Aquaponics - Blocked NFT test tube

My test tube is getting blocked.

Its only a week ago that I rebuilt my NFT test with larger plumbing to prevent blockage of the water supply.

But now it seems rather than clogging the pipe, the solids are getting through my NFT tube and getting caught up in the plants root systems.

There was a bit of a change in the sound the system made as the water entered the grow bed. It went from a babbling brook, to a brook with a throat infection.

It turned out that the culprit was a build up of solids.

This pic is looking down the NFT pipe with all the plants removed.

The water was still running, but was flowing in surges rather than constantly so I get the feeling it would have blocked soon.

Quite a bit of solid fish waste for a week and only ten fish.

And no doubt much of it got through to the grow bed, so this is only a sample.









Looking back through my posts, it seems that this aquaponics business is a lot of problem solving.

It really isn't.

I'm quite happy to make mistakes and show the world, but if you keep your system simple, there is really no need to tinker with it. Before moving to this house, I ran the blue barrel system without doing much at all.

Until the goat ate everything.

But now I want to try different methods and collect solar heat, and all kinds of other things. So it's bound to look more complicated than it is.

Aquaponics has become a bit of a platform for a few other things. For instance, I'm attempting to collect solar hot water. I'd like to get back into the wind energy thing, and connect up a wind turbine or two to the system and take it off grid. And I'd like to learn some electronics to apply to the grow house, and to everything else I do in the future. Electronics seems like some powerful stuff, and I'm pretty sure it will be interesting to learn a bit about.

Currently I know enough to make a torch.  

I figure I need to know enough to make a remote control lawnmower. I'm not really sure if that's the amount I need to know, because I don't know enough about electronics. But that seems about right.