Blackwell System

Blackwell System

Today I introduce the Blackwell System. The owner Alex Blackwell, is a good buddy of mine. His system is awesome. It can be reproduced all over because it uses universal parts. It is in his basement so he needs supplemental lighting. He is using an eight bulb, T5 fluorescent light. It has two settings to choose between flowering and vegetative stages. The grow beds are two heavy duty plastic totes bought at Walmart. The whole system is nested in a stainless steal utility shelf. The bottom  portion is filled with a 75 gallon aquarium. The whole system has a 2 x 4 footprint, so it is very space efficient. 

Lights on! The plants are loving their aquaponic home.

The system is growing peppers, green and purple basil, mixed greens, and two types of melons! The melons were just planted so they are only sprouts at this point, but the rest is going amazingly! We have harvested the mixed greens three times in the past 16 days! And the next harvest is not far away. 

Peppers started flowering not too long ago.

Delicious mixed greens. It grows about as fast as we can eat it!
Everyone here loves here "fish poop salad!"

The nutrient machines that power this awesome system are just as beautiful as the greens they produce. I never knew tilapia were such colorful fish until I saw these! They have doubled their length and more than tripled their weight (all estimates at the moment) in  the two months or so Alex has had them. They are super lively and have personalities I did not expect.

Cool colors that I did not expect from tilapia.
Leave it to aquaponics to teach me even more!

This system is a perfect example for someone who wants to set up an aquaponics anywhere in their home or business. It has easy to find materials and simple mechanics. The Blackwell System has lots of cool odds and ends that work awesomely. I will highlight these in upcoming posts.

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Nica Impact Aquaponics

Weve started our aquaponics system with a couple barrels, a pump, and some simple plumbing.
It has been cycling for a few weeks as we tested the bell siphons and allowed the gravel growing medium to become clean.

All the materials we were able to purchased in Nicaragua at local stores, except for the pump, which we found.

Our hope is to learn how to build, start, and maintain these simple systems so that we can eventually put them in rural communities to help the rural poor to supplement their diets with vegetables and fish protein.

The two barrels are 55-60 gallon tanks. The lower tank is a water storage tank we were given for free. After patching up the numerous holes it had, we decided to use it for the fish tank. The upper tank is nothing more than a 55 gallon plastic barrel cut lengthwise to create two clam shell halves. They are filled with screened 3/4" minus gravel, anything smaller that about 3/8" has been removed before placing in the grow bed so as not to plug the siphon system.


The base of the system is 12 cinder blocks stacked 4 high with a 2"x2" frame to support the grow beds. Each grow bed has a Bell siphon made of 3/4" and 1" PVC components. The design is from Affnans Aquaponics and works great. The advantage of the Bell siphon over that of some other systems is that there is no need for a third barrel. This is important as we are attempting to build the entire system for under $100 and in Nicaragua, used 55 gallon barrels cost $25-30 each.

After setting up the system and cycling for a few weeks, we recently added fish to the system. A friend from Granada, Nicaragua helped me to acquire a bakers dozen of fish (13), 9 Tilapia and 4 tropical lake bass known as Guapote. We placed them in the lower barrel. Within a day we had lost two fish, one of each species. The purpose for the blend of fish is that Tilapia supposedly reproduce rapidly and are vegetarians. They wont eat their young. The Guapote are meat eaters and will help control the population should the female Tilapias reproduce. One of the Tilapias that we have is pregnant. She will be separated from the main tank soon because we want some of those babies for our next system.

Our fish took a few days to adapt to the tank. I have been measuring pH, Nitrites, and Nitrate every other day. Unfortunately I have not been able to test for ammonia because the kit I bought in the States to bring to Nicaragua was missing some test bottles. The supplier is sending me a new kit and friends will bring it down in two weeks. After 5 days of no Nitrite levels, today they were high, which means the bacteria to convert to Nitrates will begin to grow soon. Still no Nitrate levels present.

Since we have no plants in the grow beds and the system has not balanced, I have been replacing 15-20% of the the water daily with fresh water that sits out for 24 hours so any chlorine can evaporate away. This should help manage the ammonia levels somewhat and keep the fish from shock. Plants will go in soon.

When we picked up the fish, we got them from a fish farm that produces Tilapia for export to Japan. The fish were in large ponds that were probably 6 yards across by 2o yards long. There were 6 of these ponds and they were filled with thousands of Tilapia fish. What caught my attention was that the ponds were basically stagnant. No water movement, green algae, no aeration. It seemed inhospitable for the fish. Yet they were prospering. I had heard that Tilapia were a hardy species. The farm was feeding them a ground feed used for pig farming. There were two smaller ponds that were used for raising Guapote to add to the Tilapia ponds for population control.

The fish to the left was one of the survivors. I took him out of the aquaponics fish tank because he was twice the size of the others and was bullying the other fish. Just say no to bullying :-)
So he is in a separate tank on an extended timeout. Besides, he is about 10" and is just a little shy of small plate size. Mmmm.

I have him in a larger 1/2 barrel tank now and he is doing fine. As I replace the 20% of the aquaponics water, I drain off 20% into the barrel tank of this big fish, and I drain off an equal amount to go towards watering plants in soil.

Ill do my best to keep this part of this blog updated as we get new information and learn new things about aquaponics. Ive learned a ton from different sources, but actually building and operating is certainly raising some questions that I didnt find learn from other websites.

Many thanks to Travis Hughleys Barrelponics and Affnan Aquaponics blog for sharing openly about their aquaponics systems.

Update 24 July 2011:

We added a small NFT pipe to the flood and drain grow beds. We want to see if this can work in conjuction with the F&D.

The tube above the grow beds is our small NFT addition. It is a 4" pipe with 5 holes sized to hold small yogurt cups. The inlet is a piece of garden hose. The outlet a 1/2" pipe draining into one of the flood and drain grow beds. Its a very simple design we hope will function well.









We sized the holes in the tube to accept small yogurt cups. The cups are perforated with a dremel tool. Each cup has about 50 1/8" holes. They sit in the 4" tube. The water level of the tube allows the bottem 1/2" of each pot to be submerged in the water.

We are attempting to grow lettuce, arugala, chives, and parsley in the NFT. This is an experiment.




Heres a better view of the planters before setting in the tubing.

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Marling Canizales

Marling is from outside the tourist town of Granada about an hour away, which has its share of extremely poor barrios on the outskirts of town.  Marling is completing her first year in the program. She is studying Computer Sciences (Systems Analyst) at the local University.  She is 19 years old.

Marling has a very strong personality which will help her succeed in life. University studies have been challenging for her, but she is overcoming. She is a very nice girl and adds a lot to the girls home, Casa Esther.

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The Plant

The Plant

The other day I visited The Plant in Chicago. It was great to see! There was tons of innovative ideas and a very cool guided tour. The reason I went was to see the aquaponics but it turned out to be much more than that. The Plant serves as a small business incubator. I was knew to the term, but it allows new business to come in with lower start up costs. Each business is a cog in The Plants giant wheel. Everything going on in The Plant works in conjunction with each other. Spent brewers grain gets used for mushroom substrate, CO2 from the Kombucha Tea process gets pumped into the aquaponic rooms to enrich the plants air. These are just two of the many symbiotic relationships the different business have with each other.

The Plant has plans to install an anaerobic digester. This technology will provide the building with Bio Gas. The Bio Gas will provide The Plant with all its electricity and be able to sell some back to the power company at night! It works like a mechanical stomach. The right blend of fatty, oily matter and solid, starchy matter (which The Plant is paid to remove) is combined, and constant slow rotation starts a fermentation process that creates Bio Gas. When the "stomachs" contents are done digesting there are two by-products. The liquid byproduct is sold to farmers as an organic nitrogen fertilizer. The solid byproduct is used as a compost. The property is just over two acres so most of the compost will also be sold.  

Although there is still a little ways to go with construction around the HUGE building, the aquaponics system in the basement is flourishing! The main food production bed and fish tanks can produce a 1/4 ton of veggies and 100 lbs of fish a month!

The main grow bed that produces a 1/4 ton of mixed
greens. Seed to harvest in 30-45ish days.

This is their LED grow bed. They are growing Curly Kale.
Only purple / blue LEDs are used to not waste valuable electricity
on light spectrums the plants do not use. Curly Kale is the
most nutrient leafy greens. Very efficient power to nutrition ratio.  

Producing 100 lbs of fish each month cannot be easy, but this system makes it look like people have been doing it for decades. They have the fish in raised IBC containers so the gravity pumps the water into the grow beds. 

One of many IBC containers used by The Plant. These are
easy to recycle for aquaponic needs. 

Settling tank and minimal mechanical filtration.
Behind, you can see the main grow bed. 

Aquaponic plumbing

                 

Myself, Felix Vogele, at The Plant

I was very impressed with The Plants aquaponics systems. The whole process is about putting as little in as possible and getting as much as possible out. If all goes to plan, I can foresee many replica "plants" in the future.

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Alma Bonilla

Alma is another one of our Nursing students. She was able to get into the local nursing school as a technician and is in her first year of school, with two more to go. Her long term plans are to become a licensed Nurse which is a 5 year course of study.  Alma is 18 years old and is from a rural community about 4 hours away by bus in the State of Leon.

She is a very happy young lady who loves her career and shows appreciation constantly. Her classes are all day long and when school is on break, she volunteers at the local health clinic or hospital a the direction of her school.

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Nica Impact featured on i 61 newsletter

Heres a link to i-61s newsletter featuring Nica Impact.

http://i-61.org/building-bridges/

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New Fish!!!

I got some new fish last night! I am very happy with them. One of my fish contacts had to get rid of some of fish to make room for new ones. I was happy to come by and see if there was any that caught my eye. I ended up coming home with five little guys. Im very excited about them.

Blue Dolphin mug shot. When they are older,
they will grow a big hump on their forehead.
This hump is to attract mates and is composed of fatty tissue. 

The first pair is Blue Dolphins (Cyrtocara moorii). I have been interested in them since I began keeping cichlids back in 2004. They are very peaceful fish that grow to big sizes, very cool. One of the distinguishing features of an adult Blue Dolphin is a large hump that grows on its head. The larger the hump, the older the fish. While it is mostly males with large humps, females can have them too.

The next pair and single, Im not sure exactly what type they are yet but I think the single one is a female "Rusty Cichlid" but is def a type mbuna. This family of fish is pretty easy to identify. They look very similar.

Rusty Cichlid

Here are some more pics I took of all my fish

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