Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We started our system a few months ago and have tilapia in the pool along with the birds and the bees, lol. Lots of young plants on the rise. Anyone else in the area? We'd like to do some networking and share ideas, thoughts, etc!

Hi Venim 102,
I can't believe nobody has responded in the last couple of days.
Probably because when it popped up here in Australia it was about 3am Sunday morning.
Welcome to the forum.

Welcome venom, have you got any photos
We live pics here:)

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

I am in Dolan Springs north of Kingman. Hardly local, but have three systems going.with bluegill and catfish, goldfish.
If you go to Vegas I am not far out of the way.

Hi,

I'm in Phoenix close to I17 and loop 101. I've had my system 4 years now with lots of ups and downs. Sharing ideas and thoughts is fine with me.

Here is a link to my posts

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=10420

Wow from your pictures your system is much more intensive than me. I just have a pond and grow bed. I've seen the vertical grow pipes before on YouTube are you running AP water through them or hydroponics’? If you have some free time I would like to come over and see you setup in person.

Thanks
Bruce

Very cool system. i like the verticle gutters/posts thingies.

We are using AP throughout. We started with an old pool we got off of craigslist and added a filter (trash can/cooler pads) system to it. We threw in some goldfish (which we are still trying to catch and move out) to break it in. Later came the gutters and uprights for most of the herbs and smaller plants, although, we do have watermelon growing out of the top of two of the uprights. There is a grid system above to rest the fruit on when it comes, but our next step is to enclose the whole system into a greenhouse so we may hang some kind of net under the grid ceiling to hold the fruit above. We may just buy some plastic and wrap it all up around a frame. We are worried about cooler temps in the winter for the tilapia. We bought tilapia fingerlings from a guy in Wickenburg who lost quite a bit of his pond fish from the cold and was selling the rest. I have a video of the fish under water in the pool and will try to post it here, but the fish are now about 10" long.

We are also growing duck weed and water lettuce, however, the water lettuce is not doing too well. It's not filling out like it should, but maybe it's because we just added it about a month ago and it has not adjusted. We found a lady on craigslist that was giving it away because it grows too fast in her little turtle pond. It was nice and thick, but now we just have little leaves.

So basically, the water from the pool is pumped through irrigation tubing to the gutters/uprights and then gravitates back down into the pool. We are getting ready to add some trays (home depot) to the system for growing some of the bigger plants. Currently we are growing tomatoes, brussel sprouts, artichoke, stevia, celery, grapes and peppers in bottom watered buckets with soil. We use the water from the pool to water them and they love it! These were started before our AP system so we left them in the soil. We will try the same veggies/fruit in the AP system and see how it goes.

@Bkausfish, would love to meet up! Shoot me an email.

There has to be a story behind this "just started a few months ago" statement. Come on, share.

Looking good.

queen creek here but I don't spend to much time on the forums. cool garden that you have!

It's been about four months since we started the system. Most of the focus has been on the pool, but now that the temperatures are coming down we can start planting more. Some plants did well in the heat such as watermelon, basil and okra. The okra grew large root balls and clogged the gutter so we need to move them. Lettuce does well when the birds aren't trimming it.

We picked up some mixing trays from Home Depot this weekend. To keep the cost down, we're going to try using styrofoam rafts instead of grow media. We also picked up some more of the metal grid panels to enclose the whole system. Once that is up, we can wrap the whole thing in plastic. This will also help solve our problem with the birds and the dogs digging around the pool!

Hey Venim102,

Just got our system up and running here in Arrowhead area (75th Ave & DV) We've built a three IBC tote system (based on Murray Hollam's Chop Mk2 design) with three beds and a full 330gal tank. We don't have our Tilapia yet but are just getting the system cycled first. We do have some basic green beans, chili, corn, tomatoes etc, etc... The system will be expanded by three more beds with the addition of two wicking beds, all from IBC totes.

Would you know any local breeders of Tilapia? I'm not finding a whole lot of info here in the valley.

Hey Treker,

Nice setup you have there! We've been piecing our system together bit by bit, but it everything is working great so far. We saw some tiny tilapia in our pool the other day for the first time. We must be doing something right, lol. We still don't have the plastic up yet. The roll we bought from Home Depot looks kinda white so we may take it back this weekend and look for something more clear. Thankfully, the temps are still warm enough for the fish for now.

We were lucky and found someone on craigslist that was selling their fingerlings. The gardenpool guy over in Mesa sells his once in a while. You may want to visit his site and shoot him an email. Search for gardenpool on Google.

Hi, I'm in south Phoenix.

This is the only good list of fish farms that I've found for AZ and it's kind of outdated.
A lot of the numbers don't work.
http://ag.arizona.edu/azaqua/farmlist.txt
I've talked to people at Browns Fish Farm before, but the last couple of times I've tried to call them I got their voice mail, and then the next time their voice mail was full. I haven't tried to call them back this week.

I know the phoenix permaculture guild was during a tour of somebody else's system a week or two a go, but i wasn't able to make it so I don't know how it went.