Octopus Slayer - Part 2

If you remember from a prior post last year, we made some changes to the large A-Frame NFT system that was being used over at the Together We Stand Aquaponic Gardens.  It had been designed with a manifold at the top to feed water individually at each tube and to drain each tube individually. It had so many hoses going so many directions we called it the "octopus".  Classic exacmple of over-engineering to solve a problem that didn't exist.

When I wrote about how we changed the water flow I mentioned that instead of black tubing, my hubby cut a garden hose to make the jumper from one tube to the next. It was easy, quick, and most importantly cheap!

After I posted this, several folks commented on this blog and other places about the wisdom of using a garden hose. There was quite a bit of concern about the safety of the water flowing through the garden hose and the possibility of leaching toxic chemicals.

Quite honestly, for as "smart" and evolved as we are supposed to be, it never occurred to us that the hose might taint the water.  Hubby and I  both grew up in a very hot and dry area of South Texas and drank lots of water from the hose as youngsters and teens. While it did have a funny taste, I just always guessed it was from the metal bib of the hose.  That and the fact that all the water in that town tasted like crud, no matter the source.  But when you are hot and thirsty you will drink what is available.  Of course, this was back in the 60's and 70's so we didn't know about things like bottled water back then

But this is a new century and we are evolved and enlightened!  So a few days ago, hubby decided that the garden hose should be replaced.  You spoke and he listened!

 This did require a trip to Home Depot, but it was only a few dollars and the result looks clean and works well.  I think fighting the crowd of Canadians in the parking lot and through the store on a Saturday (remember this is Hollywood Florida and it is January and in the mid-80's so all the snowbirds have landed) took longer and was more effort than making the actual change.  Here is the new set-up. 

Here is another view.

Nice huh?

But this gets me to thinking about all the things we did as kids that people never do now....or they don't allow their kids to do now.  Maybe it was because we were from a small-ish town, but we rode our bikes everywhere and got into everything. I don't know how we survived.

How about you?

Don't Overthink or Over Engineer Your Systems

It is so easy to get carried away with the physics involved in building your aquaponic grow systems that the  simple becomes unduly complex.  Complex is not good. Complex is rarely if ever easy to maintain. Try to avoid complex as much as possible.

If you think effort goes into designing a large system, just try to re-design a large system after all components are in place but not functioning as they should.  Implementing the re-design means that you have re-do all the previous hard work.  Not efficient use of time or energy.  If you and your garden want  to survive, you need to use your time and energy as efficiently as possible.

The following is a great case in point of over designing a system.  When the a frames for NFT (nutrient film technique) tubes were first designed and built for the Together We Stand project, the designer was greatly concerned that because the water was going to flow through 4 tubes before draining that all the nutrients would be absorbed by the plants on the top row and the plants in rows 2 through 4 would be nutrient starved.  So a complex manifold system was created and installed to give equal feed of the nutrient rich water into the top of the a-frame.  Truly a beautiful design as you can see from here.

Since each A-Frame has two sides, there was a manifold for each side of the frame.  Of course, this system over engineered a problem that didn't exist.  See, the nutrient levels at the top tube of an A-Frame are not significantly lower than the bottom tubes unless your system is extremely nutrient deficient. So, this overly complex design solved a problem that didn't exist.  However what it did do was utilize flow tubing that was so small you didn't get good water flow and it clogged constantly. In addition, since each tube was fed individually, it drained individually.  If you think that manifold was something, then check out this drain system

Looks like some kind of octopus, right?  In addition, note the use of clear tubing.  Well it was clear at the start I am sure.  But because the clear tubing allows sunlight to penetrate, algae growth was a constant problem and because of the design, 8 drain tubes needed to be cleaned on a regular basis.  All to solve a nutrient feed problem that doesn't exist!

The answer was to re-plumb the A-frame so that water enters in one location on each side of the frame and then feeds and drains each tube in sequence.  

So that anyone working on the system in the future will understand how it operates, each tube was marked at the feed and drain points and also with arrows indicating water flow.

 Note the use of dark tubing for the inlet feed tubing.  For the jumper lines between the tubes, in a stroke of genius my husband realized that garden hose would work perfectly and is certainly less expensive than other hosing. 

Since there is now only 1 drain for each side of the frame, only 2 drains are necessary.  That means we can slay the octopus and the task associated with keeping the lines clean.

It was a bit of a pain, but now these A-Frames will perform their NFT tasks much more effectively and will require much less effort to maintain. 

As a side note, you will notice in some of the photos that the tubes are marked with letters and numbers.  This is something that was implemented back when this shade house was first built.  It was done to help keep crop and maintenance records.  Even if your garden is small, if you have more than one grow bed, NFT tube system or multiple raft beds I highly recommend that you develop some sort of identification system to make your record keeping much easier.

So how did you spend your week-end?