Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

A little over a year ago Tamo42 was kind enough to meet me at his local home depot and help me pick out supplies for my first AP project. The next week I went to the big island of Hawaii on vacation (and didn't even get to see the friendlyaquaponics.com setup can you feakin' believe it?) Anyway after the vacation the financial apocalypse was in full swing and I never got to start my AP system. In May I bought some seeds for my son (6 years old) to germinate next to his window with the intention of planting in my AP system (that I still hadn't started). We set up a small tub with some sacrificial gold fish to get things started while we started germinating the seeds. The seeds took off and my son did an amazing job keeping them watered while they were in their starter cups. I was commuting 115 miles (each way) so we did what we could on the weekends. Finally we got our micro AP setup going and my son feeds the fish religiously twice a day. We planted half of the seedlings from his window in AP and half in the dirt. The difference is amazing. We only lost a handful of gold fish and the rest are very happy and healthy. Unfortunately my wife calls it my "ghetto-ponics setup" and is not very enthusiastic about the visual aesthetics. My next setup will need to be completely aesthetically acceptable. (No pipes, pumps, etc. visible). The water is clear (I keep some plywood over it to keep the algae down) the water tests all showed 0 or trace of Nitrates, and ammonia. My Ph is 7.2-7.4 which seems a little high, but everything looks good so I'm not too concerned. I'll take another test this weekend and post.

Here is my micro setup.
Here's the fish tub:

Here's the sump:


This winter I will be taking out the tubs at the lower portion out and putting in a pond liner. Approximately 4'X10' and 3' deep. On the top terrace I will put a grow bend about 4'X20' and 9" deep. I'm not really sure what to do about a sump. I've thought about burying some 12" pvc pipe, but the volume would still take quite a few runs. Right now I'm planning on putting the pump about 2' above the bottom so if something would happen it wouldn't drain the pond completely.
Here's a pic of the area: (I can only do 3 pics)

The picture were taken from my phone and then scaled down to fit the required size, so I apologize for the quality.

Of coarse any input/suggestions/criticism is welcome.

-hendu
P.S. Thanks Tamo42

Very good work getting it up and going! A little dressing up of the grow bed and it doesn't look bad to me.

I would recommend going deeper on the grow bed for the big system if you can, 12 inches deep is a good depth. I actually think even deeper might be better but 12 inches is a good minimum. I do have one 6 inch deep grow bed and I'm not impressed with it.

LOoks pretty good to me

and like the terace, will make a great location for AP

Cheers
pete

Seconded! Just imagine the cascading that could go on with that!

Make the sump do double duty and turn it into a DWC pond and grow more food on floating rafts- the water will be clean from the gravel grow beds. As you have a young child, I would suggest a shallow bed for safety reasons. The water level will fluctuate here but it won't affect the plants as they will rise and fall with the water level.

Welcome Hendu... the addiction has already taken hold.... those terraces will no doubt be converted...

I was wondering whatever happened to your system .

Great that you're still keeping with it. The only unfortunate thing was that when we went shopping, I hadn't yet discovered uniseals. They are awesome for drain fittings.

Keep up the good work!