At It Again!

It has definitely been a little while since I last made a post and progress towards completing this system. With that being said, I do want to update everyone on where I am at. I applied a stain/sealant to the wood, as you can see above it did change the color of the wood some. Since I built this in my basement, which does not have the greatest air ventilation, I wanted to use something that was not heavy from a chemical standpoint. I also thought it was important to find a sealant that would not impact the plants or fish in anyway, even though neither the plants or fish should directly touch the wood. I ended up with a product called Eco Wood Treatment. It is more of a stain then a waterproofing, but given the wood will not be constantly getting wet I think this is ok. If needed, I will add another waterproofing layer later. I did make a huge mistake when building the frame and that is I wished I would have sealed the wood before building everything. I recall building the frame knowing it would haunt me later, but I was just so excited to get building.

I also went and purchased all of the expanded clay pebbles for the grow bed. It was actually a bit difficult to find a local source for it. After many calls to various stores in three surrounding cities I connected with a hydroponic store which had all I needed. The owner even gave me a discount because he did not have everything I needed in the larger cheaper bags. Based on a calculator provided by https://www.theaquaponicsource.com/ I determined I needed 220 liters, with a little rounding. I have read it is a good idea to rinse the media before placing them in the grow bed. I have purchased 2 five gallon buckets for this. One I have drilled a bunch of holes in to act as a sieve. The second bucket I will use to transport from the rinsing area outside to inside the house and into the grow bed. I will do this step once the stain/sealant drys.

I have two other small parts completed. The first is I mounted a bar above the grow bed to hang the grow light over. The second is I installed more supports under the grow bed, better connecting the frame runners to the frame. The picture below shows this much better than I can articulate.

Next steps for me will be to clean the clay pebbles, hang the light, and set and plumb the tank. Hoping my next update does not take so long!

Johnny’s Words of Wisdom – Set realistic expectations. We recently got back from a vacation which began disastrous. It seems we have a habit of setting our expectations to high, sometimes forgetting we need to account for changes in our kids normal routines and ease them into different bed times and eating schedules. With this trip we changed everything as soon as we got to our destination. This attributed to two days of avoidable stress and anxiety. By the end of day two we realized our mistake and made the necessary adjustments and ended up have an amazing vacation. This type of unneeded stress can be minimized by making sure you setup realistic expectations and ensure you are willing to adjust as needed. As you know this project has taken me much longer than I ever anticipated, and I am ok with that as I continue to adjust my expectations due to outside factors.