This week at Morning Star Fishermen was physically challenging but fun. We were assigned 3 systems each to take care of. All of my systems required major cleaning and some slight design to ensure better solids removal. My partner Jon insists that solids removal is the most important factor in aquaponics. Solids build-up greatly influences water quality - the fish are living in a cesspool and plants roots are clogged with fish poop. These result in unhappy fish and plants. However, those solids otherwise known as fish emulsion are an amazing fertilizer for plants growing in dirt. A smart aquaponics also has plants growing in dirt so that he can efficiently utilize his fish waste. 

The system below is a hybrid of a vertical grow system and a raft system. This particular vertical system is known as a FOODY. Each FOODY tower supports 38 plants in less than 2 square ft of space. Talk about efficient!

3 FOODY towers connected via siphons.

The entire system consisting of the sump tank with a pump inside it, 3 vertical grow towers, a deep water raft grow bed, and the fish tank at the end. Those buckets in the far right are for capturing solids and providing surface area for nitrifying bacteria to grow.

close-up of the clarifying buckets and Jon’s amazing swirl tank, which captures the solids more amazingly well. 

Jon’s swirl tank. Can you see the solids below? the spigot at the bottom allows you to easily remove the solids. 

this is what the raft system looked like before I cleaned it. i tried to save as much water as possible by pumping into buckets and allowing the solids to settle.

nice and clean.

this is how the raft originally looked. there was even solid build-up on the surface.

Jon and I build new rafts and every thing looks nice and beautiful.