Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yep, they haven't jumped in there yet which is good.

I moved about 1/2 the sump hole dirt pile to make a level pad in front of the sump which will be the base for the gravel bed. It's slow going and we'll be gone on vacation for a week next week but little by little...

Interesting thread. I will continue to monitor it. You have come a long way since two years ago.

So kind of an update. There is a rigged-up biofilter on the end of the pond for now, all the rain we had this past week filled up the pond, and there is a single goldfish in there now. The water has greened up nicely and is likely breeding mosquitoes which I need to get something for...

The system will not be changing very fast for awhile because May is an insanely busy month this year. The next steps are to continue filling in and leveling out the grow bed pad area. I will also be calling around to get a quote for some delivered gravel and figure out what fish I want. The current ideas are trout, bluegill, or koi. I figure trout would be best to wait until after Summer. The next door neighbor has a lot of koi and I was thinking about asking her if she would sell some to me.

Just as well you said you'd been busy DD.... otherwise I would have had to say that spare tanks laying around in a photo showed a lack of commitment.... and was a sign of mental instability....

May was really freakin' busy and I didn't get much done except adding more wheel barrow loads of dirt to the square. The next step is to pound in some boards to use as guide rails to get the dirt sloped how I want, then it will be ready for a layer of sand before the liner.

Weather has been warm, as a test I added three of the small tilapia to the pond! Wouldn't you know the weather has gotten colder overnight. I don't think it's cold enough to kill them, and it's cleaner than the toilet they've been living in in the basement!

How to breed tilapia:

1. Put 9 mixed tilapia in a 500 gallon in-ground pond
2. Wait four months until a late-Summer heat wave
3. Harvest three batches of tilapia babies, yields over 150.

Sounds idiot proof really. Just think how many you could have got if you were really trying

Wow haven't updated since August, that's crazy!

Well 2009 was pretty much a fallow year. I got too ambitious with the gravel patio and stalled out. The only plants I had were some green beans which netted a few gallons of beans late in the Summer but the plants weren't trellised and I never actually ate anything out of it. There were a ton of tilapia babies late in the Summer and I gave some to the high school again. I've decided to not grow tilapia for awhile and so they all expired after the weather got below 50 degrees. All my tilapia are deceased now. I can't find the camera cord but I'll upload a picture of the beautiful big tilapia that were left at the end, they were very pretty.

Lessons learned:
1. I no longer want fish that can't handle our weather natively.
2. I have lots of water capacity now (over 500 gallons) but still not enough planting capacity. The whole point of the gravel patio was to fix that.
3. Gravel is just too heavy and too permanent in large volumes. It's generally a PITA or rather pain-in-the-back.
4. Earth moving is a hobby-killer for me, don't have the time or the energy to do a lot of it and don't have the money to pay someone else to do it. The good news is that the system has a big in-ground sump already done.
5. If I don't have things ready to go by March then I need to put together something ad hoc which can still ensure plenty of vegetables for the Summer. In other words don't stick to a plan too long before putting in a less-than-perfect backup that might work OK.

This thread is over, look for the start of the 2010 thread!