Wednesday 20 June 2012

Disaster - System switched OFF for 7 hours!

On Sunday, my parents came over to stay... My mom, as usual, goes around the house looking for something to clean, arrange, or replace... Monday night, she noticed a power socket switched to ON in the living room... Without caring where the inserted plugs lead to, she flipped the switch...! :facepalm:

6am in the morning, after 7 hours have passed, I went outside to check my system and realized that it was silent... The pump wasn't pumping water!

25 to 30 guppies died that day... The tilapias were fine as they were saved by the aerator's backup power but the water had a slight rotting odor probably due to accumulated ammonia...

Floating guppy carcasses sucked by the drainage pipe...
 The thick layer of gunk collected at the bottom of the guppy tank may have also contributed to their death as it contains loads of greedy bacteria competing against them for the remaining precious oxygen...

Some gunk netted out...

As for the plants, strong winds have been the main problem this few days... After being knocked over by the wind repeatedly, all my okras had given up and none could stand upright properly now... I got to think of a solution fast...



Monstrous Kang Kong...
 Thanks for reading... :-D

4 comments:

  1. Dear Aska, how much did you pay for the hydrokorrels? And where could we get it?

    From KONG

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    Replies
    1. I got them at RM85 per 50L bag from
      LOT 54, Sungai Buloh Green Alley (Jalan Sungai Buloh).

      I also lay the bottom few inches of the growbed with 30mm river pebbles for extra drainage.
      Pebbles are cheaper but much much heavier. Priced at RM10 - 12 per 20kg bag.

      Filling a 200L growbed with Hydrokorrels will cost around RM85 * 4 = RM340
      Filling it with river pebbles will cost around RM12 * 16bags = RM192

      Buying them in bulk from larger suppliers will cost even lesser per volume...

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  2. Aska, the hydrokorrels are lighter then the pebbles. Can you give me any idea what is the weight of the 50L bag? and how big is the bag please? Thanks man.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not sure how much they weigh. I think it's about 18 kgs per bag. The bag is a little longer and fatter than the average bedroom pillow.

      There's a photo of them laying on the floor in this post:
      http://aska-aquaponics.blogspot.com/2012/09/new-grow-bed-putting-it-all-together.html

      My backyard floor tiles each are 30cms width. So, the bag probably are roughly 70cm long and 40cms wide.

      Delete