Checking out the mangrove plantings

Continued Progress

We planted more mangroves at Royal Maya Shrimp Farm last Saturday and had quite a good time (despite the heat).

There were no crocs, but we did find some footprints.

I will be visiting Urbana in about a week and need to know how many Aquamats to bring and what type. I saw that almost 40% of the Uni student body is sick with H1N1 or other sicknesses (Yikes! Who knew coming to the US could be so risky?). In any case, I would fly into hades if necessary to see the state cross country finals, so I'll be there. Tell me a good date between the 6th and 12th if you want to meet.

Here's a quick update on the use of the site. We're well over 3,200 hits (not quite the 6,000 I mis-remembered during our Uni meeting last month). Unfortunately, I was also a bit lax keeping up with all the countries who monitored our site over the summer so these stats will be a bit under-represented. Looking back through September and October and the countries we had already logged, it appears we have at least 44 different nations checking in on us. Those include:

Abu Dhabi
Argentina
Australia
Belize
Brazil
Brunei
Canada
Cayman Islands
China
Columbia
Costa Rica
Croatia
Czechoslovakia
Dubai
Ecuador
England
France
Germany
Guatemala
Honduras
India
Indonesia
Italy
Jamaica
Laos
Malaysia
Netherlands
Pakistan
Philipenes
Poland
Portugal
Saudi Arabia
Singapore
Slovakia
South Africa
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland
Taiwan
Thailand
Trinidad and Tobago
Turkey
United States
Vietnam

November 22, 2009 edit to add:

Albania
Hungary
Iran
Lithuania
Portugal
Romania
Virgin Islands

Nice!

Good luck as you work on designs!

Aquamats Get Wet and Welcome Abigail Parham

First we stopped by the sedimentation pond at Aquamar Shrimp Farm that Adolpho has just finished rehabilitating.

You can see the deeper canal on the near bank where water enters the pond. This is where we will be deploying Aquamats. On the far bank is a footing that directs the channeled water into the shallow center area before it exits at the control structure on the back right part of the photo. There are also few shallow partitions in the deeper channel for planting mangrove strips.

The pond looks terrific and should be a terrific place to trap sediments and test the Aquamats. Thank you Adolpho!

Then Adrian and Wilbur and I loaded up 75 Aquamats (you can get an idea from this photo about the size of 75 mats) and took them down to the pond...

...where we will be using 3 types of Aquamats. The specifications for each type are listed in an earlier post. Capped PVC pipes were inserted through the sleeve at one end. The blue Aquamats with narrow strips float, the green Aquamats with thicker strips float, and white ones with heavy thick strips sink. We have plenty of all three types. The PVC for the floating type will need to be weighted with sand to sink the sleeve and allow the strips to float up from the bottom.

I will bring a few Aquamats back to Illinois in November for the group to use for the experiments. We should discuss what type to bring.

After rounding up the Aquamats, we headed over Independence Jr. College where we met with Abigail Parham, environmental biology instructor. Abigail will be coordinating the interns who will test the Inventeams prototype during winter 2010.

Welcome, Abigail!

Inventor's Club Wins Lemelson-MIT Inventeams Grant

Congratulations to all the University High School Inventor's Club members for winning a Lemelson-MIT Inventeams Grant. You should definitely be proud. These prestigious awards only went out to 15 schools around the country. People in the Placencia area were excited to hear the news. I got this note from Alvin Henderson, co-owner of the Royal Maya Shrimp Farm.

"...Congratulations on winning the Lemelson-MIT grant for the algae recycling prototype! We have seen the encouraging results of the mangrove planting initiatives and hope that this new programme will meet with similar success.

Best regards,

Alvin"


The agenda for the next 8 months looks like this:

October 2009-January 2010: develop the prototype in Illinois

January 2009-May 2010: test the prototype in cooperation with Independence Jr. College at local shrimp farms

June 2010: Present results at the Inventeams conference in Boston

Time to get busy!

Wilbur's First Day

Here's a brief photo essay showing Wilbur Dubon's first day as an environmental intern.



We had a little mangrove planting in mind for an erosion control project. Adrian, Wilbur and I went out to gather mangrove propagules.

Mangrove propagules are pretty easy to get right now and we had 1,500 in about 45 minutes.

A test plot from last year had shown good promise for sediment retention.

Adrian showed Wilbur the finer points of propagule planting....

...and despite the rain and heat, Wilbur was off to the races.

1500 mangrove propagules are now in place to slow erosion and provide habitat.

That's a great first day. Well done Mr. Dubon!

An invigorating meeting

The Uni High Inventor's Club (plus one very cute 5 year old) met today to discuss designs for the algae recycling prototype. Multiple designs are being considered and they all show promise.

Keep an eye on the blog in days to come. Great things are happening!

Pending activities and welcome Wilbur!

It appears the next Inventor's Club meeting will be October 9 at 2:00PM (confirm with Mr. Bergandine). Club members will be brainstorming and going over designs.

In the meantime, work in Belize continues.



Wilbur Dubon, freshly graduated from Independence Jr. College (an adjunct institution to Independence High School), will kick off the intern program this year. A picture of the first meeting between Wilbur and Aquamar manager Linda Thornton is posted above. Wilbur will be engaged in field monitoring and water quality analysis in canals and mangrove areas over the coming weeks.

We hope to have 3 more students working on projects by January.

Welcome, Wilbur!

Back in Belize

After enjoying some time in Illinois watching the start of the 2009 Cross Country Season (go Uni!), I'm back in Belize and ready to move ahead with projects here.

I'll be meeting with shrimp farmers soon and preparing to implement designs from the Inventor's Club.

Look for me back in Urbana from October 7-14th.

Is there any news on the Illinois end?

Here's a picture of a black mangrove forest that is going to be put into a private reserve this year. One of my projects will be working to set aside as much mangrove forest as possible this year. The little projections up from the soil provide oxygen to the roots of the black mangrove in marshy, anaerobic soil.

Some cool U of I people

This trip to Belize is winding down until September.

Before I leave, I want to take stock and introduce you to a couple of people working on this project who have U of I roots.



This is John Cheeseman, professor of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois. Here he is checking out a red mangrove that was planted in a farm effluent outlet last November. John visited last week and gave a rousing lecture at a mangrove conservation workshop that I hosted in Placencia. I can still hear the cheering....

Some one once asked how do mangroves absorb nutrients from effluent water when they're planted on the banks of the canal. That's a good question. Here's the answer. Check out those roots! That's pretty impressive root development for a 7 month old plant, eh?



This is Linda Thornton, one of my favorite people in the world. Linda manages Aqua Mar Shrimp Farm and is the owner of Cardelli Shrimp Farm. Linda as lived and worked in the shrimp aquaculture industry in Belize for decades. If you want to know anything at all about shrimp, ask Linda. She knows. She's also one of the toughest, and most accomplished people I know...AND...she has been a stalwart supporter of efforts to improve the environmental sustainability of shrimp farming...AND...she is a proud graduate of the Department of Animal Sciences at the University of Illinois.

Go Illini!

Working the ponds

The excavator has been hard at work at Aqua Mar shrimp farm removing old sediment from the sedimentation pond.

At Royal Maya shrimp farm, we have been regularly cleaning and recalibrating the In Situ probe and collecting the data for further analysis.

We've had a few bumps and we're a bit behind schedule, but we're getting good baseline data and things are moving ahead.

As the Uni High summer vacation moves ahead, keep thinking creatively about the project and checking back on the blog. If you find something interesting, go ahead and post it. We'll be ready to dive back in when school starts in fall.

The probe arrives!

The WWF water quality probe finally cleared all the hurdles at customs and arrived in Placencia this week. Representatives from the Central American and Belizean offices of WWF arrived to install the In Situ Troll. They're pictured below with captain and community researcher Adrian Vernon, consultants from Adcon Corporation (the company handling the satellite uplink), In Situ (the water quality probe manufacturer) and Rachel Carrie, a graduate student working with Xac Che, a group doing watershed work in southern Belize.



Here we are all heading out to the installation site.

Here Jon Thomas of In Situ demonstrates how to calibrate the water quality probe as Kendrick Gordon of Belize Department of Environment (left) and Jose Vasquez of WWF (on the right) look on.



Arnold Lara of Adcon works on the satellite uplink as community researcher as WWF representative Mauricio Mejia looks on.

And the finished system is ready to roll. We'll be watching the probe over the next few weeks and documenting the effects of efforts to improve water quality at the farms.

Progress!!

More Sedimentation Ponds for AquaMats

One of the tasks of my current project is to reduce nutrient inputs from shrimp ponds to the local environment. As we have discussed, one of the ways that is done is by constructing sedimentation ponds. These, intuitively enough, trap sediment and nutrients attached to sediments. Eventually these ponds fill and need rehabilitation.

Thanks to some help from AquaMar Shrimp Farm, we will be able to use Aquamats in a freshly re-dug pond.

Meet Adolpho.

Adolpho operates a dredge at the farm. He will be creating deep areas along the sides of this sedimentation pond where our AquaMats can be deployed.

Presently, the pond has filled in from years of use. The trees you see growing in it are white mangroves.

Here you can see the layers of sediment that have been trapped in the pond over the years of use.

Adolpho will not only be scraping out some of that sediment, he will also be creating small, separate catchment areas inside the sedimentation pond that we can use to test the efficacy of the Aquamats as nutrient traps.

Once the Inventor's club substrate and biofilm removal system is in place, they could be deployed in those catchment areas as well.

Many thanks to Adolpho, AquaMar farm manager Linda Thorton and owner Mike Dunker for all their support.

Quick notes and Aquamats

Three agenda items here:

1. Meeting tomorrow at 11:35 at Uni High. I assume we're meeting at the usual spot.

2. We just passed 2000 hits on the Inventor's Club page. Our site has now been viewed in most states in the US, plus Canada, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, Brazil, China, Germany, the Philippines, Thailand, Ecuador, Vietnam, Laos, Spain, India, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, the Cayman Islands, South Africa, Taiwan, Czechoslovakia, Turkey, Sweden, Finland and Iran. That's 28 countries so far.

Update, May 14th. 2122 hits and add Norway, Chile, Jamaica and Australia.

3. Newly acquired manufacturer information about AquaMats!

The following are facts gleaned from the Meridian Applied Technology Systems AquaMat Customer Information Manual (Nursery edition). We've already discussed much of this, but a summary may be useful here as we continue to think about our own substrates and scrapers.

AquaMats are especially recommended for nursery culture of shrimp from post larval stage 10 and up (approimately .01 to 2 grams of size). Sizes range from 2m X 1.22M to 2M X .61M. The Meridian Corporation reports up to 30% reductions in feed costs when AquaMats are used (a figure we may find useful for future calculations).

AquaMats require exposure to direct sunlight (as we have discussed).

AquaMats float. Therefore Meridian recommends that AquaMats be deployed on 2" PVC pipe frames sunk to the bottom and filled with sand. These are attached by cinching down by cable ties (those thin plastic strips used to bundle video cables).

Meridian also recommends that AquaMats be preconditioned prior to deployment. The desired colonizing organism (as we have discussed) is benthic diatoms. Diatoms are high in highly unsaturate fatty acids (HUFAs), an important nutritional item. Meridian discusses techniques that can be used to encourage the growth of specific desireable species. This is achieved by using pure cultures of these organisms and by saturating the mats in a solution of nitrate and phosphate salts (no lack of those in our sedimentation ponds) plus sodium metasilicate (silica is a limiting nutrient for diatoms) and some trace metals and vitamins.

Meridian recommends a 3 day culture time prior to introducing AquaMats as shrimp feed. This time period may vary with local conditions. As we discussed, if the mats are left in culture too long, they will acquire undesirable organisms. Each AquaMat user must determine the proper pre-conditioning time for their requirements.

Depending on the rates of algae growth and the density and growth rates of shrimp, algae films on AquaMats might continue to grow, become depleted or reach a steady-state where growth and removal become balanced.

Meridian states that AquaMats can be cleaned with a pressure hose and dried or simply returned to pre-condition tanks (effluent canals). Sterilization is generally not used, but can be used. The following sterilization methods are approved:

1. Steam sterilization @ 15 psi for 20 minutes.
2. 3% chlorate for 2 hours.
3. 10% Hydrochloric acid for 2 hours at 25 C
4. 30-50 ppm formalin for 1 hour
5. 3% acetoperoxide for 1 hour
6. Heating below 190 C

AquaMats are not recommended in systems with excessive fine clays. Secchi depths greater than 25 cm are required.

BARNACLES are a problem. Meridian recommends filtration of waters using Aquamats at 120 to 150 microns. We will have to address barnacle colonization (perhaps by scraping?).

Update and Notes: Progress and Burglaries

It's great to see the first bit of information from the substrate tests. The early phases of the project seem to be going fine.

The Lemelson-MIT grant and the UN SEED grants have been submitted and we'll find out about those soon. The farms are excited and ready to go. On Tuesday this week, I visited one of our farms with a WWF representative. We happened to bump into the pond manager there and he was excited about the project and volunteered his time on weekends to help the IHS students with the field work. I also found out that the probe WWF is installing has finally cleared customs in Honduras and will be arriving in about 2 weeks.

A couple of other things have slowed us down a bit. It will be Easter holday in Belize until Monday next week, so we lost a bit of class time at IHS. Also, I was burglarized and my computer, field notes, back-ups and underwater camera were stolen (life lesson learned: NEVER keep your computer and backups together, even if you're just carrying them in in a back pack for a bit).

So I'm taking 2 weeks in the US to do some family things and trying to recover lost data. I could make a meeting next Friday with the Uni Inventor's Club if you plan to meet.

Look for a post from me soon with information from the Aquamat manufacturer.

Experiment Update- D+3 weeks, Also Group B Minutes

Vinyl progress: not as much growth as the screens, but stays lightweight and the smooth surface makes it easy to remove material.

Fiberglass screen is a close second to the steel in amount of growth.

Rubber comes dead last in terms of growth. Material (dirt?) comes off just by touching. But its close neighbor, the steel screen, wins the prize.

Note the abscence of the weed mat. It was growing little more than the rubber, and then was removed from the PVC by the lake. I didn't rescue it.

Lessons learned from this experiment so far:

-This rubber will not work.

-A fiberglass or steel screen may encourage more growth, but they complicate removal quite a bit, since the material can't just 'slide' off.

-Vinyl is most compatible with our current removal plan (see below) but it hasn't accumulated a whole lot of biomass.

In the near future I plan to take sample material under a microscope to see what exactly we "caught".

Another order of business:

The biomass-removal group met to explore our ideas.

We briefly researched algae removal techniques and found little of use. The nets came up with a variety of lake and aquarium algae removal devices, ranging from vacuums to string algae brushes. The closest device we found to our dreamed-up device was a flexible stainless steel scraper shaped like a rake, designed for scraping algae from large glass aquarium sides.

In our meeting, EFritzch proposed his idea for the device and we critiqued/improved it. I'll have him post about this, but it basically allows for one-sweep scraping without repeatedly having to pull the scraper in and out of the boat.

And lastly, welcome IHS students! We're so glad to be able to collaborate with you on this project.

Next Meeting

Met at IHS again yesterday. We had problems with internet connections, but a few students are still getting hooked up with the blog through their own resources. We're meeting next week in an internet cafe to help other students get started.

Right now the local students are just getting grounded in the project. It appears we'll be able to make trips through May to the farms so hopefully we can post some results by the end of the school year. Fall semester will probably be the bigger push, but we're getting in good ground work now, especially these preliminary experiments with substrates.

Let us know how the substrate experiments are going and take some time to meet the new bloggers from IHS. I'll post new information on Aquamats and a couple of recent experiences from the lagoon.

Club Minutes 3/20

1. Lemelson-MIT grant. We looked over and edited a draft of the project summary for our initial submission to the grant; that will be sent in (or has been sent) today.
2. Group meetings. Material removal will meet at my place on Monday to discuss design ideas we've developed and to check on the experiment so that we'll have a more tangible idea of what we're working with. Structure group- keep on researching, communicate through the blog.
3. Anchor report. Adam has been gathering contacts and working on the problem of how to keep the structure we create in place. We decided to depart from the idea of setting pipes at the bottom of the lake for structural support because of unwanted expense, difficulty of installation, and the fact that our current design doesn't involve a lot of structure at the bottom. We'll now look into attaching from the top, researching the type of rope, knot, and stakes we can use to keep our structure in place.
4. Tej said his dad is working on a pricing algorithm. Post with explanation?

Meeting in Independence

The meeting in Independence went quite well yesterday. Over 60 students from 1-4 forms (Middle School through High School age) attended. The level of interest was high. We'll have a follow-up meeting in about 10 days to set up Google accounts and begin posting. I noticed a big uptick in the web site hits from Belize, so some students are obviously already checking out the site.

In addition to the meeting at Independence, I also was able to meet with local shrimp farmers and get their input on the project. The reception among the shrimp farmers to our project has been very positive here.

One of those farms is allowing us to use their AquaMats for the substrate experiments this spring. For anyone who is wondering, here is a shot of the AquMats we'll be using to test the substrate mitigations this spring. As you can see, there's no lack of material here. Your experiments are starting on a small scale (as is appropriate), but when they are fully developed you'll be dealing with quantities of material like this.

D-Day: The Experiment Begins

Today at 7:00 pm I threw these PVCs loaded with potential substrate into the catchment pond. The aluminum, fiberglass, and rubber squares are attached with picture wire. The vinyl and weed guard mat (which I attached at the last minute purely because it was sitting in my garage) are attached with duct tape since the wire cut too easily through those materials. The PVC pipes are held to the bank by fishing line and stakes.

Hardware Store

Club members ecrussel and e.allen paid a visit to Lowe's this evening, scouting any possible materials that could be used in place of aquamats in the designs below.
The initial plan is to attach all of these potential substrates to PVC with duct tape and submerge in a nasty pond to get a feel for the timeline, what works, and what doesn't. Daily (twice daily?) checks will be performed and I will record visible changes.
The material was chosen based on information from Lowe's personnel Jenny and Tim (we briefed them on our project and threw around material names).
We have:
91x213 cm fiberglass screening
91x213 cm aluminum screening
Dur-a-bull Indoor-outdoor mat 91x122 cm
Style selections premium vinyl shower curtain liner 183x183 cm
Rubber mat approx 15x15 cm
2 2.54cm x 1.52400m PVC and 4 caps to fit on the ends.
We will cut all materials into .5x.5m squares except for the small rubber mat, which was the only material of its kind available at Lowe's.
The screens will go into the water tomorrow at 6:00 pm, and will be checked at 6 am every day.
This is only the rough start of a series of experiments, and we will get more precise measurements in the future. Please comment with any modifications you would like to offer on this experiment, or any ideas for future experiments, or any other type of feedback.
Thanks for frequently checking into the blog!
-ecrussel and e.allen

More news from Belize

First of all, I should mention that I will be meeting with the Independence High School Environmental Club on Wednesday next week. They have over 50 members and are extremely active.

I have also had a chance to tour some of the area farms and check out our progress. In addition to the work with Aqua Mats, other mitigations are also ongoing in the effluent canals.

One of those projects is mangrove planting. Mangroves are a kind of tree that grow in salt water. They remove nutrient directly from effluent water and support colonies of organisms that also absorb nutrients. Recently I had a chance to check on some of those we've been doing for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Here's a picture at Aqua Mar shrimp farm showing Mauricio Mejia of WWF checking out some plantings we did with John Cheeseman of the University of Illinois. Survival is still over 95% at this site. We're happy with the progress here.



We also checked some plantings from Royal Maya. Some of these plantings were done in August of 2008. Some were done in November 2008. This picture shows Mauricio Mejia and Adrian Vernon (a community researcher in Placencia) checking out the November planting. The survival was very good there as well.

And the plantings from August at Royal Maya are growing to impressive sizes, with 4 internodes already in place and side-branching beginning. When these trees are fully grown, they will be an important part of the mitigation process in the farm effluent.

Placencia Lagoon Fisheries

I am in Belize now, and have had a chance to do some field work.

Specifically, I was able to help Eli Romero, a Belizean about to begin graduate school at Boston University. His study examines the movements of fish from the lagoon to sites offshore. This project is similar to one I did in the past, so we have been communicating and collaborating. In the picture above, we are surveying the catch of a local fisherman. Eli bought fish from this fisherman to sample the fish tissues for chemical tracers unique to the lagoon. Habitats like the lagoon are nursery areas for important commercial species like snapper.

By improving shrimp farm effluent quality, we are helping protect this fishery and the livelihood of fishers like this. We are also helping protect biodiversity. Unique fish like the trunk fish juvenile and adult below are common in the lagoon. By preserving seagrass habitat, we help protect their ability to survive.

Club Discussion - Friday, March 6, 2009

Today, in Inventor's Club, our sponsor, Mr. Bergandine, suggested that not only will we be encountering issues with our current design of the substrate, but that we also need to design a tool to use to remove the biomass from the substrate. The question is how we are going to scrape both sides of the netting/mesh that we currently have hanging down from the PVC pipes. We should try to make this a very automatic process. We would like to only have to go in one direction when harvesting. At the moment, our idea of scraping the biomass off into the boat with a scraper of some sort attached to the boat can only remove the biomass from one side at a time, requiring a second run through. Ideally, we would like to find a solution that requires little hands-on work.

In order to address the issue, we have split up into two groups, one focusing on the substrate design while the other would begin working on the harvesting tool design. Everybody should make sure they communicate with the other group members, preferably on the blog, in order to ensure that both groups are working in the same direction.

We also discussed possible testing plans. We have fish tanks available, but placing the testing materials in ponds would be preferable for two reasons:

1. In the fish tanks, a lot of the algae would probably grow on the glass instead of the substrate.
2. Ponds would create a better simulation of the natural enviroment and the light exposure.

E. Russell and E. Fritzsche mentioned easy access to ponds. We would probably want to begin testing soon. Mr. Smith mentioned that this time of year may be the best time to test due to the lack of tree leaves that would block out the sun, ensuring similar growing conditions as those in Belize. Also, there is little movement in the water and not too much rainfall. Our goal is to have some test results by the end of spring break.

InvenTeams is also an option. Applications submitted by March 20th will be given early feedback. The initial application deadline is April 24th. If we are to do this, we will have to work very quickly. More information is available at their website.

An Alternative Design

In the club meeting this week we discussed Liz’s proposed design.
http://i710.photobucket.com/albums/ww101/theodore1800/design1v1.jpg

It has many positive qualities and works as an excellent starting point (thanks, Liz!)
Main Structure.
Working from this design, I created a similar structure. This design consists of a less sturdy structure, as I use the PVC piping primarily to keep the aquamats from moving and to allow for easy removal of aquamats for replacement. According to http://www.nurturetech.net/aqua.htm, aquamats are equipped with ballast bags to keep them in place, but the PVC structure could allow several aquamats to be removed from the pond at the same time. This structure, consisting of a primary pipe paralleling the side of the effluent canal and perpendicular secondary pipes that the aquamats slip over, is attached to bank of the canal by ropes. One end of a rope would be tied to the primary pipe, and the other end would be tied on a stake on the side of the canal. This means the entire structure can be removed.
Details.
Each unit stemming from the primary pipe is connected by a tee and consists of one PVC pipe, one aquamat, and one cap. The PVC pipe length is slightly longer than the top of the aquamat. For the present, my idea for attaching the aquamat to the pipe would be to fold the top over to create a tunnel. I still need to work out exactly how this could be done, one option would be to sew this pocket in the aquamat; another option would be to use some kind of adhesive or pin to secure this tunnel. The aquamat would be kept from sliding off the PVC pipe by the cap. The top of each unit will be roughly equal to the surface of the water because of the floatation element associated with the aquamat.
Removal of substrate.
This design offers several different options for removal of organisms. I will briefly outline a few of them (discussed in our latest inventor’s club), and eventually follow up with more details.
1. Remove the entire structure and place in shrimp pond. Pros: this way we can utilize organisms growing both on the aquamats and the primary pipe. Cons: time must be allowed for the shrimp to eat off the structure
2. Remove entire structure and strip organisms by hose or rake. Pros: allows for faster cycle than in option 1. Cons: labor
3. Remove aquamats only and strip organisms by hose or rake.
4. (Inspired by Mr. Smith) Leave entire structure in the water, and move down the middle of the canal scraping all of the aquamats in sort of one swoop (this would only work with careful spacing of the aquamats, and we would have to develop a way to collect the substrates in the water). Pros: quick and dirty, Cons: we need to look into this further to be more specific. Hard to describe, so included a brief video demo- the spatula with basket represents the scraper tool (more on that later), the sticky notes are aquamats.

Pictures

Apologies for the strange model. PVC pipes represented by chopsticks, caps by pencil toppers, aquamats by cut paper, water by blue towel, rope by red yarn, PVC tees by masking tape.

http://i710.photobucket.com/albums/ww101/theodore1800/design1v2.jpg

http://i710.photobucket.com/albums/ww101/theodore1800/Overview.jpg

Credits: Thanks to CorelDRAW and Paint for graphics, http://www.irrigationtutorials.com/instal05.htm for hardware knowledge, http://www.nurturetech.net/aqua.htm for aquamat information, Mr. Smith for inspiration and wisdom, Liz for original design

Possible Starting Point for a Design

Post by Allen

After Tuesday's meeting, I thought of a simple design that might serve as a good starting point. I built frame for meshing to collect nitrate with PVC piping and it cost $6 total, although I had some left over. The box is 2 ft. x 2 ft. and the part that sticks out is 15 in.
It was very easy to assemble, I was able to cut the pieces and put it together without help, and it took about 45 minutes.


Image link: http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll219/amariah118/Inventors%20Club%20Competition/IMG_7359.jpg


This is an overview picture - I tried labeling each piece of PVC and also the joints, I hope you all can see it. Everything is 1/2 in. pipes, except "top" and "bottom", which are 3/4 in. and meant to slide over the 1/2 in pipes that they are placed above and below of, #5 and #6. "Top" and "bottom" will have mesh between them, so when you slide it over #5 and #6, it will be held out in the water. Joint "E" is where the whole thing will be hung, so you can easily have as many as you want of these in a row. To remove the "top" and "bottom" bar: when it is hanging in the water, you press on #1, so the whole thing will rotate, and the mesh will come out of the water, when you can remove it and take off the things on it.

Here is a picture of it when it is put together:

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll219/amariah118/Inventors%20Club%20Competition/IMG_7365.jpg



And here is a picture of how the 3/4 in. pipes will slide over the 1/2 in. pipes

http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll219/amariah118/Inventors%20Club%20Competition/IMG_7364.jpg


I hope that made sense, and if you have questions, I am happy to answer. There are some improvements that I can already think of.