Trouble Shooting pH, Blackwell Aquaponic System

pH

pH is a measure of the activity of the (solvated) hydrogen ion*. To the average aquapon that is very confusing. pH is the way we measure how acidic or alkaline a liquid is. Pure water will have a pH of 7. The pH scale goes from 1-14, 1 being very very acidic and 14 being very very alkaline. Substances with these extreme pH's are extremely dangerous and some can eat through human flesh! Another "cool" property of the pH is its logarithmic. The numbers actually increase and decrees exponentially. 8 is 10x more alkaline that 7, and 9 is 100x more alkaline! The same is true for the acidic side of the scale. So you can see that pH can change FAST and can run wild if left uncorrected.

To figure out what the pH of your aquaponics system should be, you need to take into consideration the organisms living in your system. Plants generally like a pH of 5.0-7.0; Fish like 6.5-8.0; The bacteria and worms (if you do not have worms, I recommend them) like the pH to be 6.0-8.0. This leaves us with some comprising, 6.8-7.0 is supposedly the industry standard. But remember, these are optimal conditions. A system can fluctuate around these numbers and still have a perfectly functioning system. My system at home has a slightly higher pH of 7.5-7.8. My African Cichlids like the water to be a bit harder and to have a tad higher pH. Since I used my existing aquarium for my aquaponics, I did not try and change my pH. 

One reason pH has to be watched in aquaponics is a phenomena called nutrient lockout. When a plant is out of its optimal pH range, it will have trouble up-taking nutrients. This is problematic as you can imagine. If plants are not eating, they will be negatively affected (duh!). Murray Halllam, one of the great aquaponic grandfathers, comments on nutrient lockout and provides a chart in this forum.

My buddy Alex Blackwell has ben having trouble the pH in his system. The Blackwell System has a pH of 8.5! That's quite high! So we are trying to figure it out together. We set up a test to determine what is causing his pH to raise so much. The suspected culprit is the grow stones used in the Blackwell System. 

We wanted to be diligent with our test. Three bowls were gathered. In the first bowl was the top off water. It has a ph of 7.4 or so after siting over night to "gas off." The second bowl we placed clean grow media and the top off water. Just after adding them, the pH was the same as the top off water, 7.4. The third bowl we placed grow stones from the system that had a bit of algae growing on them, we figured the algae might also play a roll in raising the pH. After adding the water, the ph was also 7.4. 

An hour after the initial start, we tested them again and the pH changed very little, not enough to even write about! So we decided to wait till morning to test again.

Here we saw some BIG results.  When we tested the next day the pHs have changed quite dramatically. The top off water had stayed the same (as we expected). The second bowl with the new grow stones has shot up to 8.4! The third bowl with the algae grow stones raised up to 8.6! So we are very sure that the stones play a roll in raising the pH.

The final pH testing. 

The next step, is how to address this problem. The grow stones used are made of 100% recycled glass. When purchased no thought was given to how it would effect the pH. After all, the equipment one uses to measure pH is made of glass! 

Serious thinking has been put into this problem. These are the options that we came up with.

     A. Switch out the grow stones

     B. Add pH balancer 

     C. Flush out the grow stones

     D. Do nothing and let the system "work itself out"

     

Replacing the grow stones and buying new media is very expensive and with so many established plants and bacteria, replacing it would set the system back. This will be the last resort.

Alex tried option B, and went through a whole bottle of "pH Down," a popular hydroponic pH corrector. This however had little effect. This means that there is something continually raising the pH. Another option will have to be used. 

Our local aquaponic / hydroponic shop, Route 66 Aquaponics, store owner Shaun helped us brainstorm. He suggested flushing the grow beds into a separate container to "rinse" the grow bed and add fresh, pH corrected water to replace taken out. We did a 35%- 45% water change and refilled it with pH neutral water. This helped the system a lot and cleared up the water but the pH is still high.

Our conclusion is to let the system try and "work itself out." The system is still quite young at only a few months old. Once it is fully established, which can take up to a year I have read, the system will be more stable. Plus the plants and fish look happy. The plants are flowering, the fish are mating, the systems inhabitants seem to not be affected by the high pH. 

Alex did say he had some tomato plants that were doing great during their vegetative stage, but as soon as they started flowering, they died off. This may have been due to the high pH.

Root 66 Aquaponics owner, Shawn explained to us that the tomatoes may not have had enough nutrients to flower since the system was even younger than. This makes sense. Plants need much more nutrients while flowering and at that time the system most likely did not have the beneficial bacteria build up to support a few flowering tomatoes plants.

Our Aquaponic dinner salad.
It has much more taste than salad bought in stores.

But as you can see the Blackwell System is Rockin' even with a high pH. We enjoyed a lovely salad and pasta tonight. We used salad and basil from the home system. Delicious.

Alex Blackwell harvesting his aquaponic garden. The salad was harvested just a few days ago too.
The plants, as you can see, are thriving despite the high pH.

*taken from Wikipedia

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.

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 brewer's 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 "stomach's" 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 Plant's 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.

Hello again!

Here is a quick update on my tomato plant, it is going crazy! I had to buy some bamboo supports for it because it finally fell due to it huge size! Luckily the stem didn't snap and all is good. The first tomato that came out is continually growing and is about three inches wide. I also have noticed new baby tomatoes that just came out last week. They are already getting big!

Here is my tomato plant. It is massive!
After two toppings it is still growing.

This is my first aquaponic tomato.

These two tomatoes just popped up
and are growing very fat!

I am also working on a "mirco green" project. It is a combination of different veggi seeds that sprout up and you eat them as baby greens or "micro greens." They are very tasty, but that will be in the next update!

Thanks for reading!

Quick Video

Please excuse the noise :)

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. I'm 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, I'm 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

Aquaponic Growth Explosion

Hello viewers!

It has been a while since I have updated, my computer broke. But... now I am back and ready to update! I wish I could have shown the progress of my tomato plant, however I can show you how it is now! It is IMPRESSIVE! Everyone who sees it is astonished. Even if it is only been three days, they can see a big difference. My fish are also going great. They are growing and I actually had to sell a few because they were getting big and territorial.

Having African Cichlids makes my system different from other aquaponic systems. African Cichlids seem to have more personality and behavioral habits. They are fascinating to to watch once you know what they are doing. They can also change color or more like hues and color intensity depending on how they are feeling.

For example I have noticed that the dominant males tend to show off their colors for the females 15 or so minutes after they are fed. There are also relationships between certain fish that can be seen day after day. Some are scared of others, some are couples, and then some are friends or tend to stick together.

Enough chit chat :) here are some pics

Massive growth from the tomato plant.
Blueberry bush doing okay after transplant 

My first tomato plant!

Tomato plant after topping.

Blueberry bush after transpplant.

My blueberry bush is recovering from the transplant shock and it starting to grow... kinda. One of the first things I learned while reading Aquaponic Gardening was that blueberries do not do well in aquaponics. I should have read up on them before I bought them. The reason is they thrive in a more acidic soil / media.m My aquaponics has a PH bit other 7. I would guess 7.4 or so. While this is a tad higher than the suggested aquaponic PH level, my Cichlids come from Harder water so it is a compromise. I may have problems with low iron levels later on but i will fix that when the time comes... IF it ever comes!

As you can see, my ruccola isn't doing that well. I think if I want to continue with the DWC (Deep Water Culture) I will have to hook up some lights to it. I am toying with the idea of converting it to another flood and drain, media bed because my other one is just doing so well!

Arugula needs more light than the window provides.
I will need to add lighting if I wish to continue growing arugula
and other salad greens.

Fish looking for some grub

A group shot of my cichlids. From Left; Nimbochromis Venustus,
Placiachromis Milomo, Red Empress

Nimbochromis Venustus

Lastly, but very importantly... I would recomend everyone interested in Aquaponics to read Sylvia Bernstien's book,  Aquaponic Gardening: A Step by Step Guide to Growing Fish and Vegetables Together.

I am not all the way through it, but I have learned a decent amount already. I wish I had this book a few months back though. Instead of reading forum after forum, blogs and dozens of YouTube videos, you can just read this book instead. It has everything you need to know and in simple and easy to understand language. It is written in a way that you need a bit of your own creativity, but Aquapons (as we are called, I guess) tend to be creative and DIY folk, my kind of folk ;-) 

Until next update!

Felix