Microponics for this Mama! Its a start!

9-27-2018

Microponics for this Mama! Its a start!

I have been on this huge kick lately of growing our own food. I'm not all into the whole meat thing, I cannot even eat my own chicken eggs, but vegetables, Hell yeah!!  I love that I don't have to go to the store and buy them, only to forget about them and they go rotten on the counter and have a million fruit flies on them!! So with the fall and winter upon us, I have been looking at ways to garden in the winter, and here you are AQUAPONICS!!

Why Aquaponics and not Hydroponics? My little racer wants to grow catfish to release into our pond and has started his own little "habitat" out back with perch, crayfish and catfish. This hits 2 birds with 1 stone. Im nervous about Hydroponic's, all the special nutrients and water testing, Im not that confident to be so serious about one thing. I guess if it was for a job or a way to make money it would be a different story, but everything I do is just for fun.  Yes, I have MANY hobbies, habits, ADD crazy mom here! 

Okay, so you know me, research everything. I found this great little microponic system you can start with so we gave it a try.  Everything online said I can make it for under $10 so that is my expectation.  You get a 5 gallon water cooler bottle, cut it into a top and bottom. I spray painted the bottom and top on the outside because algae likes to grow on clear material. If you have it dark or black, it tends to not grow at the same rate if at all.  I then put it together by hand and measured what a good distance would be between the top piece to grow plants and the bottom to grow aqua life.  I made sure there was enough room to put my hand in the fish tank part for easy access. Babylove measured the distance and cut me some small pieces of wood for the structure.

At first I held the wood up to the sides of the fish tank bottom part and marked with a Sharpie where I need to drill holes for the zip ties.  I drilled all the holes and held the wood up to each area and zip tied them to the plastic tank.  I completed the 3 stabilizer bars on the fish tank part. 

I then held the top in the position and marked my holes again, drilled and attached the top level of stabilizer to the plastic planter with  more zip ties and WHILLAH!! 

Next I took the top of the spray paint can and hot glued it to the inside of the plastic planter top part, right over the opening hole at the bottom. This will act as a barrier to prevent the water flow straight to the fish tank part to quickly. It will help retain the water in the upper planting area as needed. 

Next we washed out our pea gravel that we got from some of our wonderful friends that sell dirt and gravel.  I used a strainer (my Ikea one worked great!) and the outside hose to rinse until all the water ran clear. It was pretty red rusty colored water, so keep mixing it up with your hand as you use the high power jet spray on your hose. 

Now that the gravel was clean we added it to the top plastic planter area of our new microponics system.  We spread it out and made it nice and level to about 1/2 inch below the top of the plastic planter.

I didnt have any new plantings to place in this planter so I went to the garden and noticed all my tomato plants have tons of long roots growing where it was on the ground. I cut one piece off and brought it over to our new system.  

I didnt think about an actual "pump", I thought our fishtank filters would actually suck water up about 12 inches, no big deal. That was a big NOPE! I tried everything, seperated it from the filter, hotglued a long plastic tube to it, prime, prime prime, NOTHING!

So, the tomato plant actually was stuck in the bottom to get water and we had to get a small pump.  What I learned about pumps is there are many different ratings.  There is a max flow which is how many gallons per hour it will process. There is also a max head lift, which is how far up from the pump level it will allow water to flow. I also learned they can be very over priced at big box stores.  I was able to find a 158 gallon per hour, 3.5 feet max head lift filter on sale at Harbor Freight for only $5.99!! I would not ever buy anything else from there but this simple pump was worth a try!

So far all I have spent is $5.99.  The water cooler tank was free, the wood was laying around at home, of course we all have zip ties and black spray paint! The gravel was generously gifted from our sweet friends and the rest was gumption.

Currently we have about 6 crayfish in the fish tank part. They were destine to be skimmer salad in our pool before they were rescued by my little racer. We also have another tank growing out baby crayfish. The kids found one last week before the O'Connor fight in the front yard, with its tail full of babies! 

(will post updated photo soon)