Hello sustainable growers.
This is Jonathan from Melbourne Aquaponics.
In this video, we'll see, we'll review the aquaponics setup of one of Melbourne Aquaponics’
followers called Huy, and he developed a nice little aquaponics setup and that's what we're
going to review in this video.
And look at the video until the end because at the end I'm going to show you how Huy is
feeding his fish.
He found a really interesting way of producing some food and feeding his own fish.
He’s growing tilapias.
And that’s what we’re going to see at the end of this video.
Huy: Hello.
Okay, today I would like to give you a very quick overview on my aquaponics system.
Okay?
So what I have here is the fish tank which is about ... litres.
I raise about 35 tilapias of medium size.
And here I have three growbeds.
The blue one is about 100 litres.
And the small one is about 40 litres.
I also have two filters.
But they do 200 litres barrels.
The one on the left side is the mechanical filters.
I make it at the radial flow filter.
The one on the right side is the biofilter.
This is the air pump.
That’s what I use to pump the air to the biofilter.
Okay, here’s the small tank that I use to grow the duckweed.
To grow this one is super easy.
What I do is I just take the waste water out of my mechanical filters.
Okay, so this is my radial filter.
Jonathan: So the radial filter is a very interesting filter that you can design by yourself and
you can put in your own aquaponics setup.
It's going to allow you to remove all the big particles that are floating into the water.
So it's quite simple to do.
You just need a drum and you drill two holes and you're going to make one entrance and
one outlet.
So it looks like in this sketch.
So you can see that the water is coming from this pipe that is raising inside the drum.
So the water arrives with a certain water flow and then when it arrives into the second
section which is into the larger pipe here the water speed decreases and the water is
going down.
Right?
And when the water is going down with all the particles then it falls into the drum.
It's a big drum.
Right?
And once the water is in the drums the speed of the water is completely decreased so all
the particles have the time to just settle down and therefore they're going to stay on
the bottom of the drum while the water is going to come to the surface.
And it's going to be evacuated thanks to the evacuation pipe.
So it's a very simple way to separate the solids so the big particles through the water
and therefore once a while you can just open the tap on the bottom, the valve on the bottom
and you can just collect all the solids that you can use for your classic garden or to
grow duckweed such as what Huy is doing in his own setup.
So for the duckweed, just be careful because I see that you just leave -- Huy you just
leave the water sitting in the bucket outside your setup.
Just be careful because sometimes you got the mosquitoes that are spawning in the bucket
and then you got mosquitoes everywhere.
So what I recommend to do is to put some little fish inside this bucket to just get rid, to
manage the mosquitoes’ population.
Huy: So basically the water out from the mechanical filter and it goes through down there to the
biological filter.
Okay?
So let’s go to the other side to see the biofilter.
Jonathan: So then the water is going into a biological filter.
So here it’s very classic you know, a big drum with a lot of pearls and the bacteria
are living on the pearls so it needs normally a very high quantity of air.
So here, Huy, I think you can increase the quantity of air that is in this drum to have
all the pearls that are moving.
You know, it's plastic pearls and on those pearls you got bacteria and if they don't
move enough they may stay in anaerobic conditions.
So normally you want all the drums to always move and also when they move it basically
avoids to have some organic matter that are going to clog and also those bacteria when
they develop they form a biofilm but this biofilm can become very thick and then can
clog the inside of the pearl.
That's why we want them to move.
So basically when they move, they auto-clean themselves.
Then the water is going into the growbed and here I can see that you have a specific media.
So you got two types of media.
And I think you chose it really well because one is a volcanic rock and the other one is
basically the clay balls.
So that's exactly what we use here in Melbourne Aquaponics a volcanic rock.
We call it scoria here in Australia, but that’s the same type of thing, a very porous rock.
Just make sure that you don't have any limestone.
So to check that you don't have any limestone you just need to put a bit of vinegar on top
and you will see if you find some bubbles.
Otherwise, you can put some media into a bottle.
You shake the bottle with some water, some tap water that is at 7.
You shake the bottle and then you just analyze the quantity or the pH of this water.
So you will see if basically the media acted on the pH of the water.
So you can shake it, leave it for a whole day, 24 hours.
You shake it again and then you test the water.
So it's going to give you really the indication of if your media is acting on the pH of the
water.
But here I don't believe it’s the case.
It looks to be a clean volcanic rock.
So it should be fine.
So from a general design I think obviously you got a lot of pipes going everywhere so
it looks very -- how do you say it?
It seems that you got a lot of things going on.
So it's just an aesthetics point of view.
Right?
But from a functional point of view, I think it's not bad.
The growbed seems – the growbed area seems a bit limited and the fish tank as well could
be a bit bigger but I think it's okay.
It's quite good.
Just be careful because I see that you got a light that is hanging on the top of the
fish tank.
So be careful that the light doesn't fall into the fish tank and you don't have any
problem of electrocution.
Also I see that the general structure of the setup everything is sitting on very thin metal
frame.
So I hope it's adapted because you quickly got a lot of weight you know.
When you design it you just play with plastic but actually when you put the setup in place
and once it's running you know it's full of water you quickly have a ton of weight that's
standing on the structure.
So just make sure that everything is adapted because the worst thing that could happen
will be to have a kid that is playing around and the structure collapses and everything
falls on your kid.
So just be very careful of that.
Make sure that everything is really steady and able to hold the weight of this aquaponics
setup.
And again check again your electricity, all your cables.
Make sure you don't have anything hanging on the top of the fish tank.
So now, Huy, I want to congratulate you because you are one of the few people who are producing
his own food.
You are producing some fantastic insect to feed your fish and that’s just wonderful.
I can't congratulate you enough for doing that because a lot of people and I'm part
of them, we are part of the lazy people who just use pellets you know, fish food pellets
because it's very convenient.
It's dry and we always have it handy every day.
We can just feed our fish with it.
Obviously, personally I give some other live food aside from this fish food pellets.
I allow my fish to have some nice food from time to time.
But here I can see that you've insects that you are growing.
That's wonderful and I really think that’s the future.
If we can produce more of the food that we give to our fish we are just becoming way
more sustainable.
So congratulations to you Huy.
I think you made a really, really good thing doing this.
Of course, I'm sure your tilapia, your fish are very happy to eat this.
In this video we can see that the worm disappeared but we can't really see the fish eating them,
but I’m sure that they really love it.
It's really good for the fish.
So I think it's very easy to grow some insects at home especially if you are in a warm country.
So here in Melbourne, in Australia, in winter it can be quite cold.
The temperature can be negative.
So it's quite difficult to maintain the insects during those months.
Obviously, we can keep them inside but unfortunately, my partner wouldn't be very happy to have
insects inside the house, but it's something possible.
Right?
Or you can create a special insulated box specific area to grow the insects and there
is a lot of resource to do in this way and also there are some insects that are able
to live in cold, cold conditions.
So definitely, I congratulate you Huy.
It’s just fantastic what you are doing here.
That's the best source of protein.
So when you grow insects basically it's very easy to grow and they don't need so much water
so much protein to grow, you know.
I think they are 20 times more efficient than growing meats like beef for example.
So when you grow insects you grow some food that is very, very high in protein.
It's almost composed of 99% of protein.
So it's extremely high.
There is a lot of moisture obviously inside and it's also high in minerals.
So that's perfect for aquaponics because here what we want is to add some minerals in our
system for the vegetables because the vegetables need minerals, and the fish as well, actually.
So when you add those insects, you add a source of protein which is excellent for the system
because that's the base of the nitrogen cycle but you also add some fantastic minerals and
some vitamins, the vitamins that are so, so much needed for the fish.
So congratulations.
Continue this way, Huy.
If you can extend, increase the volume of growbed and if you can increase also the size
of your fish tank because I imagine your tilapia are going to be in a very narrow space very
soon because you know tilapia can grow quite, quite big, up to 2 kilos.
I'm sure you're going to keep them to maybe 1 kilo before eating them.
So if you can increase the volume of the fish tank it would be good and the volume of the
growbed, but congratulations again for those fantastic insects.
So I hope you enjoyed the video.
If you have any comment about this aquaponics setup and specially this way of feeding the
fish, please leave it in the description of the video, in the comment.
Obviously, don't forget to subscribe to the channel and to give a like.
If I ask you to give some like, it's not just for myself just because for YouTube it's very
important to get some likes.
If I get a lot of likes on my videos and the video is shared and it’s spread around the
planet way more easily and it’d really help me to offer you more videos of this type.
So please give me some like.
It's going to help the channel.
Also, obviously, if you want to build your own aquaponics setup if you haven't done it
yet and if you need some support, you can have access to our free guide which I call
the six-steps to build your own aquaponics setup in the best conditions.
And that's in the description of this video.
Otherwise, you can click on the I.
There is an ‘I’ like information on the corner of the video as well.
See you in the next one.
Bye-bye.
Don't forget to get your free gift from this screen.
You can also leave me a comment below the video.
Subscribe to the channel and see my last video.
I really hope to see you soon and I wish you a fantastic success with aquaponics.
Have a good crop!