I get that you get that we dont want to share with bugs or critters :P
I've actually had great results with hydroponics in the past, so I know it works and works great producing huge yields. But its costly to run, the cost of electricity is insanely high, which is why I am experimenting with the lowest cost but the brightest lights available which are /also/ extremely reliable.
At the moment I've found a GU10 LED light which is 40% brighter than a standard 50 watt halogen globe but draws only 10 watts per light, the color temperature is crap for vegetative growth but the blue is still there even though its 3000k (kelvin), I'm going to try and use 4x of these suckers, they are highly directional being 38 degrees each and are so bright that staring at just one of them will hurt your eyes. Hopefully this will provide me with the high/fast yield & low running costs that I need. The lights are made up of 4x 3 watt LED's attached to a large heatsink, so all-up its 16x 3 watt LED's that I will be running.
Its not going to be as reliable as a F10-F12 Fluorescent light setup, but Fluro has been knocked out anyway due to apparently becoming obsolete (I will never understand the fascination that our consumerist culture has with making things obsolete). And I'm not going to get swept up into the craze of the wonderful F5 or F8 globes, the main reason being is that I dont trust the build quality of the cheap chinese Electronic ballasts, frankly I've seen more 50 year old magnetic ballasts than I care to mention get thrown out in favour of the newer electronic ballasts and all I can think of is just how insane and crazy we all are for doing it, we are throwing out a tried and true technology like a magnetic ballast for the sake of 1 or 2 watts in energy efficiency improvement per light!
As for the tomatoes getting eaten by birds, I'm sure you are aware that there are more effective things you can do but I will say them anyway, you can buy a wire mesh which will block them off from the tomatoes until they are ripen enough to pick, but let the light and rain through. As for soil, make sure its got the nutrients it needs. Its all about following the instructions on the packet, and then using half of what it recommends until you are comfortable with using the full recommended dose (expert mode is using the full recommended amount), and then fertilizing whenever it says to do so.
I honestly havent had great results with fish emulsion, which is why I am personally using individual fertilizers, I havent used these before but I am learning how to use them:
(N)Nitrogen. (Sold as: Sulphate of Ammonia)
(P)Phosphate. (Sold as: Super Phosphate)
(K)Potassium. (Sold as: Sulphate of Potash)
And then once I've mastered the art of growing my own food using man-made fertilizers I will move onto compensating their use with my own home brew stuff like worm pee or compost, its a slow process but it must be done inorder to learn how everything works properly, so that when your life depends upon it you know what you are doing!
Aquaponics is actually fairly low maintenance from what I've learnt, you just need to make sure that the fish have water, heat, air (from an air stone), and dont do anything too drastic to the pH of the water, and dont let Nitrate buildup to lethal levels, ontop of that you should clean the filter in the tank (if you use one in an Aquaponics system) periodically, and then make sure that you arent over feeding the fish (common mistake is every day or every 2-3 days, truth is a fish can live for up to a week depending upon the species without food.) After owning a freshwater aquarium for a few years and buying the test equipment necessary to know whats going on, I am confident in undertaking Aquaponics, so yes there is method to the madness and if you are willing you should start out by taking care of a freshwater aquarium of fish first.
Aside from that its all about making sure that you have enough plants to soak up the nutrients which the fish and the bacteria provide.
I'm not sure what I would do about the heat issue, it would be wise if this system's pump were to be running from a solar power system that some part of the conduit is insulated, inorder to both keep heat out and keep heat in during winter. Ontop of that, to make sure that the place where the fish are kept is inside an insulated area. If you live in an area where it snows however you would need to take more energy wasting methods.
My ideal setup:
Ideally it would use no solar electricity, and use sunlight only, ideally the entire system would be a simple dam with gravity fed pipes made from bamboo feeding a large collection of pipes also made from bamboo, with which all of your plants are then covered and protected from the elements and bugs inside of a greenhouse. (bamboo is renewable, so if you break a pipe you can simply replace it, PVC pipe breaks down in the sunlight and goes brittle and needs renewing every 10-20 years, you can paint it with a UV Stable paint tho to extend its life.)
And as for fertilizing, Ideally I would have multiple worm farms setup, the worms can then be fed to the fish along with other sources of nutrients, and the fish then fertilize the water borne bacteria which then feeds the plants.
I havent fully worked it all out yet but I am going to try and do so, havent got a natural source for Phosphor yet.
And apparently neither has the planet:
In 2007, at the current rate of consumption, the supply of phosphorus was estimated to run out in 345 years.[4] However, some scientists now believe that a "peak phosphorus" will occur in 30 years and that at "current rates, reserves will be depleted in the next 50 to 100 years."
https://en.wikipedia...ence_and_miningIts amazing just how well we've managed to work ourselves into a corner by being completely dependent upon electrical methods of transferring energy or information from one place to another. If it were up to me the entire system would be solar powered and not electric, electricity is a nuisance, it requires highly engineered, precisely designed components all of which are vulnerable to solar flares, lightning strikes, corrosion, water ingress, bugs/ants/nesting wasps/cockroaches, and not to mention OLD AGE, the insulation will become brittle within 20-30 years (for modern non-rubber based insulation), the corrosion will build up, wear and tear will occur on plastic components like switches and plugs/sockets, etc.
So yeah, a solar power system as an entirety would most likely last no more than 10-25 years (if your lucky), frankly I would prefer to not have any batteries at all and instead simply use capacitors inorder to store a small amount of energy, and act as a buffer between the solar panel charge controller and your load. If you do this make sure to fuse BOTH the input and the output to your capacitor pack!.
With this system you could then operate heavy loads during the daytime only and run light loads (like a few LED lights) from the archaic and questionably reliable deep cycle lead acid batteries. I think that both the daytime load channel (connected to a capacitor) must be disconnected and not allow to come in contact with a nighttime load channel, connecting a battery to a capacitor in any way shape or form is a very dangerous thing to do and it shoudnt be attempted!
I would think that there would need to be two completely seperate solar power systems setup, one with large 200 watt solar panels (for the daytime load channel, the one with capacitors instead of batteries) and a seperate system, one with say a single 50 watt solar panel for the low power LED light night time loads, which use deep cycle batteries.
With this setup you could theoretically run a solar powered system for as long as the solar panels survive out in the elements, 25 years or longer if they are decently built panels.
To be honest I prefer and would bet my life on the reliability of a well built Sanyo NiCD battery pack being far better than that of a modern deep cycle battery.
NiCD's are more energy dense aswell and can tolerate a bit more abuse than a deep cycle system can. The ONLY thing that is their downfall is that the larger cell packs are no longer manufactured for the consumer market, it used to be back in the 40s that HUGE NiCD battery packs were built for everything from car batteries to electric tram systems, the only source for them now are from X-Ray machines.
Edited by Layberinthius, 16 September 2013 - 02:52 PM.
) but can the governments respond fast enough? (they should really be responding now).
