System Specs

First, I have a confession to make:
I was just looking at my earlier posts and discovered that someone commented on one.  A real live person.  A real live person that was not my mom.  A real live person who might think I'm competent enough to pull this whole thing off.  HOLY CRAP!   (By the way, it just so happens I'm crazy enough to think I can pull it off, too.)
I hadn't even really thought about the real live people.  I mostly was thinking about getting 3 college credits for my independent study, and that if I put my pictures and notes on a server somewhere in space I wouldn't lose them.  Because lord knows, if I kept them in my house, they would disappear (or have cat teeth marks in them) in no time.

Soooo... for those real live people who may wish to know - here are the 'specs' on my current system.

The frame:

All wood.  The outside posts are 2x4's, the cross bars were 1x4's ripped in half, the plywood for the shelves was laying around in my Dad's garage, and the 'cleats' on the ends of the shelves are the leftover ends of the ripped 1x4's.  The whole thing stands 6' tall and is about 50" wide.  Because I didn't have to buy the plywood, the lumber cost me only about $18.

The spacing between shelves is about 18".  I figured about 12" of growing space for the plants would be sufficient for my purpose.  This leaves 4" for the gravel (or whatever growing media I use in each) and about 2" for the lights between each shelf.

The lights:

Plain old shop lights.  These have been sitting in my dad's basement for many, many years.  He used to start garden plants early with them in the spring.  They don't have special grow bulbs in them or anything like that, just regular old fluorescent bulbs.  (and they won't have special bulbs until they have to be replaced)  I saw shop lights the other day at FarmN'Barn*....errrr, I mean Fleet Farm for about $10 each.
The lights are attached to some really strong coated string my dad had.  The shelf above has holes drilled in it so the string can slide up and down to adjust the lights.  There are posts on the outside frame to attach the string to so it holds the lights at the correct level.  Through past experience, we feel the plants do best if the lights are as close to them as possible - I wanted to be sure I could adjust the lights according to the plant height.

The growing chambers:

The chambers themselves are made from sterilite under-bed storage containers.  They just so happened to be 60% off at Shopko on the day I was out looking for some.  THAT was awesome!  I think they regularly go for around $15.

I used a borer bit to drill 1 1/4" holes in each side to fit my plumbing.  That was stressful, but it did work.  (I only screwed up slightly once.)  The PVC piping I used is 1".  This is mostly because I had it laying around from building agility jumps for my dogs.  3/4" PVC would likely work ok, but I think the 1" is actually a good choice.  For the fittings on each side I used one male and one female fitting.  I coated the opening of the sterilite container with some sealant and screwed the two pieces together, one on each side.  This is what the fittings look like:

 

See how the ends of these fittings will accept a section of pipe?  On the outside, I just attached the inflow or outflow pipe.  After assembly, I did have to gob some sealant on the outside of two of the fittings because where the fittings met the hole in the storage box leaked slightly.  It was fairly easily fixed, though.  I'm sure there is a better sealant for this purpose than I used.  If I had it to do again I would have just bought a tube of tub caulk.  I think that would have worked better.  I used 'rain or shine' pvc cement to connect the sections of pipe.  (I figured that would be a smart thing to do) 

Two things:

Did you know the outside diameter of 1" pipe is actually 1 1/4"?  Jerks!  They probably think it's funny to screw with people who don't know any better.  (This cost me two trips to FarmN'Barn.)

If you've never worked with plumbing stuff before, you will notice that the label on plumbers PVC pipe cement says a couple things:  a) work quickly, this cement will set hard and fast, b) use in a well ventilated area.    

THEY ARE NOT KIDDING!

The gravel is 'decorative stone' pea pebbles I bought at Home Depot in bags.  I hate Home Depot.  I only went there because they were close by.  This past weekend I was at Willums landscaping for something else and saw a big pile of pea gravel out in the yard.  I asked the guy, and he said I could buy it for about $1.50 for a 5 gallon pale.  That will be where I get it from now on.  In the past, my dad has gotten gravel we used for our aquariums at the local stone/granite place.  That's probably a better bet for 'prettier' stone, but I don't care what it looks like.  I tried posting on craigslist for aquarium gravel - that was a total waste of my time.  There were actually people that thought I was going to drive to their house and pay $3 for a 'couple baggies' of aquarium gravel.  Lunatics!  As I said above, my gravel bed is 4" deep.  My dad thinks this is deeper than necessary.  I disagree.  And since it's in my house, I'm the decider.  :o)

The rafts:

Go here to learn more about the raft system I am using:

http://aquaponicadventures.blogspot.com/2009/10/day-8-growing-raft.html

 

The fish:

The fish I am using right now are the 8 goldfish from my backyard pond.  Here in the frozen tundra, their pond is nowhere near deep enough for them to be able to survive outside.  Plus, they have an important job to do in the house now.  Eventually, I do want to give Perch a try.  Perch are my target audience.

The food:

Right now I am NOT evaluating my fish food productivity.  The food I am using is left over from when my dad and I had lives (other than work, school, and football coaching), and beautiful fish tanks.  See?

 

The aquadine mix we used is really primarily targeted for guppies (my dad's fish of choice).  This should be a pretty good diet for the goldfish because they, like guppies, are vegetarian fish.  When I start looking into raising perch, the food issue will have to be addressed further.   

The pump:

 

The pump I am using is the pump (and pre-filter) taken directly from my pond.  Two reasons:  1) I have it, and it would be stupid not to use it   2) the filter media in the pre-filter I 'MacGivered' for it is established with good bacteria which helped the fish with their transition into the house.

Here is the actual pump as listed on Amazon.com (not where I got mine because, again, I got a killer sale price on mine at Menards):

 

I have my pump set up with 3/4" fittings and tubing.  It's running just shy of wide-open.  This means the water really flows pretty good through my system.  (this is partly possible because I have fairly large PVC piping)  I used the 3/4" tubing because I don't want the water to come out under very high pressure, I wanted good flow without a pressurized jet of any kind. (particularly because I may eventually use the top chamber for plants)

As you can see, I have a home-made pre-filter around my pump.  This is made from an aquatic plant container.  I placed the pump inside the container, surrounded it with pouches of (GAC) granular activated carbon (which by now is long since 'activated', but is still a good place for good bacteria to live), filter floss, and filter foam.  Then, I took some screen material and cut a hole in it so the riser off the pump could poke through, and attached it with zip ties.  (I'm starting to use binder clips to hold the screen on now because re-doing the zip ties when I clean it is a pain in the butt - it seems to be working)

This is what the aquatic plant baskets look like.  I used a square one like the top right.

The plants:

I chose a terrible time to start this as far as locating seeds to start WITH.  I was able to track down a couple seeds at my local garden store.  I'm pretty much just using what I was able to get my hands on for now.

Notice the words "reliable" and "easy to grow" on each of these packets.  I figure that part sure can't hurt.  :o)

The lettuce is the primary concern for my system, but I had the Cilantro, Basil, and Oregano seeds left over from summer so I figured what the heck.  The lettuce has been doing great so far.  The Basil and Oregano are doing so-so.  The Cilantro is a big fat flop.  I haven't seen a single one sprout yet, at 14 days.

 

So, there you have it.  My aquaponics system.

If there are any 'real live people' (or my mom) out there who wish to know more, please feel free to let me know. ;o)

* FarmN'Barn is one of my favorite places.  It's actually called Fleet Farm.  My brother and his friend (who worked there) always call it FarmN'Barn, and I happened to like it... so, it stuck.  :o)