Sand System Completed and Cycling

Well, the weather's warmed up enough to feel comfortable turning on the sand system to cycle it. If it does decide to get cold again, I'll shut it down. There are no plants or fish in it right now, so turning it off won't hurt anything.

A couple of notes about the spider valve. First, it requires a good deal of pump pressure to work. I had to use a more powerful pump to get it to function properly, or at least to get it to switch properly. Second, while it does divert the flow, I'm finding that there is flow coming out of at least parallel channels if not all channels. This may be due to the fact that the spider valve is located below my grow beds, so there's a little bit of head to climb before the water comes out, but I'm not sure.

In my system, where I want the flow to move slowly through the sand, it's probably not an ideal way of doing things. In hindsight, it probably would be best to have a slow pump going to both grow beds and an aerator running constantly versus using a spider valve to switch between the growbeds and using the two un-used feeds (there are 4 channels on the spider valve, and I have 2 grow beds) to cycle the water around in the tank for aeration.

We'll see. I'm also curious to see if the sand system is more efficient at removing the nutrients. It had better be, because I'm probably only running the entire volume of the fish tank through twice a day - again, due to the slow inflow.

Problem Solved!

I went with the cheap and easy option - elbows! Found a neat little piece of conduit in the electrical department for the overflow ($3). Kinda looks like this:

          ------(
)-----/

Happened to have some 2" pipe and a 2" elbow, and had some leftover aquarium caulk.

So, I put in the piece I bought (middle), put in the 2" elbow (and a lot of caulk), had to move the pump outlet over a little (the pipe on the right was longer, so that the pump was centered in the skimmer) to make room for the previous two items (and added a lot of caulk), and voila!

Did all of this just in time for the 2.5" of rain we got yesterday. Now the pond is at an all-time high level, with probably an extra 300+ gallons in it from before.

Took the opportunity to update the veggie photos.

Broccoli looking really good. I cut a bunch of it already, fearing that I would somehow let it sit too long again and have it flower.

Tomatoes, broccoli, strawberries, squash, etc.

Basil, tomatoes, strawberries, peppers, etc.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Just a quick update on the garden:

Things are growing quite well. I've got about 6 different heirloom tomatoes in, some broccoli that's starting to crown, strawberries, basil, sweet and hot peppers, eggplant, and yellow squash. I'm using leftover 1/2" pvc as support for my tomatoes, which is nice, 'cause you can keep building on to it if you need more height. Other than that, I'm waiting for a call from Foster Lake and Pond about the tilapia. Should be sometime this month.

Oh yeah, I also replaced my water inlet piping, 'cause I had it going from the 1.5" feed lines down to 1/2" when I was trying a drip grid. The problem with 1/2" pipe is that it's the perfect size for hydroton to get stuck in. So, I got some 1.5" PVC. Shouldn't clog now!

Trout fishing!

Well, it's happened a little sooner than I had hoped, but the water temperatures in my tiny little pond have reached the danger point for the trout. With 70's and 80's predicted today through the foreseeable future, I decided it was time to start harvesting the trout.

Even as I made this decision, I saw a trout on the bottom upside down, but when I tried to net it, it swam away - not quite dead.

Due to the fact that I have goldfish and koi in the pond in addition to the trout, I thought that I would try to catch them with a hook and line. I called over the neighbors, and we managed to catch a couple using artificial worms. I had hoped to be able to bait the hook with some of the floating food, but it didn't work out. Too hard when dry, too sloppy to stay on the hook when wet. All in all, it was pretty fun catching the fish, but it wasn't as easy as I had thought it would be. I figured since they were so used to eating anything that landed on the water, they would throw themselves at the hook. However, it seems that genetics and instincts are present, even in "domesticated" trout!

So, after pulling in 3 fish with the hook and line, I went with a net I used to bring fish into my kayak. I was surprised to see that the goldfish and koi seemed much more net-savvy than the trout. I easily caught another 5. 4 fish for the neighbors, 4 for me. There should still be 21 trout in the pond for me to catch.

The biggest fish so far was 15" and at least 2 pounds - maybe more! They range from 10" to 15", with the majority in the 12-13" range. I am blown away by how much they grow!

Mid-May Update

I thought I should update how things are going, since it's been about a month. First, we still don't have any tilapia. The word from Foster Lake and Pond Management is that they don't have their tilapia in yet, 'cause of the colder weather this spring. They were confident that they would be in soon, and they'll be larger than usual, so there should still be enough time to grow them out to plate size before it gets too cold this spring.

Sometime soon after my April post, we had a torrential rain that eroded out the mound that the upper bog was sitting on, 'causing it to slant. It was not level enough to use, so I had to empty out all the gravel and re-level. I decided at that point to just run the outflow directly into the pipe that spills back into the pond instead of filtering it through the second bog. Everything's working great now, but I lost all my plants in the upper bog.

As you can see from the photos below, though, we bought some tomato, pepper, and squash seedlings, and they seem to be doing OK. Note also that the lower bog lettuce is coming in, and some tomatoes from seed are also coming in. I think that they aren't getting quite enough nutrients from the two fish that are living in the pond (oh yeah, one of the koi died mysteriously. he was always a little sickly from day 1).

soybeans, lettuce, small tomatoes are original. squash, large tomatoes from seedling

what you don't see clearly here in the upper bog are the little cucumber seedlings coming up from an extra packet of cucumber seeds we had in the house. there are some little pepper seedlings hanging on, as well.

trying their hardest to poop enough for all the plants!

The plants in the pond are doing amazingly well. Considering that they were dormant and kind of runty looking, they have truly gone through a miraculous transformation. Below, you can see what one month meant to a bog arum. And, we were fortunate enough to get one of our iris versicolor's to bloom. For a larger version of that photo, click here.


Next update after the tilapia go in. It will be interesting to see what happens, as the pond system is in a nice equilibrium right now. The water is crystal clear. Many of the plants are yellowing, so I believe they need more nutrients (and soon!), but for now, everything appears to be surviving. I anticipate that once the fish are in, the yellowing will stop and the growing will increase. Stay tuned!