Murray Hallam talks about iAVs

 

Murray: Hi. Murray Hallam here. I’m going to share with you the work of a researcher from many decades ago. Now, it’s doing aquaponics in a slightly different way and so far, our experiments have been running ever so successfully. It’s now here’s a look at one of the beds that we’re operating right now.

Now here’s one of the sand beds that we’re running that is based on the work of Dr. Mark McMurtry, actually. Goes back a long way. You remember some time ago, I spoke to you about building a sand system, Steve, and we’ve had that running now for, 22 months now, actually, and keeping good records, and we’re finally getting fantastic results out of that.

Host: That’s good.  So, we had somebody ask how how is that going? Because, I saw you did the build for it, but then I haven’t seen much much update. So that’s what we’re gonna be talking about, iAVs, do you wanna give a simple explanation on the difference between a a sand based system and traditional aquaponics? What what makes it easier or simpler?

Murray: Well, it’s just sand to start with. It’s gotta be a fairly coarse sand. It doesn’t work very well if it’s a fine sand. It operates on the idea of flood and drain, so you flood it, our system, we  flood it every every 90 minutes, we flood it for 12 minutes. At 12 minutes, we’ve just found by trial and error, it’s sufficient time to actually flood the beds.

And then we let it completely drain for 90 minutes, and so the cycle goes. And at nighttime, we turn the, the pump off. We’ve got it operating on a photoelectric cell, so as soon as the sunlight depletes, then the the the pumping cycle doesn’t go on anymore. It’s another advantage, because the pumping required is much lower than you do when you’re pumping continuously, in a traditional aquaponics system.

We’re really desirous of, proving the work of doctor Mark McMurtry, and he wrote his papers back in, I think, 1984, 85, something like that, where he made some really amazing claims about how well the system works, and the way in which it closes the nutrient gap. Most aquaponic systems do not produce quite enough nutrients to give good plant growth.

Of course, the claims made by doctor Mark McMurtry almost 40 years ago now, that that system would remain stable once it settled down, as we’re finding to be absolutely true.

Our pH is settled to about 6.4. We we don’t have to make any pH adjustments. And, the whole system now, we have never ever added any additives whatsoever to it, Except in the 1st 3 months, we added compost tea to give the system a bit of a kick start. But since then, we’ve added nothing. No potassium, no calcium, no iron, no phosphorus, added nothing.

And then and we’re getting fantastic commercial, testing results on our tomatoes, because that’s what we’re growing mostly in the system is tomatoes, because of the idea that tomatoes are the hardest thing to grow and get a good result. So, yeah, so we’re we’re getting terrific results, and it’s just so simple. It just works.

So I’m very pleased with that. Requires really little maintenance. The fish are happy. The system we’ve got has got about 35 square meters of growing area, and we have a 125 jade perch, mature jade perch, which are all about £2 each, around about that size in the system. And, yeah.

So disgusting simple. It’s can be a bit difficult to write a book about actually.

In reality, the test for aquaponics and for any gardener is growing tomatoes. It’s fairly easy to grow lettuce. You can grow them fairly easily and other leafy greens, but tomatoes have a very high nutrient demand. So the trick is to be able to grow good tomatoes. If you can do that, then you can do the rest.

I say this very cautiously still, but I believe it’s probably the way of the future for aquaponics. It’s extremely simple.

Extremely simple, and, it works very, very well. We get massive tomato growth and good good fruit setting. So I’d be really keen for someone to try cannabis in it to see how it goes in this system, the sand system, which I think is just going to change the face of aquaponics quite a bit.


 

Here you can watch Murray Hallam displaying his iAVs;

 

 

 

Related Articles

Responses

  1. Rant Alert: So … Murray knew about iAVs decades ago, that it was scientifically developed, documented and proven stable and highly productive. Despite this, he consciously decided to aggressively promote erroneous, unsubstantiated schemes to ‘milk’ his sycophants for all they were ‘worth’ … and did quite well ($$$) at that. I’ll spare y’all the many first-hand ‘stories’ Gary shared with me about that extended period other than being suffice to say that none of them represented an honorable actor. After Gary and Aquaponic Nation came around to ‘see the light’ (evidence) of iAVs, Gary repeatedly attempted to ‘beat some sense’ into’ Murray for many years, all to no avail. It wasn’t until Murray’s income stream started drying up from his decades old cons that he started ‘playing’ with iAVs as a possible new income source. He continues to resist implementing the ‘original recipe’ favoring instead his accrued suppositional biases, albeit that he is seemingly inching incrementally closer to authenticity. I presume that his goal is to finds ways to ‘make’ (claim) iAVs as his own and to sell it as such to a naive and gullible public. Yes, I can find NO merit in his self promotion/marketing. It always has been and continues to be about the money and his personal notoriety, not about the improving of the circumstances of others (or the environment). Additionally, he as less than zero clue as to what ‘good’ growth is – especially in regard to tomato. I clearly recall a video he posted years ago in which he spouted streams of effusive glee (in ‘heavy’ Aussie) about the wonder and glory and ‘miracle’ of the scrawniest tomato plant I have EVER seen sporting a single green tomato fruit smaller than a golf ball. One would have thought he had just discovered the existence of an advance alien civilization on the dark side of the moon by the way he carried on and on and on. I laughed SO hard for SO long … and I still do wherever I recall that screed- as I am now. And this is SO classic in and about the so-called aquaponics ‘world’. Absolutely NO one reports yields or presents any tangible data at all – ever. Just hype and spin and fluff and nonsense – all with the glaringly obvious goal of self promotion … ‘look at me, I am SO awesome … therefore you must believe it and you too can be magnificent like me’. With but slight exaggeration, IMO, ‘success’ in AP means keeping a fish alive long enough to get a picture of a green thing sprouting – usually lettuce. Given the decades on false claims, exaggerations, obfuscation, perversions – the 100’s of cons and scam artists – it is no mystery whatsoever the AP in all its myriad guises has not emerged as an even potentially sustainable production or economically viable methodology (despite every fraudulent claim to the contrary). BTW, iAVs is NOT aquaponics, It isn’t ‘ponics’ anything. It is soil-based organic olericulture (horticulture) typically sustained by the ‘waste stream’ (effluents) from recirculatory aquaculture. Anyway, not ‘sorry’ about this rant as I just couldn’t stay silent. On the one hand, it is good to see recognized (alleged) ‘ex-spurts’ (former drips under pressure) beginning to recognize (some of) the potential inherit in iAVs. On the other hand, this continues to feel like ‘just’ more of the same, where the motive appears to be solely one of personal fame and fortune based on hyperbole and strident claims without demonstrable evidence. Too harsh? Perhaps!. Yet given what I know of this actor’s history and ‘nature’ I find it exceedingly difficult to assume/detect that this ‘tiger has changed his stripes’.