Aquaponics 101 – Bamboo

There is one thing that tomato plants like and that is decent support.  This is probably even more relevant in Aquaponic systems because of the continual flooding and draining of water and the nature of the growbed medium, in my case a 13mm gravel.

Traditionally, young tomato plants are staked until they get to a certain height and then supported with a wooden teepee. I have taken this concept a step further and connected a number of these teepees together.

I normally build my teepees out of bamboo, and if you don’t have any of this versatile grass growing in your garden yet, I strongly recommend that you plant some soon.

Today I built some new teepees and then lashed them together with 3 horizontal bamboo poles, one on the top and one on each side.  This will provide excellent support for both the plant and the fruit once these young plants start bearing.  Here is what the end product looks like.

Here is a shot from underneath a well supported tomato bush.

The hatchery is going from strength to strength and apart from the occasional “walk-in” sale, I am busy with no less than 3 batches of fingerlings for various local farms  Feeding times are getting a slight bit complicated with 3 different types of food for the various batches as well as the adult brood fish and the goldfish.

On the subject of goldfish, I moved some bigger babies back to the goldfish pond to see how they integrate with the adults.  I also topped up their water today which means that they’ll be spawning like crazy by tomorrow morning.

Water is a very scarce resource at present as we haven’t had a decent downpour this year yet, and my rainwater tank is now bone dry.  I have a sneaky suspicion that this is about to change so I planted 30-odd tomato seedlings out in my garden today.

Here hoping

Synaptoman

Aquaponics 101 – Ernest Hemingway

I have just personally given birth to my first real baby. The first four didn’t count because my wives did all of the hard work.

This one I did all on my own.

Aquaponics – The Synaptoman way, hit the Internet today and the first orders came in soon thereafter.  What a rollercoaster ride trying to summarise everything that I’ve learnt about Aquaponics into a manual for the ordinary guy or girl out there to understand.

I decided to explain the basics of Aquaponics and then go on to detail exactly how I built the 3 systems that I completed last year.  In a way I am giving away all of my “secrets”, but in another, it feels really good spreading the word about Aquaponics.

I learned a lot during the production of this manual, the most important lesson being that unless you can offer a convenient means of paying for something by credit card, you’re wasting your time.  I spent 3 days getting my ordering system working and now, at the click of a button, my clients can order and pay for my manual

Thanks to the guys over at Monsterpay for setting up an absolutely brilliant Internet shopfront system.  If you’re even considering selling something on the Internet, give these guys a shout.  Click to join, it’s free and they take a tiny percentage of your sales as a commission.




Apart from my manual, I am very proud to announce that the various publications of Leslie Ter Morshuizen of Aquaculture Innovations will soon be available for online purchase right here on Synaptoman.  Leslie is a highly-respected Aquaculture Consultant here in South Africa and his various manuals should be prescribed reading for anyone even considering entering this industry.

On the hatchery front we delivered 2000 male Tilapia fingerlings to a commercial site today. They’re going into a 45000L pond, will be fed well and the temperature is a toasty 30 deg C. They should grow like crazy. Here’s a picture of the Child Bride releasing them into their new home.

These fish were from Batch 2009/01A that I posted about previously and were sex-reversed to all-male. Unlike previous treated fry, we had almost zero mortalities with this batch. They were strong, ate well and grew quickly and I am sure that they will do well.

We now have orders for another 15 000 Tilapia fingerlings, so I suppose it’s back to playing Frank Sinatra in the brood tunnel again. Come on guys (and girls), you can do it.

For those of you who haven’t ordered the manual yet, get it here.

Be Good

Synaptoman

Aquaponics 101 – Reaching for the sky

I paid a visit today to the first commercial site I built last year. Wow, never in my wildest dreams did I expect plant growth like this. This site will eventually become a tomato, pepper, cucumber tunnel, but at this stage anything goes. All of the above plus melons, basil, mint strawberries, corn, flowers, chilli, you name it, it’s growing.

Let me rather just keep quiet and show you the images.

Melons

Welcome to the Jungle

Tomato Trees, the roof of the greenhouse is 4.2m !!!

Tomato Jungle

Red Tilapia

Pond and plants

At the hatchery it was also fun and games today. We hatched over 2000 fry from our brood pond. These will all be sex-reversed to fast-growing males for the farms. Here is an image of the Tilapia swarm.

Now for a beer.

Synaptoman

RIP, Kurt my old friend.

Aquaponics 101 – Summer Days

After the Christmas break everything is now slowly getting back to normal.  At the Gouna commercial site steady maintenance is bearing fruit (forgive the pun).  So far in this system we have the following planted;

Tomatoes

Strawberries (in towers)

Watercress (in the drain)

Mint

Lettuce

Cape Gooseberry

Green Peppers

Chillis

I am now doing research on rice.  Yes, rice !!  I’m thinking of planting it in the very wet drain that collects the water from the strawberry towers and growbeds and runs into the sump.  Here is a shot of the watercress thriving in the moist environment.

We planted about 50 strawberry plants and after 4 weeks (save for some initial wilting) they are thriving. They produced a good many fruit and are now sending out runners in all directions.

The fish are also doing well. I introduced another 350 male fingerlings to pond #3. Today I borrowed a throw net and after a few practice throws in pond #1 (brood pond) managed to catch quite a few fingerlings in the 30-40mm size range which are looking nice and healthy and I moved them to pond #2 (mixed-sex juveniles).

We shaded the ponds with 80% black shade cloth this week and it certainly has helped. The temperature is now a perfect 28 deg and the algae in the ponds is definitely reduced.

Enough for now

Synaptoman

Aquaponics 101 – The end product.

Every new venture should begin with a marketing plan.  Aquaponics is no different, unless you are doing it merely as a hobby or to feed your family.  As the fish grow daily at our commercial sites, consideration now has to be given to what we are going to do with the tons of fresh Aquaponically-grown ™ Tilapia that will soon be ready for the market.

And so, the killing began.  I decided to cull 4 large males from my system and try numerous processing methods to arrive at a profitable formula.

I find that the most humane method of killing a fish is to shock it on ice.  Here are the 4 test fish “chilling out”.

The fish weighed an average of 500g and we decided to try 4 different processing methods;

Filleted (skin on)

Filleted (skin off)

Tilapia Kebabs

Smoked Tilapia

The fish were processed and very professionally vacuum packed by Chris at Knysna Seafood Safari. Many thanks, Chris.

Please let’s have your comments as to which product you feel has the most potential.

Now I’m off to taste.

Synaptoman

Aquaponics 101 – Neglecting the Plants

A very Happy 2009 from Synaptoman and his Tribe to all of my loyal readers. The Child Bride and I were debating what three wishes we could send to our family and friends and eventually decided on,

Health
Peace
Happiness

,and we also sincerely wish these for you and yours.

As mentioned in previous posts, I have converted my home Aquaponic system into a small Tilapia Hatchery and I have spent the last few months stripping eggs, hatching them, cleaning tanks, pampering brood stock etc. and totally neglecting the plant aspect of the system.

With 3 good batches of fingerlings in December and the system nicely settled down, I have now turned my attention to the poor growbeds.

Here is a list of what I have done since the 1st.

• Removed mint from two growbeds.

• Repaired two leaking growbeds.

• Unclogged all pipe-within-pipe drains and adjusted flow.

• Removed nasturtions and squash (waste of time).

• Cleaned up under all bushes.

• Trimmed back gooseberry bushes.

• Planted tomatoes in seed trays (Roma and Money Maker varieties)

• Planted 3 types of chilli and capsicums in seed trays.

• Planted Swiss Chard and sundry chilli seeds directly into gravel.

• Generally tidied up the area.

I am trying seeds in seed trays this year and I am using a soil mix of 2/3 compost and 1/3 river sand as a potting mix. I then mix 5ml of Seagro in 1L of water and add to the mix.

I have placed the seed trays on the floor of my greenhouse next to pond #1 (brood pond) and am irrigating morning and night with water from the pond.

Making so many changes at the same time (and removing so much plant matter) is risky as my water quality and clarity is perfect at the moment.  A nicely balanced system like this will suffer from excess Nitrates if you remove too much plant matter.  What sometimes happens (and if the ponds aren’t properly shaded) is that algae forms and takes up the excess Nitrates.  I am going to have to keep a close eye on water test results until all the seedlings are up and planted.

Enough for now.

Synaptoman

Aquaponics 101 – Egg Gathering

I am collecting eggs from my female Tilapia every 2 weeks.  I seem to have got the formula just right because my females are producing a steady stream of eggs.  This time (with the help of the Jobug Cuzzie Wuzzie) I rinsed eggs from 13 females and placed them (the female fish) into a container.  If the female wasn’t holding eggs I placed her in another container.  18 females were holding no eggs.  This is a fantastic ratio (42%)  There must have also been 9 females that I didn’t catch as I should have 40 females in this tank.

What I need is a third container to place the captured males because I find myself catching the same males over and over again and at the end of the process the fish seemed rather stressed.

Amongst the eggs there are always some hatched or partially hatched babies.  These I catch and put directly into the hatchery tank.  The eggs go into the trusty incubator.  I am a little concerned this time because I have quite a few thousand eggs and I am worried that the water flow in the incubator won’t be sufficient to turn all the eggs over.  This results in a fungus forming and killing the egg before it hatches.

My last batch of fry I treated with MT (Methyl Testosterone) feed for 2 weeks which converts them all into males.  These males are much faster growing and seem to show no ill effects from the “tweaking” of their sexual orientation.  I have found that the mortalities amongst treated fry is quite high (about 30%) compared to untreated fry (under 10%).  I have decided to split todays batch and treat only half of them to get a direct comparison.

Here are some shots of the eggs collected today (Batch 2008/12/B)

Time for a beer.

Synaptoman

Aquaponics 101 – Somebody stop me

They say that “Nature hates a vacuum.”  The same is true for me and space.  I can’t bear to look at an unused piece of my garden that I just know that an Aquaponic system could fit into.

So I dug a hole.

I sloped it from 500mm in the shallow side to 1.2m in the deep side.  I made it 4m long and 3m wide.  Then I sat back, had a beer, and decided what to do with it.

I visualised a tank of about 10 000L that I could stock with Tilapia in Summer and Koi in Winter.  For growbeds I’ll use some of my trusty 500mm PVC half pipes suspended somehow over the pond.

Then I threw a concrete base built some shuttering and cast 150mm re-inforced concrete walls.

Here are some action shots up to where I find myself now.

This is the beginning of the base.  Note the re-inforcing

This is a shot of the completed base

This is the shuttering we used.  They’re called EF Panels

After the shuttering came off

These are the 4 growbeds I’ll be using

Now I need to think some more.

Cheers

Synaptoman

Aquaponics 101 – Fire and Water

Interesting week so far. On the way to P.E. with the Child Bride on Monday, I got a phone call from the manager at my recently completed commercial site, to say that the battery room had just burnt to the ground in about 20 minutes. The shed, the brand new generator, batteries, inverter, solar panels, even the wind turbine, all burnt. Luckily the wind wasn’t blowing too strongly and the greenhouse tunnels were unaffected.

Fortunately Eskom arrived today to install the permanent electricity supply so at least we’ll have power within a day or two. In the mean time we’ve hired a generator and are cycling the system 1hr on and 2hrs off. I have introduced about 40 juveniles and brood females to the brood tank (tank#1) and 80 mixed-sex fingerlings (batch 2008/11A) into tank #2.

I’ve decided to go with this formula and then stock ponds #3 and #4 with male only fingerlings. With my home hatchery going well I should be able to produce about 500 fingerlings from quality brood stock every week and will supply clients with mixed-sex or faster growing male only.

Here are some shots of the initial plant growth at the commercial site.

I also did a water test while I was there. Here is what the results look like.

From this you can see what little effect a mere 100 odd fish have on over 100 000L of water. The Ammonia is almost zero, there are no Nitrites very little Nitrates. The plants are going to need Nitrates urgently, so the answer is to load fish, and quickly. Another problem is that there is a lot of algae in the system. The problem with this is two-fold.

Firstly, algae uses carbon dioxide and secretes oxygen during the day which is good, but unfortunately at night, this reverses and we could have low dissolved oxygen levels. With the very, very low fish stocking densities at present this is not really a problem, but it’s worth bearing in mind for the future.

Secondly, the algae is going to be using the Nitrates just as they become available, so the plants will be at the back of the queue, and will invariably suffer.

The answer here is to shade the fish ponds and the sump and reduce splashing from the spraybars.

On the home front here is a shot of the monster koi pond hole. Tomorrow we’ll be casting the concrete base.

It measures 4m x 3m and slopes down from a depth of 600mm to 1.2m, just slightly smaller than my swimming pool.

Enough for now.

Synaptoman

Aquaponics 101 – Hatching Tilapia

My first batch of Tilapia babies (they were named batch # 08/10A) have grown like crazy and have become totally conditioned to feeding times. I am using normal Tilapia Starter food from AquaNutro and merely crush the pellets into a powder and then feed them to the fish.

I have had limited success collecting random eggs from the brood tank and hatching them in my home-made incubator so the events of yesterday really put my incubator to the test. In moving some fish around yesterday a female coughed up literally a thousand eggs and very small fry with egg sacs still attached. We quickly went into action and moved batch# 08/10A into a newly prepared mesh pond where they will grow for a few weeks before being moved out to one of the farms.

We then carefully netted off the new batch #08/11A and put them into the fry tank. The eggs I placed into the incubator and was surprised to find them all hatched out overnight. Temperatures in the fry tank and the incubator are both 28 deg.

Here are some action shots.

Here is a photograph of a net full of eggs, newly hatched fry with egg sacs still attached and free swimming babies.

In this image you can clearly see the little Tilapia with their egg sacs. This will provide the little fellows with enough food for a couple of days.

Another image. They photograph well against a white background with a macro lens setting.

And here they are safely in their new home for the next 2 – 3 weeks.

I now have a good system going and will move the fish between various tanks as they grow and then move them out to the farms when they are about 40mm long.

Be Good

Synaptoman