This weekend we moved most of our aquaponics system into the light, about two meters right. Such a simple sentence. Deceptively simple. Somehow the scratches, the hefting of gravel and the sheer grunty hard work of it gets smoothed over. Let me tell you a little about it…
Our prototype system was set up in our backyard under an opaque roof adjoining the shed. It was a good place to start, and as we added fish, bacteria and vegetables, it served us well. Over the months however, we realized that we weren’t seeing the results from our beds that we had hoped. My father somewhat drying suggested we were growing a lovely set of miniature vegetables. So we checked what we knew - we checked the ratio of beds to water, we checked the quality of the water, we checked the amount of fish poo to plants. And still, we wondered why we weren’t getting the lush sort of crops that Joel Malcolm and the other members of the Aquaponics community casually talk about. We figured that most of these guys live in Queensland and its lush up there - throw a watermelon seed out your car window and the car behind you has to avoid the watermelons on the highway, its that lush. But apart from the natural fertility of the tropics of Queensland, we wondered why our system was going so slowly.
Then we hit on the answer - sunlight! Our system receives a filtered light but it isn’t quite enough. Also, we wanted to increase the amount of grow beds we actually have - and there just wasn’t enough room where we had the system. So the solution became clear - move the beds! Just two meters to the right was a nice open space, relatively sturdy floor, lots more sunlight, couldn’t ask for more. Right?
Well actually we found out its a huge job to move a working system, even a small one like ours. My partner Bruno had to do all the work aswell, since I was unable to do any heavy lifting. So that meant moving three full grow beds - full of gravel and plants, and their stands. It also meant creating a new stand for the new fiber glass bed (take a look at it here), and filling the new bed full of 17 bags of 20mm gravel, all of which had to be power hose washed first!! After the beds were moved, Bruno set up a sump tank - an additional thing we now had to have since by adding the new bed the system got a little more complicated. Which mean more pipes, more draining, and new pumps! All of this, just to move our grow beds into the sun.
So now we have a new big grow bed, and our three existing beds, all in the sun, only two meters from where they used to reside. Bruno has many hand scratches and sore muscles, to show for it. It took hours and hours of work, but we made it! Now we have a new whole bed to plan out, and fill with wonderful veggies - something for next weekend!