with fish and earthworm wicking beds

    Howdy, Cyara, and welcome to the diy forum! I think your sketch up looks good and the idea for the slo drain draining directly into the wicking bed is good. Our worms love to eat the fish solids. Assuming your liftgates are manually operated, you could water from the top so the good stuff is filtered away from the water as it makes its way thru the growmedia. I think this will make it more readily available to the worms. FIY-composting worms have an aquatic gene (some types worse than others) so if not kept separate from the water they can easily drown themselves. It is not easy finding a material that they cannot eat or move through or that will not deteriorate over time, but a separation between the standing water and the soil along with a constant supply of food (solids removed from the fish tank) will help keep them where they need be.
    Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.-- Dr. Seuss, The Lorax
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  2. #12
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    May 2010
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    Hartbeespoort, South Africa
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    Re: AP with fish and earthworm wicking beds

    Hi stucco, Thanks for the welcome..... and your comments!

    I am not sure what a lift gate is. Please would you explain? I am just using gate valves - open and shut valves operated manually as desired. They involve no lift because it all follows gravity. These lead the water into underneath the worm/growbeds and all watering will be through wicking upward.... well that is the plan! I have been told it will work and is working for others. They have just not used it as part of an AP system.

    I agree with you about separating the wormbed soil above from the gravel reservoir below is important. I will probably just use a piece of cloth of some sort to effect this. I will be feeding the worms kitchen waste buried into the bed in different places as well as hopefully the nitrates proceesed with the nitrogen cycle and wicked up with the water. I am hoping this double whammy of nutrition will help me avoid having to supplement with any other sort of plant food.

    If there is enough oxygen in the water... such as with a recycling system.... which this is not... then the earthworms can actually stay "underwater" without drowing. I found this hard to believe at first, but it has proven true. Oxygenation seems to be the criteria.

    If I wanted to feed the fish poo from above as you are suggesting then davidstcldfl's neat swirl filter would be excellent to introduce somewhere in the system. I am definitely toying with the idea.

    Thanks for your thoughts.
    Chelle

  3. #13
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    Jul 2010
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    Kailua, Hawaii
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    6

    Re: AP with fish and earthworm wicking beds

    What would your stocking density be? If you want to maximize fish production, my concern would be for aeration of the water. Do you plan to use air pumps?

  4. #14
    Members
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    May 2010
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    Hartbeespoort, South Africa
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    Re: AP with fish and earthworm wicking beds

    Because it is not a recirculation system but merely water use by gravity feed and top-up - exactly as I do with my fish now because there is a very slow leak in the old reservoir that I keep the tilapia in - I will be using non-tech aeration techniques before the top-up water enters the pond.... flowforms and waterfalls. The flow-forms will guide the water from my top-up tank at the top of my food forest.... this increases humidy there too as it meanders through the food forest as well as oxygenating the water for the fish.... and then it will be guided to fall over a wide waterfall to fall in a thin sheet into the pond. This also adds ozone. Tilapia are not in need of oxygen dense water .... like trout for instance. They are doing really well and breeding with nothing more than top-up at the moment .... so draining off fish water for the worm beds will even improve water quality compared to what they have now because there will be more frequent top-up.

    That is the current plan. I want low-tech and low maintenance all the way that I can manage it. The one pump I do have is necessary to draw up well water for the house, and so I will draw off of that tank as needed .... as I do now. I want very clean water for the fish. For the Food Forest I will have another system drawing off river water by way of a coil pump and ram pumps in continuous movement up to another top tank and leaking down into underground reservoirs under the pathways I am currently building.

    I still have a way to go.... but building the whole integration step by step. The wormbeds will come last after the food forest and fish pond. These beds will be more of a speciality kitchen garden that I can enclose. Unfortunately the CDs did not work in chasing away the monkeys. It is very wid around here so maybe they are more hungry and determined. It only took them an afternnon to figure out these things were not going to hurt them. I hung plenty. Pity. But was worth a try so still appreciate the idea being suggested.

    Chelle

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