Prototype wood system Woody

  

I built this system as a Christmas gift for my father last year. He said he wanted a system that was constructed entirely of wood and he didnt want to see any of the ugly plumbing. He also wanted it compact and to be able to see the fish. This is what I came up with. I call this grow system Woody. All the pictures are before I stained it with an all natural and non toxic Tung oil.

This was pretty experimental. Some of the ideas worked and some didnt. I tried putting a screen filter in-line before the pump to trap some of the bigger debris. I wanted it to prevent anything from damaging the impeller on the pump and to lessen the load of solid waste going into the grow bed. We ended up having to clean it twice a day once the tilapia put on a little size. That has since been removed :) You can see in the picture of the plumbing I am using one pump to fill the grow bed, for the aeration bar and to the circulation outlet. In hindsight, it would have been much more efficient to have one pump to fill the grow bed, one small air pump going to an air stone and one small pump to provide some water circulation. Every 90 degree turn in the plumbing is going to restrict flow, and in the plumbing set up here, there are quite a few. Nevertheless, it worked and I was able to hide all the plumbing. I lined both the grow bed and the fish tank with Dura Skrim HDPE liner. It is the only liner that I know of that has been able to receive an organic certification when being used in an aquaponics application.  I put a 12" by 24" acrylic window in the fish tank so he could observe the fish without opening the wood lid that I later covered the fish tank with. It is very nice looking but its functionality and efficiency are below par. It requires quite a bit of pump to move enough water to all the outlets. I took off the one pictured below and had to increase to a 1,000 gallon per hour pump. It was pretty expensive, expensive to constantly run and still I dont think it provides optimal flow to all outlets. It has been in operation since Christmas and the plants and fish are doing great. My dad likes it so much that he wants another aquaponics system so he can start growing a larger crop variety. In the near future I will go get some updated pictures of the grow system with the fish and plants in it.

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