Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am thinking not....

I have done a few water changes and upped the filtration along with a pretty thorough clean out and the water clarity has picked up dramatically.

Also have been noticed a few bugs roaming around and losing a heap of water.

I think it is evaporation so i have buried the water inlets into the GB and done some companion planting to try and get ahead. time will tell....

Water clarity comparison [youtube]http://youtu.be/2Qi8Ndt104s[/youtube]

Hi Guys! Long time no post.....
System is doing well and the fishies are growing.
My tomatoes got some kind of fungus, which now looks like powdery mildew, they died.
My cucumbers got the same thing, they died.
The capsicums are doing well though and I did get some fruit from everything else before it all croaked.
Will attempt a baking soda spray to control the last vestiges of powdery mildew on my remaining cucumbers.

Any ideas on how to lower pH? or what could be buffering it in my system? My pH is over 8 and i am thinking that cannot be good for anything in my system....

Thanks guys

Hey guys just wondering if anyone has any ideas what is killing my capsicums. They were thriving until a week ago when the leaves started to curl, yellow and fall off.

Sooooo update.....
All but one tomato died and that one just barely survived but is now almost 2m tall

My armernian cucumber continues to hover at deaths door and probably wont fruit this season

The mouse melon has taken off and is fruiting like crazy

The basil has been harvested and dried

Many, many capsicums growing and fruiting

All my garlic died....

The Silver Perch are eating voraciously twice a day but still are not growing as fast as i somewhat naively hoped

Considering setting up an aquaculture IBC so i can continue to grow the SP over winter but still start some trout

Fun times...

This summer was also the first for my system and I have had patchy plant growth too, some things did well, some not so well and some died. I put it down to being a new system and people say it takes a year or two for the growbeds to mature and hit their stride. I also wonder if the SP food is as "rich" as the trout food. When I harvested the trout and started feeding the little SP fingerlings little amounts of SP food I felt that the system needed a boost so I added some organic blood and bone with iron and seasol and that got things moving along. Should plant garlic about Anzac day. Every few weeks i would pull the garlic up a little higher in the media so that the bulb formed above the water level, it was one of my plant successes and I will plant a lot more this year.

Moving the garlic was something i hadnt even considered! I must try that next year.

I upped the feeding rate on my SP and I think the plants are doing much better so i think you were right about the fish not producing enough...

How long do you run your SP for? and your trout? My SP went in november and they are going to need a lot more time to get plate size......

Hi, glad your system is doing well. Bought a garlic today so I will plant the cloves this weekend. Might be a little early but I will plant some more every week or so for a month and see how they go.
The SP's take two summers to grow out. Some of mine are 20+ cm and I've sold a few to aquarium guys but I have another smaller system where they will go for winter. That smaller system is chilled at the moment and full of trout fingerlings so let me know when your water temps are consistently below 20c. You will get good plate sized trout in one winter here as long as you don't overstock so you can keep feeding to the max. I think its ok to have trout fingerlings in with the SP's if you only have one tank, I've only been doing aquaponics for a year and a bit myself and I've not mixed species so stand to be corrected. Could put a laundry basket in your tank for a month to keep the fingerlings separate until they've grown a bit. It will be cold by then and the trout will be smashing the food like crazy at the surface while the SP's will be cold and miserable on the bottom. What is your growbed and tank size and number and weight of SP's ?

I have almost finished setting up a separate grow out tank, thanks to a healthy pay check or 2....

I have 4 Gravel garden beds, cut down IBCs maybe 20- 25 cm deep. More than 1500kg of gravel, fed by a 1000L IBC tank via a swirl filter.

Setting up another 1000L IBC tank with a simple barrel filter full of various filtration media, pump should be here tomorrow and tank up and cycling by the end of the week, knock on wood....

What do you think would be acceptable stocking of trout in there?

Hi Antechinus, the oft repeated rules of thumb thread has good figures on stocking rates. you need a minimum of 25 litres of wet media per trout grown out to 600g. You would have just under 200 L per GB, so 800 in total. That gives you 32 trout MAX if your system behaves itself. With a young system you will get ammonia and nitrite spikes when you add the trout and start feeding the voracious buggers. Ammonia toxicity increases with pH, and nitrite kills too by binding up the haemoglobin preventing oxygen uptake. Salting your system to 1 ppt can help trout deal with nitrite and increase their protective slime coating. Stock lightly for the first season and only feed a tiny bit whilst checking levels daily until your system's bacterial colonies increase to deal with the N load. Its taken me 2 weeks to increase the feeding rate to the appropriate level for growth, while managing nitrite spikes and my stress levels! Better to have fewer trout that survive and flourish, than deal with deaths and stressed fish.

Update!
Aquaponics is doing great, heaps of mouse melons, cherry tomatoes and capsicum.
Too many to eat so started pickling them

I have been losing several capsicum to some kind of burrowing insect that eats into them....

The trout system is set up with MBBR filtration, gardens coming soon....
40 trout, Ammonia under 1 and pH around 7.6, temp around 15C
Only lost one trout in a week - the bugger jumped out...

Got my second AP system up and running now

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26184

My small system has a constant rain of eucalyptus leaves and small twigs falling into it, but I have no staining. I scoop dozens of leaves out every week, usually when the SLO gets slow- too many leaves in it! I have a 1000l litre open topped tub (temp FT used earlier this year for 220 trout) sitting under a tree with the bottom well covered in leaves, but the 150cm of water in it is perfectly clear. I imagine it would take many thousands of leaves to cause much staining. The leaves are mostly White Box, but an occasional Lowland Red Stringybark leaf no doubt gets in there too.

My second system is running.quit well.
Again. It is a basic RAS with one bed of clay..
I did have a canister (cartridge) filter, but have tried removing the cartridge and filled the canister with Bio-Balls..
The pool-filter did remove solids, but caused pump pressure variations that created instabilities..

One pump in ST with split output

Two FT. > SwirlFilter. > ST > Long BioBall Filter > 2FT
---------------------------> Clay Bed Bio Filter > ST

The water is seriously Tea Coloured, from the food... How I wish you can remove that colour, easily, without water changes ....

AC.... give us a glimpse photo of the overall system... with plantings..

PS... and about 150 SP.. FTs about 900L... ST about 500L..
.

Which system BuiDoi?
My water quality in the gravel GB system goes up and down. Sometimes it is really tea coloured and then it just has heaps of particulate but really clear water.
The NFT hybrid system had terrible water clarity, the trout are filthy fish and the the submersible pump was chopping up all the waste to it got through the filter - or at least thats my theory.
New filter system finished this week so hopefully that improves with the new fish