Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

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In England ? Doesn't land there cost about 1000 pounds per sqaure inch ?

£10000 x acre to be precise and space being at premium prices only makes it pefect for intense horticulture and aquaculture. ie aquaponics.

1 acre down here for sale at 36k lol we offered 25 for 1 acre last year and was outbid

ok todays update
am having problems with the syphon, some days it works fine, i can stand and watch for hours and it will work fine, go home and come back next day to the damn thing with an inch of water in the bottom and the syphoning not breaking, so am going to move the pool to the bottom of the tunnel and go for a 15 min on 45 min off method, a pity as the place to put the pool will take a week to clear lol

water test
amm 0
ph 7.0
nitrite 1.0 (or more)
nitrate 80 (or more)

just need to get the nitrites to come down and i can go for fish in the system

this is a trial system and i am trying everything to see what grows fastest and best
in the gravelbed i have 1 broadbean plant that was sickly and was going to be thrown out, it is now 3 times the size of those planted outside and has its first set of flowers open already, the first set have 15 flowers so thats 15 beans, along its length is 10 more sets of flowers so far to come out, if they each have 15 on that will be a lot of beans for 1 plant (and its still growing at 4 inches per day lol)
i have put in 5 different types of toms to see what happens they are going well
2 x broccoli plants both going well
4 x cucumbers also going well
and a seed tray that is buried to its rim so it gets flooded, this is to put cuttings into, so far cuttings that have gone into it and have worked are:
basil
tomato
fuschia
chocolate mint
apple mint

the flow beds there are 4 of them, the bottom one has its first seedlings in now so am going to see how long to reach saleability
am starting seeds off in trays and maybe will get a jumpstart on growth by doing them in that for 3 weeks before planting into the rafts
the lettuce i started at 19th april have all gone this weekend they were brilliant, they came from tescos salad tray thing and were planted to see what happened, well the damn things turned out to be 50% bigger than any lettuce in the shops and tasted fantastic.

as it stands the pump is on for 3 mins and off for 7mins so cost is about £1 per day and £1 per week for fish bone blood meal (from poundland lol)
am aiming to start planning the full scale system in the next few days and am aiming for a flowbed system that will hold enough rafts to house 12,000 lettuce and about 100,000 litres of gravelbed system for tomatos,cues and other assorted bits, i am hoping to complete to full size within 4 years and doing it so that i bring the system online in 25% increments per year heres hoping.

If you're running a timed system... then just abandon the siphons... and turn them into a standard overflow standpipe...

am in process of going timed, i put a hole in the top of the syphon so it is now on CF till i get the pool moved, gonna start clearing the new pool area today and will get a second pool next week so i can transfer the water

I am sure I speak for a huge proportion of the community. Unless you only want to grow mint in the grow bed DON'T PLANT IT. It will take over being almost impossible to completely remove without completely emptying out your grow bed. Earthbound has plenty of good pictures of mint taking over the piping in one of his early trials.

no worries on it taking over, the chocolate and apple mint cuttings are placed in 5cm netpots that are then put into the flowbed rafts for 4 weeks, then they are planted into 9cm pots for sale to public in the farm shop, they are ideal to do this way as they are a novilty plant really that tastes and smells nice, also they grow very fast which is what i need

Good morning GBH


Have to concur with Jeff on the mint. It takes over completely, will block up the drain-offs and it seems to attract greenfly and whitefly. The only mint we grow now is apple mint as there is a demand for it but we keep it well under control and cut back the roots regularly.

You are doing a great job building with bits and pieces that people discard as there is so much that gets wasted when it can be put to good use.

Where are you going to site your trout tanks? We have to watch the water temperature with ours as they are inside a big shed but the water can get up to 22 and 23F and the fish tend to get a bit lethargic. Sticking them in a polytunnel or greenhouse would be a recipe for disaster for us. We are in the process of coating out outside carp tanks with aluminium coated bubble wrap to reflect the sunlight in the hope that we can keep the temperature down a bit in the summer. Winter is no problem up here.

Keep posting those pictures.

WD and OH

Welshdragon, at the risk of seeming pedantic but in the interests of avoiding confusion, did you mean up to 22 and 23Celsius?
It sounds as though it gets quite a bit warmer in your part of the world than I imagined. I thought that trout would have been a year round proposition without too much additional attention, as far as maintenance of temperatures is concerned.

Oops !
Yes - celsius !!
Get very mixed up with using fahrenheit and celcius !
Old age I`m afraid !
Trout ARE a year round proposition for us and we have been keeping trout for the last five years - just have to add extra air stones if and when the weather gets really warm !

the mint is only grown on in the flowbeds for 4 weeks from cuttings so there is no danger of it taking over, i am keeping it well away from the gravel beds, for the trout i am thinking of something like a shed building, am looking at a tank size of about 3 meters long 2 meters wide and 2 meters deep, this would give a volume of 12,000 liters to start with, we are looking at a polytunnel of 40 meters long by 7 meters wide for the first one, there will be 3 beds in it 2 flowbeds and one gravel bed the gravel bed on its own will be about 29,000 liters ( a lot of gravel and i dont wanna wash it lol).
i am hoping to have the first tunnel completed with the fish in their tank by jan 1st 2013 so that we can start planting crops in january

I guess you need long handled fishnets for 2 metre deep fish tanks, unless you have thought of another way to harvest them.

my mate and i discussed this and i have a cunning plan, my daughter has a wetsuit and snorkel that should fit my missis
but i have been looking at it, first thing is that although the depth will be 2 meters 1 meter is below ground and 1 meter above, at one end i am thinking of having a shallow step and then i will fashion a large net to drive the fish to the shallow end

I understand the net thing, but I'm not sure I see why the missus still has to get into the wetsuit..

You just want to see her suffer don't you?

Might be an idea to cut the gravel bed into a few smaller ones if possible rather than one giant one. Should make for easier flooding, draining etc...