Skippy Filter

Bio Filter

It turns out that if you put fish into a pond it doesn't take a long time for it to become pretty funky. Our fish were sitting at the top of the pond, listless, gulping air. It was pretty much a cesspool.

I did a lot of research online and came across what's known as a "Skippy Filter". Basically you pump water from the pond into a bucket all the way to the bottom. The bucket is full of some sort of media with lots of surface area like lava rock or scouring pads. Near the top there is a hole in the bucket so that the water level stays in the same place. As the water fills the bucket from the bottom up the water is forced through the filtration media and flows out of the overflow hole near the top.

water is forced to the bottom
through the pvc

It's a simple device but very effective. Since I do not have a/c electricity down at the pond I was able to use the dc pump in this instance to good effect. I did need to run the pump at night as well and I had a car battery that I had just taken out of our car and started using that in the evening. Although it won't crank a car any more, it will run the small pump all night long.


On top of the lava rock that I used as the filter media, I put in some expanded clay grow rocks to support some plants. I've got sweet potato, pineapple basil, and a sweet potato that I started indoors now growing in the top of the skippy filter. So far so good.

It isn't pretty with a car battery and a drywall bucket sitting on top of the pond rocks with water pouring out of the side but it's a stopgap measure until I have time to get something more permanent in place. The water is totally clear now the stench is gone and the fish aren't lingering at the top sucking air because their gills are burning with ammonia. The plants in the filter seem to be thriving as well so it's a little bit of an aquaponics system I suppose.

In due course I will add a charge controller to recharge a deep cycle battery that can run the pump 24/7. The pump draw is miniscule so I might be able to run some lighting as well. We'll see.

Strawberries

It turns out that we aren't too bad at growing berries although the vegetables leave a lot to be desired.

When we moved to this house the area that these strawberries are in now was completely covered with English Ivy.

Ivy is something that you never completely eradicate you just sort of keep it in check. The same goes for monkey grass.

In order to supplant ivy with strawberries we had to do a lot of work. We sheet mulched the ivy with cardboard and newspaper first. Then I laid on about 4 inches of compost and then straw over that. After that we covered the straw with wood chip mulch.

The summer of 2012 I planted strawberries into the mulch, last year there wasn't any real production to speak of, but by the fall the strawberries had gained a good foothold and they were beginning to dominate the area.

The patch is against an eastern facing wall, so they get sunlight in the morning and then it goes away around lunchtime. I've never watered them after about a month of putting them in. There is a drip hose there if needed, but the mulch and compost over the old ivy seems to retain lots of moisture.

I've bought a lot of strawberries at the grocery store, I like them. Sometimes you get some decent ones, flavor wise, but mostly they are never really ripe. I don't water, fertilize or spray pesticides on these berries. That's extra work anyway.

None of them are perfect and lot are sort of deformed a little and some of them the ants eat. So I am positive at this point the strawberries at the grocery store are by necessity sprayed with chemicals and probably over watered. They are all fat, really firm because they aren't ripe and usually not sweet at all. And imagine that there are acres upon acres of just one crop and they all end up perfectly shaped?

I don't think so. And it's hard to imagine the labor to harvest them. They aren't easy to see until you bend down and start moving the leaves, in other words it's labor intensive to harvest them.

But for us it's fun to pick them, they're six feet from the back door. If they aren't ripe today we'll wait until tomorrow. No worries.

I guess you'd call it free food and it's easy to think of it that way, but then I remember loading all of that mulch and compost by hand and unloading it and carting it to the yard and dispersing  it and sheet mulching etc, etc. So no, it isn't free, but at this point we are set to get much more out from what we put in. And, on their own, the strawberries are spreading. Without any help from us, food is multiplying.

That's a nice concept!

Updates

I think these are Roma tomatoes. They were sown on February 7th.  I put them outdoors a couple of weeks ago. They are doing well so far. They are about a foot tall now.

Mar 25

 I think these tomatoes were from seeds leftover from last year.

I've started all new seeds from Baker Creek this year. There is about 9 varieties in this tray. Yesterday we potted them up.

It dropped into the 40's again last night and probably will tonight as well. But it is supposed to be in the mid 80's by this weekend.

We have a 700 percent increase in peach production this year. We have seven peaches versus the one we had last year.

This peach tree was just put in the yard last fall. The Elberta peach that produced the one peach last year, got hammered by frost while it was in bloom this season.

It didn't set any fruit at all. This new tree is doing very well and has grown a lot. It even got hit by a big poplar limb and has a large scar on it's side now. It seems to be healthy though.

The strawberries are literally going crazy. Hundreds I imagine. If we can manage to get some to ripen that will be fantastic.

Blueberries are really going good this year. I have about 4 or 5 big bushes that are loaded with them. Some of the smaller ones I planted last fall bloomed but I cut them off so they would grow a bit more since it's their first year.

They bloom all summer though so it isn't a big deal to drop the blooms off of them. I had a few blueberries all the way into November last year.

Here is one single berry that is beginning to ripen. All of the others are still green. So hopefully in a week or so we can start harvesting some strawberries.

There are a few tartarian cherries and a few nectarines as well. I'm not sure the cherries will ripen. The nectarines are very, very small still, so it's hard to know what to make of them yet.

There are a few gooseberries on as well. They seem to be doing okay, but I'm not sure how long I am suppose to wait to harvest them. I've never had one before.

The Genesis of a Chicken Coop

The last couple of weeks I've been working on building a chicken coop out of the scrap wood that I have around the homestead.

I have been replacing the soffits on the eaves and I have been able to repurpose some of the old plywood that has been removed.

I thought that the tiger stripe paint job would cut down on the predators or at least look pretty cool.

I used some old posts that used to be borders around the yard as legs. The top of the table used to be the door to the basement.

The exterior is made from the old soffits and I used the eave vents for ventilation in the coop. So in essence the coop has been zero cost except for time.

The top lid is hinged and will open up as will the front if needed.

I found it to be quite time consuming building on the fly without a definite plan to go off of. Cobbling together scraps of wood and trying to match one piece with the next is a slow process.

I'm really not fond of working this way because although the scrap material was free, the extra amount of time that it took to figure out a design offset the money saved on material.

I'd much prefer to spend a few hours drawing a plan and then buy the material needed and execute the job, even if it is more expensive.

Time is our most valuable asset.

Pond Evolution

We've finally been able to level out the terrain around our pond and bring in some rocks. We've put in a few plants like some grasses and a couple of bulbs that will take a little while to come in.

The fish have all survived now for about two weeks. They are more adventurous now and spend more time in the shallower water. I didn't see them at all for the first few days.

I see quite a few birds using the pond as well.

The water in the pond had become crystal clear but since it rained a good bit lately it's pretty cloudy again.

It's still a work in progress but overall it has come along pretty well.

Pond Life

Besides our tree frog Lincoln, I've added ten goldfish to the pond yesterday. As of today they are all still alive though they stay pretty deep most of the time, out of sight.

Goldfish cost twenty-nine cents a piece at Pet Smart. So I spent $3 on fish. Not too steep of an investment I suppose.

More aquatic plants are coming in the near future.

I haven't actually seen Link since I moved him out to the pond, hopefully he's still around somewhere.

The pv powered aeration pump kicks on about 10 a.m. and stops around 4 p.m. It runs fairly strongly most of the time. It will taper off some when a cloud passes over. On an overcast day it just trickles a little. Still, I think with the aquatic plants on the daily water flow the water has ample oxygen for the fish. The water has actually cleared up quite a bit lately. I'm not sure if it's the flow of the water or the addition of the plants or a combination of both.

However, it is a natural habitat. I am not filtering the water with elaborate pumps and filters like koi pond enthusiasts do. Any detritus that falls into the water will decompose and create a fertile compost that I can later use elsewhere.

Last year we took a koi pond tour in Atlanta and saw some amazing ponds. Unfortunately, all of the ponds we saw take great amounts of inputs of energy, food, time, and mostly money. They are for all intents and purposes, swimming pools for fish. Still, they were all gracious people and the ponds do give serene and meditative elements for the owners.

 This pond was truly amazing!

He basically had a dock off of his back doorstep. Tens of thousands of gallons of water, all filtered. There isn't one speck of algae in these ponds.

I believe this pond owner was a koi breeder and does therefore earn some income from his fish. This was by far and away the most extensive pond/eathworks location on the tour. From the front of the house you would never have guessed the backyard was like a tropical rain forest.

This was one of the larger ponds we saw, not as ornate as the one above but the fish were huge. There were two more ponds above this one which was probably over eight feet deep.

Lots of ponds featured gorgeous water features. This was the sole owner I heard mention using any outputs from the fish.

He said he used the fish manure to fertilize the banana trees.

This is the elaborate filtration and pumping system for the pond. An incredible amount of time effort and money!

This tranquil looking pond was adjacent to a swimming pool.

Function Stacking

In permaculture every element should have multiple functions.

"Each element in the system should be chosen and placed so that it performs as many functions as possible. A pond can be used for irrigation, watering livestock, aquatic crop, and fire control. It is also a habitat for waterfowl, a fish farm, and a light reflector." - Mollison


In our system we have an arbor. Besides it's intrinsic function of providing a shaded sitting area, it also provides structure for the climbing kiwi vines. In keeping with the second part of Mollison's statement, the arbors placement was chosen carefully.

It's orientation is aligned exactly north to south. The arbor is located in close proximity to the pond so the pleasant sound of flowing water can be appreciated.

Utilizing the southern aspect of the arbor, it makes a great structure for mounting the solar panel that powers the dc pond aeration pump. So now the pond will not need any additional energy inputs from industrial power generation.

So the arbor performs many functions for us:

- sitting area
- kiwi vine trellis
- solar panel structural support
- birds & squirrels often utilize it
- aligned with cardinal directions
- shade
- meditative area