Month: October 2010

October 28, 2010

Plant Type= Basil

Growth Status= 2 sprouts with reasonable growth, 2-3 possible germination’s

Water Temp= +/- 72 F

Water Ph= 7.0

Fish Count= 43

Light Cycle= 15 on/ 9 off

News= Today, we walked in to only a few casualties.  This is MAJOR progress from our disaster last time around.  With most of our fish still swimming, we only made some minor adjustments for the weekend. We swapped our intake filter for a screen, to keep our water flow up. We added some water that had been lost due to evaporation and  balanced out the Ph again.  We fed the swimmers and left them be for the weekend.. Hopefully we don’t come back to an underwater genocide.

October 26, 2010

Plant Type= Basil

Growth Status= 2 sprouts with reasonable growth, new one outpacing original sprout, 4 dormant

Water Temp= +/- 68 F  (installed heater today)

Water Ph= 7.2

Fish Count= 50

Light Cycle= 12 on/ 12 off

News=  Today we introduced 50 beautiful little fishes to our aquaponics system. We also made some alterations, including adding a tank heater and an intake filter for our pump.  we are hoping that with the water monitoring we did last week, and the warmer temperature from the heater, that we can keep our fishes swimming. Pictures coming soon!

Welcome to the show!

Hello, and welcome to the Big Heff Show Aquaponics Blog. Our team consists of myself, Phil Erdley, and my P.I.C Jeff Woytowich. We are constucting and monitoring an Aquaponics system for ITEC140, Bio-Related Technology.  Let me get you up to date on our progress.

Our set-up is a 10 gallon aquarium, with a custom fabricated rack holding our 6 basil seeds, planted in Rock Wool substrate. On October 14th, we planted our seeds and introduced 45 fish (goldfish and guppies) to the tank.  Sadly, on October 19th, all of our fish were dead, and the tank water was a terrible yellow color.

So here we are, on October 21, 2010 where we have  fabricated a water trough to keep our seeds hydrated, solving the issue we had with evaporation.  we have also swapped out our water, to make sure it is clean and has time to condition itself for next week, when we will reintroduce fish to our tank. We will make entries with some consistant information and fun updates as we go. Enjoy the blog!