Aquaponics - Worms

I've been growing a tomato plant for over a year (I think) now, and it's been looking very tired over winter. It was originally in my grow bed with a bell siphon, but at the end of the season I decided I'd pull it up, that was six months ago. In the interim, it's been sitting in a bucket under the input flow to that same growbed, and as far as I knew there was no media for it to grow in, just a stack of roots in a bucket with a drain hole half way up the side.

It looks like this now.

It's seen better days.

It's not quite as dead as it looked, and there are still a few patches of life in various places, but it's definitely time to retire it.

It had quite a bit more green on it only a few days ago, but I cut all the healthy bits off in an attempt to get them to strike roots by sitting them in the fish tank. There's even a few tomatoes.





For some reason it didnt work, even though normally it does. Rather than striking roots, the shoots just all died off.

But when I had a look in the bucket it was living in I found there was actually some media in the bottom. Around a quarter of a 10L bucket of scoria.

But interestingly, I also found these.

Pictured herein what apears to me to be zero gravity are a large handful of some of the most insanely lively worms you ever did see.

All living entirely under water for ever.







I accidentally left them in the water I had them in to take this photo, and within only a few minutes, they had turned from the liveliest bunch of worms to a very sleepy bunch of worms that I'm guessing were not enjoying living in the still water without the dissolved oxygen levels they had enjoyed before.

I think I found them just in time, and have put them into a container with some rotting vegetation to become the first inhabitants of my worm farm. They took nearly five minutes to dig themselves into the ground whereas when I was trying to get them out of the scoria, I sometimes chased a single one for what seemed like five minutes.

It seems worms like to breath.






120 Things in 20 years - Discovering the obvious about Aquaponics and worms.

Aquaponics - NFT test system rebuild

I mentioned I did a rebuild of my NFT test before leaving my system unattended, and as far as my attention goes, in the fore for four days.

Yeah I just wanted to say "fore for four" in a sentence.

It wasn't as fulfilling as you might think.

But this is what I did....

This is what I used to have.

Or at least this is the exit tube I used to have.

The inlet tube was even smaller, at 4mm.

It was getting itself blocked on most days.

This is what I have now.

Now I add the entire flow of my pump through the NFT test. I guess it's not really NFT now because its no longer a film of water, but rather a tube half full of water.

I went with 12mm poly because I have a lot of it, and a lot of fittings lying around.

12mm polly is around the same diameter that exits my pump, so anything that can make it through my sad little pump should flow through the rest of the system without blockage.

I drilled a bigger hole

And found some bits that should do the job.

At the time, I was also getting ready to go away for a few days, so didn't really have time to be fussy.

It would have been better to use straight fittings, and curve my pipes rather than have these right angle fittings as they slow the flow a bit, and I'm struggling with getting enough flow as it is.

It turns out, you can often force a thread even when your project is all plastic.

There has been a few times where I found it expedient to employ what I like to call "Force tapping" a thread.

It involves screwing something into a place where there is not yet a thread for said something. Oddly enough, if you unscrew it, you will often see a shiny new thread.

It even works when both parts are plastic.

It also ruins the thread of the thing you are trying to screw in, so be careful how you employ this method.

My next hot tip is to stretch an O-ring from a snap connector garden hose thinggy with some pliers, and gently force it over the thread you want to make a seal with.

Plumbing tape probably would have been better.

Actually, what would have been better, is whatever you would get is you went to the hardware and asked someone for a part that would do exactly what I'm doing. I'm guessing there is one.

But this looks pretty good, and as I strive for second best practice, I consider this as having exceeded my expectations.

I swamped the side the test system was on because I wanted a shorter trip from the pump, and a shorter return trip back to the fish tank.

I also mounted the entire thing onto some milk bottles full of water. This is an attempt to shed some of the heat that the PVC tube picks up on a hot day, and store that heat into the milk bottle heat sinks.

It should work a bit, but I'm not sure I'll need it any more because of the high rate of flow I'll be putting through the tube.

The new depth looks like this.

This is a bit deceiving because the water flows differently when the plants are in place, and it makes the other end dip a little.

The depth is now more like 25mm, where it was 5mm before.

It's very easy to check by lifting a pot out and seeing the water mark.

The new outflow into the grow bed now looks like this.

Due to the length of the tube, it now enters the grow bed from the far corner. This means it no longer dumps into the core tester.

There were no worms in the core sample I took last, and I'm wondering if having the water dump somewhere else might change that.

Today when I pulled up a lettuce, there was a worm within the root system, so they are in there.


[edit from the future - This turned out to leak a bit ]

Solar hot water - Aquaponics - NFT worm

[Edit from the future - there is some additional material on NFT ]

That previous post was meant to go out 2 days ago, but I saved it as a draft instead of publishing it.

That sums up my life at the moment.

I'm in draft mode. I found one of my fish dead, on the concrete yeaterday. I'll post about it when I know a bit more about it.

But I did take the time to check the water level in my NFT test, and discovered that not only was the water very hot, but there was a worm in it.

My worm looks like he's all broken and sore, but when I gently teased him out, it tuns out he was faking.

Perhaps he's in labour.

I've always thought that those large, white, thicker sections on a worm indicated the presence of an egg. (seen here on the left in pink)

One of the dangers in always thinking something, is that it might not be true. With anything you have known all your life, there is a fair chance your older brother was the source of the information at the worm wise age of five and a half.

I'll look into it, and if it turns out it's important, I'll let you know.

But the reason this post is in solar hot water, is than on a 17c day, I'm finding my water in the NFT tube, within the grow house, is 36c. I'm pretty sure worms don't like 36c so I moved him back into the main system. There is also the danger that something like a worm could block the plumbing and cause an overflow.

I'm guessing that's a little hot for strawberry plants as well, although they seem content enough.

That's not bad from a heat collecting position though, even if it isn't so good for a strawberry or worms position.

The strange thing is, I'm collecting all this heat from a white PVC tube, that I thought would be one of the cooler sections of my grow house. It's making me rethink the way I might go about collecting some heat to make a solar hot water heater.

The other strange thing is that the air temperature in the hothouse is 29c.

I think I might have a hot house within a hothouse situation going here.

If so it might be very easy to concentrate some pretty hight temperatures, making storage of the heat a lot more compact.

Aquaponics - Worms

Worms.

I bought some worms and fed them to my fish.

They went nuts for them.

My worms came in a tub that said there were 70 of them inside. It also said they were from a company called Orana Inc.  The package didnt mention what kind of worms they were so I looked up their website.

Worms have web sites these days.

It turns out these people help other people who need help, and help them help me get worms. That's a lot of help, so all things being equal, and you live in Adelaide, (which you don't) buy worms from these people.

It also turns out my worms are known as red wrigglers. I bought them from a fishing tackle store as bait worms, but it looks like they may be the same worms you might add to a composting worm farm.

Someone named chillidude suggested that silver perch might not lose interest in food over winter, but instead, might just have different food requirements. I thought I'd give it a go, so bought some worms.

I did a bit of study on worms and found they can happily live in an aquaponics system. It seems, as long as there is plenty of oxygen, they can deal with being under water for ages.

A lot of people add worms to their systems, but quite a lot find that worms have moved in of their own accord, so it must be a nice place for them to live.

I added some worms to my system.

They help break down solids like roots, that are left behind when you harvest or remove a plant. They also help break down fish solids and make sure all the solids are spread throughout the grow bed rather than all gugging around the point or points where the water enters.

I added my worms in the corner opposite my core sampler, in the hope that I will find some in a core sample one day, and gain some idea of how long it took for them to get there.

It took less than 24 hours.

This isn't a picture of it taking less than 24 hours. Its a picture of the other corner.

The corner where I added the worms.

I like my core sampler.

This isn't a picture of the core sampler, but is in fact the opposite corner where I added the worms.

Its taken a few minutes after I added the worms.

I like my new worm friends.

These are some of my new worm friends.











I don't see them often, but I know they care.

.

Aquaponics - Core sampler

Last night I had an idea.

I thought it might be nice to be able to see inside my aquaponics system.

I thought I should build some way to take a core sample.

I started with what used to be a aquaponics media screen, and then became a cheese press. Its now a media screen again.

I then created something similar from a thinner length of PVC, and stuck a lid full of holes on the bottom, to form a cup.

This will hold my removable, and replaceable core sample.

The plan is to push the media screen into the media, empty the media from inside the screen, and then sit the core sample cup inside.

It takes a bit of work, but I found it helped to screw the media screen in a bit. It turns out, there is a lot of friction between scoria, and a PVC media screen.

As I drilled the screen down, I removed more and more of the media from inside.

Due to the curved bottom of the blue barrel, it ended up on a bit of an angle, but I think it should work just fine.

I decided to put this contraption under my water inlet so I could have a look at the state of any solids build up.

The system is a year old now so is starting to show signs of maturity. When you dig into it, there is a faint scent of rich healthy soil. Like fresh mushrooms have.



Delicious!

I should be able to take the core out, dump it into a bowl, and see what state the system is in.

I'm not even sure if I'll learn anything by doing this, but it was another opportunity to drill holes in PVC so I couldn't see any harm in making one.








I plan on introducing some worms to my system, so hopefully this will enable me to see where my worms are at as well.

Now all that's left to do is sit back and soak up all the excitement that only a replaceable core sampler can provide.

[edit from the future - opening my first mature core sample]