Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sep 2016 So The ducks are making a mess and the water bill going out of control. How can I recycle some of this? uckponics experiment 1.

The idea: I have an old bath that Ive put down stream of the duck pond, and upstream of the soil based vegie garden. Can I grow duckpond hydro lettuce to help feed my poultry (chickens and ducks). Lettuce is like "weed" to ducks.

Visited the local hydroponics shop with my idea. I recon they think I was crazy but they smiled and sold me some cocopeat, while saying no way was there going to be enough nutrients in pond water alone. Maybe I will need something extra later on? (But they hadnt seen the colour of my pond water!). Hardly the complete setup I had hoped for, but I guess it cost me less.

Cocopeat put in a plant pot. lettuce seedlings installed. Plant pot put in a 20ltr bucket of duckpond water. No pumps. no electricity. Some extra lettuce seedlings put in the soil based vegie garden as a control measure.

Eureka! seedlings have doubled in size. The only extra effort was that I topped up the bucket occasionally with pond water. I think I changed it completely once.
Mind you they are not as big as the control lettuces but I feel good that the water is being used three times now. 1. ducks 2. lettuce 3. soil based vegies.

Lettuces reach top of bucket, possums and rats find them, lettuce crop is decimated

But the proof of concept is there. Strong steel weldmesh is installed on top of bathtub!

3/4inch tap on pond drain has blocked. Bugger. gonna need a bigger drain.

December 2016 I slip over in backyard, smash my right femur (how did that happen so easily?) and am eventually rescued by barking dogs, the toddler next door and two teams of paramedics who took two hours to get me down the hill. Lettuces die from lack of attention while I spend all summer in hospital (well 5 weeks anyway). Thank goodness for barking dogs.

Now its Easter 2017. Might be time I replace that tap and get the project under way again.
Your input (both practical and derogatory) would be apreciated.

Your first mistake was when as you say "Visited the local hydroponics shop with my idea." Of course they laughed at you, they sell for a profit everything in their store. There is no profit for them in what you are doing or how your doing it.

Your doing a first form of Hydroponics before it was called Hydroponics. Your system has been in existence for 1,000's of years and then some few more.

In the colonial days, young men were paid to hold a stick with a cup or vessel tied to the end. They would stand around the corralled cattle, horses, etc. and when those animals would relieve themselves of their valuable urine, these your men would hold the container to catch as much as they could. Mixed at a ratio of 1 part urine to 15 parts water, they were providing their crops with a liguid diet of nutrients.

Go back to the shop and ask them, for everything you'd need to build a Wick Hydroponic system, they won't and will not sell it, there is not PROFIT for them...
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