Ag water can be ditch water out of a ditch, or water out of a pipe that has come from some sort of an open water distribution system without treatment of any kind. It’s PROBABLY okay to use [Read more…]
Chlorinated city water is potable water by definition. It is relatively expensive, but you can safely use it for washing babies and drinking. Even filling up a big commercial aquaponics system [Read more…]
If you install a tank downhill from your sump tanks and plumb it to the overflows from the different sump tanks, it will catch the overflow of system nutrient water that comes from those tanks [Read more…]
These systems are incredibly stable and dynamic; stable means they are rock-solid, and dynamic means they adjust to changes easily and (usually) with minimum damage. This doesn’t mean [Read more…]
Even though they never vary more than a few parts per million, we still test measurable nutrient levels in our systems. At least once a month! The people who taught us [Read more…]
We measure our water for: dissolved oxygen, measured with a digital DO meter that costs about $350 and is really accurate; nutrients (ammonia, nitrites/nitrates) measured with [Read more…]
We have started systems with water having a pH as high as 8.3 with no seeming ill effects, so don’t worry if your source water has [Read more…]
This is why we don’t build the troughs “up off the ground to avoid bending over when working”. [Read more…]
There’s a lot of nonsense about needing “filters and biofilters” in your aquaponics system coming from people who simply don’t understand how and why these systems work. [Read more…]
If you want to build a system that is smaller or larger than ones in this manual, simply multiply the amounts and system numbers up or down proportionately, remembering that [Read more…]
The Aquatic Eco Systems/Pentair Aquatics catalog gives a great example of a “cheap” $259 water pump that only uses $813 more of electricity per year than the “expensive” $479 pump. So, be on the lookout [Read more…]
How to determine if your troughs need additional airstones: You can determine if you need aeration in your troughs by measuring the DO going into the trough, and comparing it to the DO going out, but the system must have mature plants [Read more…]
If you don’t feel like reading this whole post, and just “want the facts”, here they are: If the water exiting your fish tank has a DO of 5 or above, you’re good. If the water exiting your troughs has a DO of 4 or above,
[Read more…]
This is a looong post; we couldn’t figure out any sensible way to divide it into separate posts. It covers High Density aquaponics systems, which are systems that are designed to raise a maximum amount of fish. [Read more…]
