Another aspect of Aquaponics, it's suppose to be power efficient to ensure you are able to go off the grid, with big pumps & filters, we are heading in the opposite end of what we are trying to achieve.
As those that follow my work on aquaponics, I am constantly trying to make the system as power efficient as possible, starting with the siphon that works with less water inflow to now the Cascading Gutterbed Set.
Just completed this week, I am trial run it to see how it perform.
This particular set has 4 level of gutterbed with the top most gutter feeding water into the one at the bottom and so forth. This way, we only need to fill only one growbed and this significantly reduce the amount of water needed thus power will be reduced too.
The trial works fine, I only need to ensure the gutters are level to avoid water spillage. After adjusting water inlet it works flawlessly, cascading the flush one after another.
Except for the top most gutter, drainage is complete for the other. I try with plants and see what happens.
Completed set as above, been running like clock work. This particular set I'm planting strawberry and other shallow rooted plants. Due to the depth of gutter is about 5 inches deep with water levelling at 4, the plants are a bit limited so that not to cause overflowing due to root growth.
On my normal gutter set, I had plants like tomatoes, chillies and other leafy vege without problem.
Power requirement for the above set is about 14 kwh or RM4.50 per month, even for a longer gutter it will cost the same, as long as the water height not change.
Ok that's all for today.
