Wednesday 26 November 2014

DIY workshop at Green Bazaar

This weekend was exciting as Green Bazaar had organised an event on "Design Matters". One of the many workshops was on Aquaponics. Here i got a chance of talking to a lot of Aquaponics enthusiasts who wanted to know more.
After a short presentation, I did a DIY session where i showed how one can make a Miniponics - Aquaponics for just under 10$.

Here are a few pics of the workshop. and also a video on DIY - Miniponics


































A quick video grab of the workshop.



DIY - Video - How to make Aquaponics system for under 10$






Sunday 23 November 2014

DIY - Aquaponics for under 10$

Aquaponics systems can be setup in various sizes, if you have the space and money you can set up a large 1000liter system in a green house or you can have a small 100 liter system in your balcony.

Most kitchens have a window which gives a little sunlight, this Miniponics is an ideal system that one can use in such small spaces.
So here is how you can make one for just under 10$ and in about an hours time.

This is Miniponics - Aquaponics system made from a 25liter water can.





Tuesday 18 November 2014

500 liters Aquaponis setup - Early days

After removing the NFT system i deceided to set up my next big, or rather my first big Aquaponics setup. A 500 liters fish tank with a 300 liters grow bed. The grow bed was filled with 20 mm gravel.



Pictures of my first Aquaponics growbed

Here are a few pics of how the 70 liter Aquaponic system looked a few months after it was setup.
I had to also build a cage around it to keep it from being destroyed by monkeys. Yes we have some monkey trouble here once in a while.





Early experiments - 70 liter Aquaponics using aquarium

When the NFT system started to grow, i began looking up online about aquaponics and came across a lot of content and realised this is a wonderful food production system.

So i decided to try a small growbed system. I had few small tubs and an old decommissioned aquarium lying around and so i decided to make use of it. So first i built a wooden table, just to hold the growbeds/tubs above the aquarium.












After a visit to the hardware store, I created the siphon mechanism using pvc pipes and connected the water flow mechanism whole system. I did not use any taps to regulate the water flow as this was an early experiment. Just wanted to see how basic can this setup be.






























My NFT system was giving a bit of a problem and so i decided to transplant all the plants form there to this grow bed system. Since i wanted to remove the NFT system and plan a bigger Aquaponics unit in its place. The transplanted tomatoes started to grow really well. This system has a 70 liters aquarium below the tubs and it has 10 goldfish and a few guppies.

































Days, weeks and months later ... lust look at the way the plants have grown and in 4 months time of just feeding the fish twice daily and topping up water as and when the level dropped a little due to evaporation. After this system completed six months i learned a lot about the simple science behind aquaponics, and once you follow those life becomes easy.

I learnt a lot like the right size of growbed, the right growing media and size the water flow rate how it drains out etc. Then i decided to go bigger .. My next project a 500 liter aquaponics setup.


Monday 17 November 2014

How I got introduced to Aquaponics

Every weekend i used to build something like a DIY, sometimes furniture or sometimes toys. And then on day Chaitanya mailed me a video of a small DIY aquaponics system that was interesting. The following weekend I jumped into action... and set up my first aquaponics unit which was a NFT system.

I already had a 500 liter water tank that was used as a raised pond of sorts, with gold fish, koi, sword tail and a few guppies.

The fish tank or raised pond with fish and water lilly



The plan was to create a NFT frame work next to the tank and pump the water from the FT to the pvc pipes. For the drain to to flow back into the FT i raised the pipes above the FT.

A full saturday of shopping at the hardware store, cutting drilling and assembly.

Here i primarily used 4 inch pvc pipe and drilled 2 inch holes. I used some tank valve and some 0.75 inch pipes to create the drain.

I then used some plastic cups i had, drilled a few holes in the bottom and just placed it in the holes.
I had some aqua clay left over from my aquarium that was decommissioned a few weeks before this build, so i used the aqua clay to fill the cups. I then hooked up the water connection and planted the seeds directly into the cups. And 10 days later .... it starts to sprout.





Aquaponics in Bangalore

Hello Everybody,
This is my first post in the blog. Aquaponics is a beautiful food production system that works for me. Its ideal for people who are in a busy schedule of their day to day job.
From my experience this system is easy to maintain. All you have to do is feed the fish twice or thrice a day depending on the kind of fish you keep, check if the pump is working and that's it.

This system has been working beautifully for me for the last year and a half.
I am using this blog to share my learnings and hope to get lot more people interested in growing your own fresh organic food at home.

My first grow large bed

cauliflower