The chickens finally arrive! So we ordered 22 Hens, 2 Roosters, for a total of 24 Birds. In addition, they sent us one extra of what we ordered in case one didn’t make it, and they also sent us one free “rare bird”. We aren’t entirely sure what the rare bird is just yet. I’m […]
Breaking Ground on the Chicken Coop
Finally breaking ground on the chicken coops. We’ve had a lot of set backs but overall it’s been working well in the end. These first 4 posts are the 4 corners it took us all weekend, but of course that’s including the time it took to get supplies as well as the fact that it […]
3 Weeks on New Aquaponics
I have to say I’m extremely impressed. I know that growth on an aquaponics system is supposed to be explosive. However expectations have been managed for any system that is less than 4 months old. The whole ecosystem just hasn’t been developed yet. And yet here we are, amazing growth. After just barely over […]
The Fish Arrive
The fish finally arrive. I got the PH set right and after about 2 weeks the water fully cycled. So I ordered my fish from TilapiaSource.com They are out of Missouri and I’m in Oklahoma so it was an easy overnight ship. I acclimated the fish properly, in fact was probably more than cautious. The directions […]
Shade for the fish tank
Well we had several days in a row with 97-99 degree days. This was no good. Luckily we didn’t have any fish yet. However the water was getting up to 94 degrees. This is stretching it for Tilapia. I tried pulling the Bells so that the Grow Beds were in a constant flood. That didn’t […]
Wicking beds from IBC scrap
In an earlier post I made a suggestion about what to do with the IBC tote scrap after cutting them up for aquaponics. The suggestion was to use it for making wicking beds. Below you can find the picture of my wicking bed with the tote scrap. A wicking bed is essentially 24″ or less […]
Plants taking off
A couple pictures to show you how well the plants are taking off in the brand new aquaponics. Granted this is a brand new system it’s not even a week old when I planted the plants. The plants took a good 5-6 days to sprout, and while I was waiting I ended up needing the […]
Setting up drip irrigation
So far we’ve been following Back To Eden Film for our garden. Of course this is the very first year and we didn’t even get a full 6 months to let it set before using the garden. As such it hasn’t been going as well as we planned. However, it’s just the first year, so […]
Putting it all together 4/4
The final step is finally here. It’s taken me a couple weeks of getting all the right supplies and putting it together in the evenings. Not too bad for my first system. So the last step of course is just filling with media, which I’m using river rock. And I also needed to get my […]
Putting it all together 3/4
Well now that I have everything set and leveled, tanks are painted and looking good. Now I’m ready to start plumbing it all up. You can see in one place I used UniSeals. From the fish tank to the sump I’m running hard PVC. And from the sump to the grow beds and back to […]