Steven McKraken

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Hey Steven, good info. How do you prep your char for filtering? As in, how finely is it ground, how heavily was it rinsed heavily during production, and how long do you think it remains effective in your filter?

PS, fish farm on the prairies? More information SVP.

To start I use the retort method to make the char because it gives the best char for my application. I don't grind or crush the char at all. I know I can get a lot more surface area if I do I find that I end up with a lot more dust that I have to wash out before using it. So the first rinse is when I douse the char when it just comes out of the retort. I then place the char on a screen to shake the dust and small particles off while I fill the bags. After that I give a rinse to the char until I see no black running out of the bags. This past winter I also started using the char to help with solids filtration, so as the water makes its way through the settling tank, aquaponics tank, biological filter it then goes through a 5 gallon bucket of char. The char should help filter any remaining ammonia and nitrates and polish off the water before it hits the fish tank. I would say I believe the fish did benefit from the extra filtration but I think my char was actually too course to properly filter out the solids. I use whatever clean wood I can get my hands on but I do have a preference for hardwoods. Softwood makes a much more porous char but can crumble and turn into dust fairly easily while hardwoods don't. I want to keep the water clean not make it into a char soup and irritate the trouts gills.

Late to seeing this post. I use biochar all the time as a filter media in my fish farm. I put the char in filter bags and throw the bags into my filter. One thing from my research and understanding is char does not hold onto nitrates very well but holds onto ammonia.

That is very interesting. Are you mixing saw dust in with manure to compost?

Do you use your frogguano in your own gardens or do you dry it and sell it?

Fascinating! Love the pictures. So do you control light and temperature to morph the frogs? How do you get them to eat pelleted feed? Very interesting to see a different aspect of aquaculture.
Do you make use of the fouled up water?

So you raise all of your frogs in tanks? Do you trick the adults into breeding all year long? What exactly do you feed them? Do any of them get turned into frog legs?

Here are the links I was mentioning:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-020-08196-3
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/aquacultural-engineering
https://www.conservationfund.org/projects/woodchip-bioreactor-research
http://aquaponicsnation.com/forums/topic/8204-mushroom-biofilter/

My plan is to somehow combine mushroom growing with such a wood chip bioreactor. Anything I need to think of? Suggestions? Maybe someone has already tried it but no one knows. Seems like there is a lot of gaps in this field but I guess I try it. Trouble is when running a business/farm one may not have the facilities, time or inclination to do a proper scientific study.

Does anyone here have experience using mushrooms, specifically wine cap (Garden Giants or King Stropharia) as a mycofilter ( other species acceptable)? Especially in an aquaponic or aquaculture setting? I am trying to drop nitrates down to manageable levels. Once I have time a little later I have a few papers and articles to share on what I would like to do.

Working and being part of the aquaculture industry, whenever I hear indoor shrimp farming and state of the art I always go how long will it last. From my understanding shrimp are finiky creatures, very susceptible to disease and when you talk northern states/Canada hard to get a good supply for young stock. I recall hearing a place I think it was in Alberta that tried it and didn't even last 2 years.
Hope they do well but only time will tell.