Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi

I only have experience with growing geraniums on window sills, fragrant red roses outside, pink roses outside, castor oil plant inside. I have spent many years deciding what to plant in the space I had and meanwhile tackling weeds. My neighbour had a lovely garden: lovely tree and shrubs but she got rid of it all last year and replaced it with cement and garden features. Her garden seems baron and empty and I missed all the beauty that she got rid of. So I set out to take some practical steps to change my garden and have something more growing there. I was only ever successful with geranium cuttings in the past. The cator oil, I had bought that and kept it for years, even took cuttings from it. The roses were already growing in the garden when I moved in. All this time, I was trying to take cuttings from the fragrant red roses because my plan was to plant them everywhere and just fill up all the space with them. In summer their fragrance lingers in the air and passers-by comment and really appreciate it. All my attempts with the red roses have been failing. When I ran out of available red rose cuttings to practice on, I would start practising on the pink which I didn't care about and wanted to get rid of all along!! And they're the ones that kept surviving !!

This year, after much googling and with help from YouTube videos I am gaining more and more experience with red rose cuttings and I still have some that haven't died ... yet !! I have a growing list of plants that I have taken interest in. Most of them are seeds that I am practising with. I have germinated my first seeds this year but I have no idea what I'm doing and 3 tiny little seedlings have died ! I have no idea what went wrong ! I discovered information and videos on aquaponics and I am trying to set up my own system at home. I have started with light source because I don't want any more seedlings to die. I have set up grow lights. I am in the process of aqcuiring water pumps. I know nothing about keeping fish but I have always wanted to keep them. So I want to get everything setup as quickly as possible. There is one YouTube video that has given me the initial and lasting inspiration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBspR2p0 ... 327752AFC5. He has ball syphons set up in his grow tanks and I have been looking at a lot of videos and many people are using ball syphons for draining their grow beds. This seems like a very difficult hurdle for me and I have no one to ask for help. There are a number of aspects to this problem: 1 my local b&q store does not stock them and I need to find a supplier! 2 my DIY skills are unreliable i.e. some tasks I do well and some end up at a level that is well below the layman level !! So I am not looking forward to having to fit the syphon to the base of the grow bed. This brings me to ... 3 how much will it cost me to try again and again? will I ever get it right?

All help will be soooo appreciated !! ... you have no idea !!! I know it will save me much time as I'm a verrrrry slow thinker !! and I want to get my system started as quickly as possible ... so please help

Have a look at the IBCofAquaponics link at the top of the page here. Then just scale it down or up to whatever you want. Also autosiphons are neat, but not needed as timed flood and drain and constant flood are just as good and easier to set up.

Thank you

Hi

I took your advice on flood and drain system. I am about to explain what I've been doing all this time to set up my aquaponics system. Please read through the tedious details and see if you have any further suggestions to make my system better. All help would be greatly appreciated. :

I took the overflow end from fittings used on kitchen sinks and fitted it onto the plastic box that is now my grow bed. The hole was done very low down on the left side by a friend. At the time it was done, I was thinking only of drainage but now that that is sorted, I find that I can only flood the grow bed if I connect the outlet pipe to the pump. The pump would then have to be on a timer, so that when the timer switches off, the grow bed would begin to drain. I was worried about this because I have a maxijet 750 pump and I have no idea how much water it can pump up in 15 mins because that is the lowest time setting that my timer does. I kept the pump on for what seemed like only a little while and the grow bed was half flooded. So I set up separate pipes, one to pump the water into the grow bed and one to take the overflow down to the sump tank. That left the fish tank disconnected from the system. So I set up a plastic bottle inside the grow bed with holes and fitted plastic tubing into the holes. I then directed one tubing to the fish tank. It is a very narrow tubing which was very annoying to me to consider but I had soooo much trouble sorting out an overflow system for the fish tank. My pet shop guy showed my how all his fish tank overflows are dealt with but his method required having a hole cut into the fish tank in the base to fit an overflow pipe. None of the glass merchants would cut it without warning that the fish tank would be weakened. They all said the hole should be cut before the fish tank is put together i.e. I would have to have a custom fish tank built or put the fish into a plastic box but then I would not be able to see them. There are no pet shops in my area that take orders for custom builds and they all warn that it would be quite expensive. So I had to search on YouTube and I found a contraption that is the only one out of all the ones there that I managed to put together AND get working!!! The contraption: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiVDACgpEQk I didn't want to use this because it only does a meagre trickle of a flow. I replaced the tubing with a wider one and that helped but the flow was still nowhere near the flow of the drainage from the grow tank. The pet shop guy had suggested to only use one pump to pump the water to the grow bed and then let gravity take care of the rest. So I followed his advice. My grow bed is now draining constantly into the sump tank. It does not flood because I'm scared to rely on the pump for 15 mins!! The fish are happy with only a little water trickling in ... I imagine it would be scary for them to have a faster flow pouring in constantly. The pump is always on and the plants are constantly supplied with incoming flow from the various pieces of very narrow tubing fitted in the plastic bottle.

I have tested the water for pH levels, nitrate, ammonia. I read an article that said to take regular readings. I am new at keeping fish and some deaths have occurred. Please help