Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Imagine the water quality with that sitting next to the window after a few months... thats if you can see the water through the plant roots.

Well I for one am super glad that the Back to the Roots guys ran their Kickstarter campaign. It was my first introduction to Aquaponics. I couldn't figure out how it worked so I started researching and found this BYAP forum. Yipppeeeee!

And yes, I found more information than I could cope with and built my own system out of whatever I could find.

Thank you "Back to the Roots" for your video but kind of glad in hind sight that the postage to Australia was so expensive.

+1

My wife donated to it for me for chirstmas and I still haven't gotten one.... But its cool I just built my system in the mean time. I will post up about it when I do finally get one!!!

It's now end of April... and both of you haven't received the plastic box yet..... what do you reckon your chances are....

Close to 0?

Haven't seen a couple of smiling young cashed up Americans... living it up in Thailand... have you?....

I asked my wife the first half of the backers already got theres one of her friends was an early backer. They found a few problems did a redesign and the new ones are slated to be sent out in May. So I guess we will see. But either way I am happy about it because they lead me to here

http://inkabio.com/res_aquaponic_system.html

The people who helped out in the design seems to be well versed in aesthetically pleasing systems...

Yep nice designs.

Critiques: The Vertical design will get (way) too hot in the sun, the Stretch garden appears to be using galvanized pipe in the water which will kill some animals due to the zinc, and the AP system uses an acrylic tank that will become an algae paradise and probably cost $1000 or more just for the acrylic.

At least they are physical things that are not just renderings or Sketch-ups.

One sees a lot of young smiling Ami's over here....but generally they don't look like cashed up or living it up. More like retro hippies with a bad taste.....which will later (when they finally have settled in) be further perfected in the homeland.

I think it is a great "starter" for the idea and interest of AP, Though not as much as a system in itself.

I don´t know about your regulations( in Aus/Us etc.) but here in Sweden that setup would be illegal on account of the minimal size. Minimum 30 liters if i remember correctly. No fish should live in such a small space.

+1 though for being neat. I wouldn´t mind a small ( though bigger than this one) AP- system in my kitchen, given the right conditions for the fish are in place.

I've been thinking about doing some vertical stuff similar to this, but am still researching viability. When you say get too hot, I assume you mean the water in the fish tank?

Heres another one. On ebay for $160. This bad boy can contain up to 6 fish and has a fully intelligent control system. Its so intelligent it can keep you water blue! Its amazing!

The water exiting the tubes can get extremely hot in hot weather.

In a grow house in colder weather it can also cause problems by chilling your growing environment if it's hotter than your water, or by dumping heat from your water if the air is colder than your water.

In other words, grow tubes or vertical grow tubes act as a heat pump, and shift a lot of heat around.

You can get around the water getting too hot by dumping the water to a flat shallow pond so it cools off a bit before re-entering your system, or by creating a waterfall with lots of surface area before, or as the water re-enters.