Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Read through most of this thread last night, awsome job Burnsy...

Has again inspired my conversion to CHIFT PIST, have posted my plan in my system thread.
I'd be greatful for any suggestions/feedback you might have from your experience v's my plan.

Newfarmer I have replied in your thread.

Finished the decking today, fitted the sump tread mesh and fitted the second half of the lid. I am really happy with how it has turned out and we are getting heaps of good feedback from other staff and parents.

Some of our GB water distribution rings had already gummed up with biofilm and other snot so a few kids had fun cleaning them out to get the flows all balanced again.

Wow!
Wishing and hoping and .... whatever those lyrics were!
Congrats. great system.

Cheers Ian K

Looking very good Burnsey... nice job mate...

Sump pump failure today - twice. Float switch is playing up and lost about 2000 litres of water all up. Will deal with it tomorrow.

Other than that everything is going great guns, kids are right into the water testing and looking after the plants. We also tried to weigh some fish today but I think the scales were not liking being tared with one and a half kilos on them as these three trout only weighed 72 grams

Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0.25 and Nitrate 10

Nice fingernail polish ducky.

12 year old girls mate, you can't tell them.

Burnsey ''Sump pump failure today - twice. Float switch is playing up and lost about 2000 litres of water all up. Will deal with it tomorrow''
Ah for the good old chift pist

Burnsy try for the catch and release net I posted about somewhere in general banter a few days ago they are great, big deep net with tape in the net and scales in the handle, so basically weigh, measure without touching the fish, they do work better at around 150 - 200gms
EDIT** link here viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5566

We did investigate it but for the FT and GB heights we needed for the kids to be able to access the system easily it would not work. Replaced the pump today, all good, was a good excuse to go visit the BYAP shop and have a poke around .

Thanks Nocky, will be buying a reliable digital scale as we need one for the kitchen anyway.

Just a couple of updated photos of the plant growth. Since changing feed to Joel's stuff our plant growth has been much better. We had a major algal bloom but that all cleared last week (we had cut back feeding to nil for the past three weeks to try and fix it). We started feeding again yesterday and are currently feeding half Joel's half the old stuff (we have 20kg we need to use).

I mentioned previously somewhere that we have a mad marron that likes to sun itself on top of the floating Lebanese watercress. Today it spent the entire recess time sitting out on the floating pot while about a dozen kids stood around pointing and yelling. After lunch I tried to get a photo but it had climbed back to under the pot where it spends much of it's time hanging (literally) around. In the photo you can just see it's antennae under the float ring. I will get a decent photo of it at some stage, it looks pretty awesome sitting on the pot given it is about as big as the pot. It does not seem to want to escape (it could easily reach the mesh top today but did not bother), it just likes lying around surveying it's patch like a dog

Good one Mike.

It's surprising how a system tends to come good when you go away..

Glad it did come good as I was not doing anything with it when I was around other than looking and worrying.

As promised here are some pictures of our mad marron, it was out this morning sunning itself, oblivious to the fact that we were all looking at it and taking photos. It did not even flinch when the sump return pump cut in and started dumping water right next to him.

Nice system, nice pics!! Must be really exciting for the kids!

Keep the updates coming.

Nice pic Mike, but will guarantee it is not sunning itself, just looking for a way out, they are Houdini's watch your water level, when it can latch on to the mesh it will