Water

Modularity rules!

One of the great things about aquaponics is that you can design a high degree of modularity and redundancy into your system. Am example is our floating raft beds – the plants in them aren’t doing so well now that the cooler weather is here. I noticed that, in these conditions, the Azolla was thriving. You can’t have too much Azolla, so I made the decision to swap out the floating veggie bed with a new Azolla mesh bed. Now, we have twice as much Azolla growing and the space and nutrients aren’t being wasted on struggling plants. The Basil that was in the vegetable raft bed will make their way to the front garden. They’re a perennial, bush Basil type so should do well after a period of adjustment. We were lucky enough to get some thick, construction grade, Styrofoam from Andrew Hurst and his Habitat for Humanity project. This stuff will last for years so I’ll clean up

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How we save nearly 2000 litres of water a year

It’s this simple! We all know that water is a valuable resource and one that shouldn’t be thrown away lightly. Some of us are still in mains water, so here’s a way to save quite a bit of that precious and increasingly expensive resource. The idea works for those on tank and bore water too. Here’s how we save a almost 2000 litres a year… The idea is simple. A 1 litre bottle of water placed in the cistern of a toilet will displace 1 litre of cistern water. That keeps the float valve always just a little bit higher, causing less water to flow into the cistern. I’m assuming you already have the float valve adjusted to the minimum. The pic above shows how easy it is. Just fill a bottle with water. pop the cistern lid, slide in the bottle where it won’t catch on anything like the float and pop the lid back on. The next time

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