Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I wouldn't salt unless you have fish health issues that you are treating.
Salt is a good way to kill parasites and help fish when they get infections but why salt when they are healthy?
Some will disagree with this, IMO its just somethine extra to worry about for no reason.
If you focus on keeping the fish healthy by maintaining ph and not overfeeding and keeping the water clean and not overstocking, health issues should be avoided.

I have some questions about Seasol.

Since my system is still cycling (taking a while...I am guessing due to the cooler weather we've had here), I am only feeding once a day, to try to keep ammonia in check. I discovered a full bottle of Seasol in the garden shed the other day and thought I might add a little of that to promote plant growth...

What side-effects does Seasol have? Does it cause ammonia spikes? Does it hinder a cycling process? For a 1,000L FT/2x400L GB system, what would be the recommended dosage??

And finally, what is the average wind-speed velocity of a laden swallow?

African or European?

Seasol is good (almost no ammonia at all) although only needs to be added if the plants need a pep or tonic; no need to add it just for stamps and giggles. 20-50mL concentrate per 1000L once per week is plenty.

Small update

Everything is growing nicely...in the right side GB... Got some reasonable growth on the left side, but the only thing really doing any good is the cherry tomato. Tomatoes being tomatoes, I am pretty sure the answer to that is obvious. It's just sucking that bed dry of nutrient and everything else is living ion the dregs.

Anyhoo, pics.

Right side, from rear, beans, pak choy (soooo yum!), celery (new), capsicum (also new), lettuce and broccoli...which also seems to be having a pretty ordinary time of it...



Left side

Cherry toms, some starving capsicums, spring onion, mint, corriander, thyme and basil (new)



Looking at an auto feeder in the not too distant, as well as a more power efficient pump.

Cheers.

Hey Ghengis,

looking good, although I notice you havent updated since Dec 12 months ago.

I am in Townsville also and starting my first system. I currently have 2 Grey IBC's (1 as afish tank, and the other as a sump and grow bed, once cut into 1/3 (grow bed) and 2/3 (sump). I am looking for 2 x 205litre Blue plastic drums to make and additional 4 grow beds, and I anticipate this will do me and my mob for salads etc and some room for experimenting with waht will work here in sunny NQ.

I would be interested if you or anyone else knows where to get a couple of Blue plastic drums around this town. Also would like to see how you system is going. Cheers for Greg.

Ghengis, what is the size of your components? Fish tank volume, grow bed grow surface areas?

Thanks, BobinPanama

Hi all. Just thought I'd share what I've been up to for the past couple weeks....

After four ish years of almost flawless operation, I decided to play with this again. Early in the piece, I had wanted a CHIFT PIST system, but had put that in the too hard basket and remained content with how the system ran. About a month ago, I started to research costs of water troughs. I had initially thought a 1200mm x 500 would be sufficient, but ended up going with a Smart Feed 750 from Gough Plastics in Townsville, which is 1570x570.

First things first, I wanted to get the existing IBC tank out of the ground and have a general clean up. This proved to be a real mission...even with a ll the water drained out, the tank refused to pull free. A little discussion with my father and we went with some Yr 4 physics



From that point on, it was about getting the frame work sorted to bear the load of the new tank. Much consternation as we tried to guess the physical size of the tank (which hadn't yet arrived). I also need to move the power point to somewhere more accessible...

After that, I dummied up the plumbing to get some idea in my head how it would go.





And last Tuesday, the tank arrived!! It turned out to be the exact perfect size and allows excellent movement around to the rear side. Pretty happy with that!

Got plumbing finished today, and happy to announce the system fired, flooded and drained straight away! I've used 50mm pressure pipe for the main drain, with a short length of 25mm going thru the base of the tank and firing along the water surface. Seems to make a nice little current in this way...





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Cheers for looking

Good job, looks great Ghengis

Looks great. Nice work


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Very nice!