Fish Pee and Sunshine

Got around to creating a logo for CELSS.net.



It is comprised of a human silhouette within a blue nearly closed circle, superimposed by a starburst/spiral or double helix (as seen from the end).

The human silhouette in the background reflects the centrality of humans to the design.

The circle nearly enclosed by the C shows the goal of closing the loop. The color blue represents the importance of water to Life.

The golden bars forming the rungs of DNA also form a star, Sol and ultimate source of power. With some imagination, the golden bars also help form the e and l in CELSS. The spiral S simultaneously represents the DNA of Life as well as the ever outward expansion of Life through the galaxy. The color green represents the plant kingdom and its importance.

Inside:

I finally broke down and bought a 300W LED grow light, through Amazon, which won't arrive for a couple weeks yet. I also got around to mounting my #2 mirror (see Aquaponics through the Looking Glass), which does seem to help. It was previously leaning against the house, but the lean angle, even though slight, was not favorable for getting sunlight to redirect down in the window well.

No substantial changes to the AP plant beds, although I do have a bit of lettuce going now in addition to what was listed in my last update. I am going to experiment with using sand for media in one 10G tank and try growing some root veggies there, most likely a combination of carrots, beets, and yams. Will need to make another bell siphon, but need to think on how best to filter sand. May ultimately end up with a wicking bed instead.

I'm also making plans to start a BSF colony, in preparation for raising quail. Have not settled yet on a design. Ideally, the pupae to self harvest, but keep the flies somewhat contained.

For all that, I still have a bit of cleanup to do. A couple weeks ago, our washing machine overflowed... for 4 hrs... and flooded the basement. Fortunately, it didn't cause any damage to my hab lab. Unfortunately it did warp a bunch of floorboards upstairs, and mess up the ceiling in a few places in the finished portion of the basement, and soak through several cardboard storage boxes in the closet right under the laundry room. The contents of those boxes are strewn across the dry, unfinished portion of the basement, where I'd arranged them to dry. In a more humid environment, this would have been more catastrophic. Overall, it does make one consider design of grey water/clean water flows in a closed system...

In Between

Brought my moringa home from the office to put outside and feed some fish pee. It was hit by spider mites at work, and so far has yet to recover. I'm hopeful, since it has lost leaves several times already and regrown them after I thought all that was left was a stick.

I've also put out my second paw paw tree, which I'd wintered in the garage (the other is successfully growing in AP ystem). I've identified a nice shady spot for it in my front yard.

Outside:

Although I anticipate at least one or two more snows this year, I did start planting the garden, and got my asparagus in, along with some onions, kale, and carrots. I moved the rhubarb to the mulch under my maples. Since rhubarb is poisonous to insects, I am instead putting mint around the fruit trees, so as to keep my bees from harm and not impact fruit pollination. I ordered more apple scions and will try grafting again this year on the two crabapples. Also got some chinquapin seedlings, which I will be getting into the ground after the next snow (expected in a few days). I'm hoping that the chesnut blight will be less likely to hit them in the arid climate here, just outside of their native range.

Been thinking a lot about colonizing Mars lately, with the publicity of Mars One in the news, and started off reading through the MIT analysis, which came to the not-too-surprising conclusion that 50m2 of plant space (in racks) would be insufficient to feed 4 people. What did surprise me was that this conclusion was based on the inadequate CO2 production by the crew to induce sufficient plant growth, and that supplementing the CO2 from the Martian atmosphere would result in flammable levels of O2. The obvious solution to me is that the mission should consider animals to supplement both the food supply and the CO2 production. Were it up to me, I would add the following:

• red worms- to break down compost from human waste and dead plant matter, possibly for processing Martian soil, and for feeding tilapia and quail
• BSF larvae- also for composting and feeding tilapia and quail
• tilapia- for adding protein to human diet and nutrients to grow beds
• quail- mostly for eggs and occasionally meat
• rabbits- add protein to diet and process vegetable waste

None of these take up a great deal of room. The invertebrates can be kept dormant for the trip there, simply by temperature. The tilapia will incur the greatest weight penalty just due to the water weight.

The study utilized the Modified Energy Cascade (MEC) for modeling plant growth. The limited data set in this study inspired me to look further into the topic to see if there was a way to open crowd source the methodology to expand the body of knowledge to a much wider plant set. I'm still looking into that, more to come as I do so.

This topic has me also waxing philosophical about the life cycle of an EcoArk. As somewhat of a CELSS purist, I've long considered the metric of good habitat strictly to be its stability measured in years it is capable of surviving in a completely closed status. However, the process of starting an Eco Ark may start from nearly scratch, from a very limited "seed" of parts and biomass, such as one would take to another planet. A habitat cannot be winked into existence, it must be grown, built, evolved. At the same time, nothing lasts forever, so ultimately CELSS must be able to reproduce, if they are to provide humanity any long lasting benefit. For the growth and meiosis stages of a habitat life cycle, there MUST be a transfer of matter, thus violating the definition of a closed system. However, the catch is that a CELSS cannot exist without considering both the beginning and end processes.

A few additional measures of success for a CELSS habitat come to mind, besides the first one:
1. How long a mature closed habitat can remain stable.
2. The transmissibility of seeds- cost of assembling transporting a seed package.
3. Seed viability- how quickly a habitat can be grown to maturity from a seed

For 2 and 3, intake of outside resource must be considered. No living thing can grow without consuming resources, and also no living thing can birth progeny without sacrificing part of itself. Indeed, it would be sad existence for humans if we could not go travel out of our habitat on an occasional EVA to explore the surroundings in search of resources or to visit other CELSS and exchange genes, companionship and ideas. The ultimately successful CELSS must be able therefore to support both ISRU and EVA.

In the course of analyzing the Mars One study, I came across the NASA Baseline Values and Assumptions Document, which I think gets NASA much farther in the direction they need to go. I will be gradually integrating this paper into the CELSS site as I find time over the coming months, and as I continue also looking for the methodology behind MEC plant data (for which I've already created a wiki page).

It seems I'm long overdue for an update. System is going well, although some of the plants are looking a little scraggly. Had a bit of white fly that I'm still mopping up onesies and twosies, and they devastated the bean plant I had going. While I was down in Florida at the end of last year, I picked up a stalk of sugar cane and some lemon grass from the Miami Fruit and Spice Park, and both of them seem to be doing well in my system.


Worms are doing fine in the basement, thinking of adding some more trays, and would like to reserve the top tray for something that eats fruit flies. Unfortunately our midwife toads all died, but I may try collecting a Woodhouse toad or two this summer.

Bees are wintering. We have had a couple of pretty cold spells this year, so I took pity and added a reptile heat pad under the roof of their hive. Had a couple warm days this weekend, so I took the opportunity to clean out the dead bees from the bottom of the hive, which were fed to the tilapia.


Lost both of the fancy goldfish, which I put down to inbreeding. A few of the white tilapia also somehow disappeared completely soon after adding them. I suspect the catfish but can prove nothing. The remaining 17 tilapia are doing fine, with several of them up to 4" or so now. I've been careful to throw some worms and meal worms into the fish tank once or twice a week to give everyone a protein fix.

While visiting the Great Sand Dunes in the San Luis Valley, I stumbled upon the source of the mythical Colorado White Tilapia(R): Believe it or not, in the middle of Colorado there is an alligator farm. Colorado Gators started out as a commercial tilapia farm and imported a couple of gators as garbage disposal for dead fish. I suspect that along the way, they discovered a few tax breaks and decided to turn the operation to an animal rescue/educational/tourist venture. While not a true aquaponics system (they continuously pump in new water from hot springs source, and release cold water to the surface), they do use fish pee to grow various plants (watercress mainly, and what appeared to be a lot of bamboo).

There was also a cute little geodesic dome greenhouse next to the yurt where we stayed. Of course, I completely failed to get any pictures of it, but ran across this image which is even cuter... and closely approaches the CELSS ideal in my minds eye.

At any rate, I acquired 10 more fingerlings, unsexed whites, to go with my reds and blues. Also got two 7 inch channel cats, and got everyone (including wife and kids) home safely in the first snowstorm of the season. Need to check on my bees in the morning to see how they are weathering the frigid temperatures.

My AP system seems to be cycling well- nitrate levels are a bit high due to slow plant uptake/growth, which I suspect is limited by poor lighting and somewhat cool temperatures.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my son to the Grow Haus for home school co-op and picked up a dozen tilapia. So in addition to those fingerlings, my AP fish tank now contains a couple of large fancy goldfish, two smaller goldies, and three large (~10") catfish of different varieties. In the sump I have some daphnia and ghost shrimp I'm hoping to breed for fish feeding. I have duckweed going in a couple of tanks. I do have some commercial feed, but the fish seem to like table scrap rice and meal worms best.

The tilapia are two varieties, Red and Blue. Supposedly there is a third breed particular to my area, called Colorado White. All mine are males, raised at one of the state penitentiaries. Supposedly there is guy in the area that raises catfish, which I'd like to mix into my tank.

I'm still refining bell siphons and have two (10gal) modules cycling reliably, with two more in troubleshoot mode to get them to start and stop better over a range of inflow rates.

After three cracked aquariums, I think I've got a working bell siphon design. The difficult part was, well... all of it really. Actually the research and design were pretty simple after running across Affnan's website. My design (shown below) is a recycled bottle variant. I had to refine my glass cutting skills a bit, and went through a number of practice bottles along the way, but think I've got the technique down now. Just need to drink a couple more bottles of wine...


The bulkead I had so easily envisioned was surprisingly difficult to source. I probably spent $20 in plumbing fittings trying to find a workable combination, then over tightened it and cracked the bottom. Then I bumped the mounted siphon in a second tank, and cracked that one. Then sliding a third tank across the top of my sump, ran the downspout into a partition (which I've trimmed down to prevent this going forward). I've worked out a repair method for cracked aquariums using clear epoxy. Hopefully, I've also learned to be more careful! Here's a little video I made of the workings thus far:

I've made a push to get the whole system going by next weekend, which in addition to some plumbing involved a lot of expanded clay ball washing last weekend before I had to leave on this week's business trip. I wasn't confident enough in my cutoff valves and pump flow to leave the system cycling while on my trip. Right now the tank is occupied by a couple of goldfish and some ghost shrimp, and some water hyacinths (see below) that I am using to detoxify the system, and provide shelter and nesting for my feeder fish. I'm debating about how many hyacinths to keep, once I have the grow beds hooked up and planted. I'd also introduced some water lettuce from the same source, but most of it rottted.

We've acquired a number of new aquariums, and are actually running out of places to put them. One of them came with a 20 yr old, foot long plecostomus catfish, which will go nicely in my 240gal tank, able to defend itself from the food fish, and keep the algae down. For now however, it resides in what will be my 55gal breeder tank. I've also got about a dozen smaller breeding plecos.

Seems we've officially entered the aquaponics phase, since I'm now growing duckweed and hopefully watercress (just started from seed). As something of an experiment, I took a different spin for the time being, by integrating edible aquatic plants enclosed within the aquarium habitat itself. As you can see from the photo, I've also acquired my grow media... which floats. Waiting to see if it gains density with bacterial colonization.



My more traditional system is still in construction phase, currently trying to find a good solution to bulkhead fittings for the bell siphons.

Extinctions and EcoArks

The K-T extinction event that heralded the end of the dinos and the rise of mammals is widely believed to have been caused by atmospheric heating from the asteroid that impacted the Gulf of Mexico some 65 million years ago, causing the Chicxulub crater. The theory is that the kinetic energy of the asteroid converted to thermal as it came through the atmosphere, and briefly heated the global air temp hot enough to cook meat. The critters that survived were generally small burrowing animals (e.g., mammals, snakes, and dinosaurs that became modern birds) or aquatic (e.g., fish, crocodilians, turtles) that were protected during the catastrophe.

In terms of death toll, however, the K-T pales in comparision to P-T extinction 252 million years ago. The evidence for cause is far less conclusive, but a leading theory is that the atmosphere quickly became anoxic, with poisonous (hydrogen sulfide and/or methane hydrate) gases bubbling out of the oceans. Dinosaurs and mammals both survived due to their efficient lung design. Large insects (such as the giant dragon flies) and many amphibians were too reliant on 30% atmospheric oxygen and died out. Possible triggers for this dramatic atmospheric change may have been some combination of volcanism, continental drift, and asteroid impact causing chemistry and temperature changes to the ocean, and hence induce bacterial blooms to cataclysmically change the atmospheric makeup.

My takeaway lesson from these examples is that you can't trust the Earth's atmosphere over the long term. The allegory of Noah's Ark was probably on the right track - it's always good to be prepared. The other piece Noah got right was the biodiversity of breeding stock. For better or worse, humans require a complex food chain; I suspect any stable closed ecosystem does as well.

My Growing EcoArk

This summer has been a season of acquisition, adding to my aquarium stock and plumbing. An unintended consequence of outsourcing procurement operations to my freecycling, garage saling, craiglisting wife, is that many of the enclosures are already inhabited. I'm not convinced that it is entirely coincidence-- she's long had a love of exotic critters. Hence, we are now incorporating a ribbon snake, a woodhouse toad, a fluctuating number of minnows, 3 silver dollar fish, an indeterminate number of hermit crabs, and 2 dwarf frogs.

So far my ark contains representation from the phyla of Chordata (humans, reptiles, amphibians, fish, considering fowl), Annelida (earth worms), and Arthropoda (honey bees, pill bugs, crabs, considering crawdads and black soldier flies). Other phyla for consideration are Rotifera, Tardigrada and Mollusca, I'm not convinced yet of the utility of all the other various (round, flat, jaw, etc) worm phyla and other saltwater primitives (sponges, jellyfish, echinoderms).

The minnows are a PetSmart acquisition to feed the snake. Apparently, goldfish are not nutritious enough. Also, apparently the goldfish is not compatible with the silver dollars. I am inclined to throw the frogs in with the goldfish now that we've got a 5 gal aquarium. I'm now in the process of changing the silver dollars and remaining minnows from a 27G to a 40G tank. The silver dollars require a heater, of which I'm not fond. We're considering changing the minnows over to platys, which can hopefully breed well to keep the snake fed.

Other than population control of the minnows / anticipated platys, I'm not entirely sure what the function of the snake would be in my CELSS. A bit like a self licking ice cream cone... . Not that I have anything against snakes, but if I need a reptilian representative for my ark, my preference would be turtle. Not only do they have fewer bones (ever eat snake?), turtles are nature's Campbell's soup, even providing the bowl. Snakes are finnicky eaters, and only carnivorous- this ribbon snake seems to only eat fish, the insects we've put in his cage all died of old age. Turtles (and tortoise) can be fed from table scraps. The downside perhaps is that they are not exactly prolific breeders.

The hermit crabs are also scavengers, and are the most popular pets we've had yet. My kids love to take them out to the sandbox and make castles for them. We've put the toad in with the crabs, since they both have similar habitat requirements, and both eat pill bugs (which help to breakdown waste, and are easily caught by my kids). The crabs are almost ideal for a CELSS. I say almost, because they are reliant on conch shells for protection and need brine to reproduce. I'm leaning toward crawdads for crustacean representation, since I know they are edible and can cohabitate with freshwater fish.

My Extinctions

My worms disappeared. I suspect bad sawdust from treated lumber as the culprit, although I will cop to throwing in an odd lemon rind as well. While I do have a second composter, it is not populated with worms. Clearly, there needs to be a level of redundancy. Fortunately for me, the garden supply store can provide it this time around.

This situation has worried me with the bees as well, particularly since they breed as a colony and are less dependable to source. Subsequently, I've built a second topbar hive, in preparation for next spring's swarm season. Don't worry, they currently are going strong and I plan to harvest some honey this month.

Just a quick update - a lot going on.

Aquaponics- gave my contractor the ultimatum to be done by the end of this week, so I can clean up the basement, get rid of the dust from sheetrock, tile cutting and sawdust. In the meantime I'm still struggling to source plumbing to make bell siphons- more to come on that. The good news is the glass cutting hole saws I purchased online seem to work ok on the 10G aquariums.

Bees- had to add a bunch more top bars to keep up with hive growth. A baseball size lump of bees was having to camp outside overnight. In the process, I did get stung once. Sting count for the year is 5.

Companion Planting- while late for this year, I've been looking at the sparcity of my garden and thinking about all the wasted space, especially where the peas are starting to die back. Only two of my three sisters are going: beans never came up, the corn is pretty minimal (maybe 5 stalks), but the squash is going gangbusters. There is a whole lot of info on the web about companion planting, and frankly I'm still absorbing it all. I am considering moving my rhubarb patch to go under various fruit trees next year, so I can stop worrying about weeding grass out of my mulch. Same thing with mint. Wife nixed the idea of using cactus.

Desirables- Learned a big lesson this year, before I got around to ripping out an unknown sapling, slotted for replacement with one of my pawpaws. The tree started sprouting berries, and I eventually managed to identify them as juneberries, which are not only edible, but indeed quite tasty. It turns out I had 3 more juneberry bushes in my garden area that are all slightly different varieties. I'd also been on a mission to gradually change the flower garden (planted by previous owners) over to edibles. I've now identified calendula (marigold) as a keeper (not only edible, it makes a nice companion for lots of veggies. Who knows what else I'll discover about the existing flora?