Aquaponics - Automatic solids removal

So this...

out of the blue

A while ago... What I think is a year in Bullwinklle time... I decided I'd not use the invention engine for a year to see if it made any difference to the quality of the stuff I create. I have no real idea if it it has, but I'm now officially giving up on the experiment.

It feels a little like I've had one hemisphere tied behind my back.

So now I've decided to set two tasks allowing full access to the invention engine process.

1. Get sticking rich.
2. Contribute something to my garden that might be useful to someone else.

The two are in no way connected, and because I have no idea how to get sticking rich, I thought I'd start with the aquaponics system, and leave the wealth part for another day.

I suspect leaving getting sticking rich for another day might be a theme in my life.

anyway ...

I've been playing around with the idea of making a farm to grow escargo for many years. I figured this might by the thing I could put some research into and come up with an idea or two. My ideas put to the engine have all been based around using a bell siphon to flush a grow bed of snail solids by drowning the entire farm...say... once a day, by completely submerging the grazing feed (lettuce etc) in 30cm deep of water to wash away the snail's solid waste.

The plan looked something like this...

Picture a 30cm deep BYAP grow bed with 15cm of media, and a 1cm wire mesh stretched across the top. The escargo would live in a cage on top of this grow bed. Planted in the growbed would be green leafy plants that snails liked, and that could survive being eaten from the top once they reached a height of 15cm. Lettuce etc. The plants would grow to 15cm height, then they would be grazed by the snails that would be housed in a cage that sat on top of the lettuce cage.The lettuce would continue to grow, and via some magic that I would figure out with the invention engine, the solids would be rinsed every so often with the rising tide of an auto siphon (or something)

Got it?

It doesn't matter, because that's not what I'm going to do.

It turns out that if you read through own threads on forums, you find you made some other promise to make an aquaponics system that removes solids automatically.

Oh well.

Unfortunately for me I think I might have a go at this as a project.

I would like to state at this stage that I think this is an entirely pointless thing to do. I really like the way aquaponics works as an almost closed loop (if you invite your fish food manufacturer into your loop).

The balance is what makes it so appealing.

But that is also what makes it appealing as a task to set the invention engine.

Sorry universe.

So that's it...

How do I make an aquaponics system that removes solids?

Eughhh! (with shaking head)


Ok...


How do I make an aquaponics system, that I don't hate, that removes solids?


I already have some stuff that might be relevant from when I made a swirl filter (somebody eles's invention), but made it with a built in autosiphon. The problem with that is it triggers all the time and dumps a lot of water with the solids.

Now that I think of it, I might have already come up with some other useful stuff as well.

Perhaps this test of the invention engine will just prove that I should have paid attention the first time around.

And now I remember the deer scarer.

Perhaps I've already collected all the bits I need.




120ThingsIn20Years thinks this might be a bad way to come out of semi-retirement (Eughhh!)