Aquaponics

[andrew11235]

I was wondering if there was any interest in Aquaponic systems?

What is an aquaponic system it is aquaculturing ( breeding fish tilapia or others ) and hydroponics ( growing plants with no soil usually a mixture of water and nutrients ) combining the two you get aquaponics.

A normal fish tank has a filter in a aquaponic system the filter is plant line which contains a bio-filter ( usually crushed porous rock and an aerator )  then the water flows through the plants and in to a sump tank where Ph is balanced and any excess particles settle.

There are two different kinds of aquaponic systems continues flow and a "pump and dump" or flood. 

There is allot more that can be expanded on aquaponics and i hope there is interest.

interest that go with aquaponics 

 automation - harvesting, natural Ph balancing, bio fuel etc.

a cool site gardenpool.org

   

[andrew11235]

Sorry for the double post i didn't mean to create 2 threads it crashed on me the first time so i split up the pdf's and then there was 2. 

[andrew sooy]

There is one pdf that the discussion board did not send out because i think it saw it was a 13Mb pdf.

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[Joshua D. Johnson]

Andrew,

        How does this pertain to Hive 76? I'm really interested but would hate to see it turn into a gardening club.

        I've taken Aquaponics and associated workshops at Growing Power in Milwaukee as well as visited Aquavita Farms in Syracuse, NY. Growing Power treats it as more of an art, Aquavita as a strict Science. Neither of them are automated to the degree they could be nor do they have any communication or monitoring functionality other than what is commonly and cheaply available through Hydroponics suppliers.

        Do you have any Aquaponics experience? I'm interested in it and have collected some material to get a small (~1000 fish) project going. I know others in Philly with similar interests.

        

Best,

JOSH

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 3:35 PM, andrew sooy <andre...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Rich Hart]

Hi Josh,

To answer your criticism: I too think that aquaponics is very imprecise but that is exactly the type of problem that can be solved at Hive.  In the other aquaponics post I talk a little about microfluidics and how it might be a low cost way to tackle the problem of monitoring the chemicals in the system. There are other possible solutions but I think that Hive76 could be a perfect place to solve them. 

[Joshua D. Johnson]

Hey, no criticism here. Just trying to see where you are at. I don't think anyone has it figured out yet.

I'd be interested to see a list of related projects to see where I can help/collaborate. My background is in mechanical devices and physical prototyping, nothing compared to the geniuses at the Hive.

Josh

[Sean McBeth]

A core-value shared by all of the members at Hive* is that the space is for whatever the members deem fit. While there is an enthusiasm for electronics shared between many of the members, and it will most likely remain that way for a while, that doesn't mean it is set in stone. It's just the most visible thing that some members happen to be doing**.

Hive is nothing without the members; I cannot stress that enough. I've seen this from a lot of people: an assignment of values to the place, separate from the people who are here. Hive is this room. It does not exist as a thing in the world outside. What some people have called The Hive is just a bunch of people in a room. It's just where we plopped our junk*** for the time being. We're just people who decided to create rather than consume. A person will fit in here better by making the worst thing from a beginner's kit bought at Radio Shack than by buying The Best One Evar. If a person has never even folded a paper airplane in their life, let them come here and we will show them.

It is really important to avoid treating this place as sacred. Sanctifying this dirty, ugly, noisy, somewhat-inconveniently-located room makes people become conservative in their use of it. It sets the membership apart from the rest of the community, making us unapproachable, unobtainable, unjoinable. It prevents people from being brave and taking risks, which is the only way to learn. Keeping this place dynamic and available to people of all skills levels is far more important than keeping this place an electronics club.

* Hence why our membership confirmation process requires a unanimous vote.

** One member uses it to create custom jewelry. Another member experimented with growing organic fibers for making renewable paper. One member recorded a sound track to a video game here. Another prototyped and focus-grouped a board game. I personally used this place for 6 months as an office, writing word processor documents and constructing business reports. Aquaponics or gardening absolutely fits into that. 

*** And most of it is junk. You don't have to wait until you have the best stuff to start making. Just because something isn't the best doesn't make it useless.

[DonTrackbiker]

On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 2:02:45 PM UTC-5, andrew11235 wrote:

I was wondering if there was any interest in Aquaponic systems?

 

What is an aquaponic system it is aquaculturing ( breeding fish tilapia or others ) and hydroponics ( growing plants with no soil usually a mixture of water and nutrients ) combining the two you get aquaponics.

A normal fish tank has a filter in a aquaponic system the filter is plant line which contains a bio-filter ( usually crushed porous rock and an aerator )  then the water flows through the plants and in to a sump tank where Ph is balanced and any excess particles settle.

There are two different kinds of aquaponic systems continues flow and a "pump and dump" or flood. 

 

There is allot more that can be expanded on aquaponics and i hope there is interest that go with aquaponics 

automation - harvesting, natural Ph balancing, bio fuel etc.

a cool site gardenpool.org

 

   My thoughts, especially in an area where I may be able to contribute to

such a project in the Hive:

 

  Lighting, whether LED or fluorescent or whatever, for aquaponics.

 

  Maybe along lines of what I say in:

http://donklipstein.com/photosyn.html

http://donklipstein.com/ledfaq.html#gr

 

  Maybe next Wednesday will be a long night for me?

 

 - Don Klipstein (d...@donklipstein.com)

[andrew sooy]

We will eventually get in to growing plants and lighting.

First thing me and rich discussed is efficient water transfer system from bottom to the top.

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[Rich Hart]

Hey Andrew, 

Missed you at Hive last Weds. I brought a friend with me to Hive who was also interested in Aquaponics and I think we have a kickass system in the works.  Will be there next weds?

Rich

[Joshua D. Johnson]

I'll show if Aquaponics is discussed.

[andrew sooy]

Yes I will be there weds. This weds I flew out to Louisville ky for derbycon it has been great so far I have learned a lot.

On Sep 28, 2012 10:36 AM, "Rich Hart" <richh...@gmail.com> wrote:

[andrew sooy]

Rich i will be there tonight at open house and i have some stuff to experiment with on for efficient upwards flow.

do you know if there are any 3d printable water pumps if not we can make one.

[andrew11235]

I will be at open house tonight and plan to play around with a few ideas for the project with a couple experiments and bouncing ideas off people.

concepts

efficient water transfer up, efficient space utilization, osmosis membranes/semi-osmotic membranes, water Ph/Particle balancing,

If anyone has ideas they would like to throw around that would be much appreciated this is a working project.

On Wednesday, September 19, 2012 3:02:45 PM UTC-4, andrew11235 wrote:

[Joshua D. Johnson]

I should be able to make it around 7., hoping for development of simple, known tech first followed by complicated stuff. 

You are thinking open source and fully documented!?

JOSH

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[andrew sooy]

yes

[andrew sooy]

but it would not be released till fully done with the project to make sure most of the bugs are out.

[Sean McBeth]

It works better to release it earlier: 1) you never know what help you'll get, 2) it motivates you to keep going, knowing that other people are watching what you're doing.

Release early, release often.

[Rich Hart]

Hey andrew.  Let me know if you need anything from Home Depot for tonight and post it in the new thread I created. 

[andrew sooy]

everything is still in the beginning stage we don't even have a design 100% yet so anything can happen it is open already to members of hive.

i am trying to do it in sections and what i am looking at right now is efficient water transfer from bottom to top and other ideas bounced around.

[Joshua D. Johnson]

Marcin over at Open Source Ecology has a Wiki of sorts started here. I'd hate to reinvent the wheel on this one as it seems like a lot of people have a good start on it. 

Having said that I haven't ever seen a non-proprietary control system. Orgs either go with no controls other than a few float switches and a pump or fully controlled with really expensive stuff. This leaves a lot of room for development.

Can we start at the beginning and vet all ideas out?

[Rich Hart]

Love the guys at OSE!

[Sean McBeth]

That would be really cool if you guys got involved with OSE and got Hive's name involved with them.

[PJ Santoro]

I found out about farmhack.net at Maker Faire, as well. Similar to OSE in regards to open source tools, but solely focused on farming.

[andrew sooy]

anything is possible and i am a firm believer of ne reinventing the wheel. what was on the main page is most of what i would be using.

check out http://gardenpool.org/

[Sean McBeth]

Wow, that is *really* cool.

[andrew sooy]

sounds like we will have a great think tank to hash things out and throw ideas around tonight at open house.

me

Rich

Josh

Kyle

and maybe PJ and Sean if they want to.

concepts

efficient water transfer up, efficient space utilization, osmosis membranes/semi-osmotic membranes, water Ph/Particle balancing, energy conversion biofuel/gasification, Automation,

If anyone has ideas they would like to throw around that would be much appreciated this is a working project.

There are pdfs that can be grabbed from this thread in the first few posts and here are some sites.

http://www.youngfarmers.org/practical/farm-hack/

http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Aquaponics#Open-source_systems

http://gardenpool.org/

lets have fun, this will be a great project

[Kyle Yankanich]

Andrew, I typed this e-mail out then hated myself for sounding like a corporate whore.... I'm sorry.

Can you prep a quick 5-minute intro to what the goals of doing this are, and any firm design basis you've already established?


-- Kyle Yankanich

[andrew11235]

Yes i have that somewhat in my head but it would be easier to show on a white board tonight at hive.

some basic goals i would like to get just as a small jist.

 efficient, cheap as we can, automated, fuel conversion/energy, sustainability as in it is its own sustainable eco system, and has more to give for sustaining people.

also

http://news.softpedia.com/news/New-Microfluidic-Device-Can-Remove-Salt-from-Seawater-138023.shtml 

[andrew11235]

Last night we had a very good discussion on aquaponics.

I showed what my design probably will be like and we discussed water transfer from the bottom to top.

We went over limitation of vacuum pressure, pump pressure, and we discussed using air bubbles to move the water up.

The vacuum and pump i will test with as well as using air bubbles which i believe will be the most promising method of moving water up.

[Joshua D. Johnson]

Andrew,
                It was good meeting you and the discussion was interesting.
                I can't see any reason to try and draw water via capillary action rather than directly from the fish tank and letting gravity water the plants. I haven't seen anyone do this either.
                 Look into the Growing power system and vertical towers from Bright Agrotech. My hope is to build something tried and true but contribute tech along the lines of Ph/mineral/O2/flow/level/chems monitoring.

Thanks for getting this going!

Josh

--

[andrew11235]

It looks like you just use a big fish tank air pump/ aerator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4xkUsAlM_0

http://aquaponicsjournal.com/docs/articles/Aquaponic-Equipment-Airlifts.pdf

http://www.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/AirliftPumps.pdf

http://www.ca.uky.edu/wkrec/RectangularAirliftPump_08_24_12.pdf

[andrew sooy]

The capillary action was just to bring it up just an inch to make the water just sit at the edge to make it move easier from a pump.

As of right now i am still sticking with the capillary bowl because it give more surface area for plant mater to grow but i will most likely use an air pump system which i posted about just a sec ago.

At each step up it will have the airlift so it is going up in steps and one pump can do that and more so it seems like a good idea "in my opinion" to maximize space and that is one of the thing i really want to do get the most out of the area you have the more plants the better.

[andrew11235]

also it is being gravity fed but the water needs to get back to the fish and i wanted plants to grow off of the water travelling up to.

[Sean McBeth]

The best part about trying new things is that you always learn something, regardless of whether or not it works as you expect. Definitely go with your idea and see what happens. If it doesn't work, oh well, you learned not to do that again :)

[andrew11235]

Which i am going to do i probably will be testing a few things saturday if rich or kyle wanted to help i will probably be down around like 4-5ish and be there like all night.

[Rich Hart]

perfect. I was considering stopping by this weekend anyway. I try stopping by saturday

[andrew sooy]

K I got tubing and junctions and an air pump to do it

[andrew11235]

I Tested a small setup for moving the water up. It did a proof of concept barley but i need to change a few things with it maybe use more of the 2 liter bottle to give more depth and i will need a way bigger pump i'm looking at a 100 pound pump for like 140 which can aerate  10,000 gallons of water, the one i have right now can do 60 :) which was $20.

Also i am going to create a scad file to print that will hold the 2 liter bottle and a hose so that it can go to the next stage. I want to try to make like 3 drawing so it can all snap together in this stair system to go up. 

[Joshua D. Johnson]

Aquaponics with the Art Controller Relay Board and Adafruit Flow Sensors

http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/10/16/aquaponics-with-the-art-controller-relay-board-and-adafruit-flow-sensors/

BTW Wick transfer will also cause you to lose nutrients in water.

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[Rich Hart]

Nice find J.J.

[Joshua D. Johnson]

Those meters and rough setup might work well for the water based hydraulics circuit as well.