Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey Rob

Yeah, time flies! :-)
The startup has been good with the new system all in all I think.

I have had to add aereation to the fish tanks.
First all my crayfish died one by one, then one tank had fish dying without any signs of why.
I discovered that the affected tank had the slowest water flow and since the crayfish are more sensitive to low oxygen levels I began putting 2 and 2 together.
Since I added bubblers I have had no losses - apart from the odd jumper. :-/
On the plant side I have been happy with the startup.
Looking forward to next season!
For now I'll be sowing some winter crops this weekend to keep things working over winter.
Spinach, parsley, kale and that sort of thing.

How about you? How are your projects going?

Cheers - Jens

Next season? I'm not done with this season yet! We're getting cool nights but still mid 65F or so during the day, going to be closer to 75F this weekend. I need to clean up the garden a bit more, we still have green beans which we quit picking that are huge - we're thinking we'll pick what is left and dry them to try and use for seed next year, but then I need to pull all of the plants out to get that bed ready for next year. We have one or two zucchini plants in the garden that are still producing albeit a bit slower, then we have cherry tomatoes which are still ripening like crazy in the garden. I've put plastic over the cherry toms to keep them from getting frosted to see how long they'll keep going in the garden. We have a boat load of chilies that we've run out of use for so I will probably try and pull them this weekend as well as pulling the other full size toms which have all started rotting.

I put plastic cover over another bed which still has basil growing in it (did not enclose the ends, mostly just keeping it from getting frosted). I have another bed which still has lettuce going that I need to add posts in the ground to put my hoops up over so I can get plastic over it to keep the lettuce going for a while yet.

I need to take the time to clean out my compost pile and haul it to the garden to add to the beds that I've already cleaned up (as well as two additional beds that I built which I haven't filled with dirt yet to plant asparagus and rhubarb in).

I still have tomatoes going gangbusters in the small greenhouse. There are still a ton of new flowers on them so I am hoping I'll have fresh tomatoes for at least a couple more months in the greenhouse (really hope to grow them right through the winter but they are blocking a lot of sun out of the greenhouse so eventually I will get to a point where I need to decide either between growing toms or warming the greenhouse because sun isn't getting to my water barrels right now).

Harvesting tilapia... I didn't get to any the last two weekends and probably won't this weekend either but I have probably another 50 I need to harvest in the next few weeks as my water temps are dropping.

Otherwise my projects are a bit slow right now... ran in to lack of funds! I am hoping to order the plastic for my hoophouse in the next couple of weeks... my dad will be here about a month from now so I want to have everything ready when he is here to be able to help me stretch the plastic on the hoophouse seems how my wife isn't able to help much (someone has to watch the kid...), then once the plastic is on I need to decide how I'm going to enclose the ends (probably plywood and vinyl siding that I have leftover from the small greenhouse, or a type of plywood I used for my hunting shacks which has a weatherproof exterior on it that is supposed to be termite resistant too)... but I don't want to add that until I get plastic on the hoop house because I don't want the inside of the wood getting wet.

Dude you've got it all going on! :-)

Truth is we've had an abysmal summer here, so things like toms and cucumbers and zucchini didn't get going very well. On top of that it wasn't till august that I got the trout in to really crank up the system.

From now on the days are just too short and cold to keep anything but leafy greens alive.

I finally got around to putting a door in the hoop house, so now I can conserve a bit of heat for the nights.

Sounds like your Summer was similar to mine for plants. Aeration does wonders for the fish and the plants in our little DWC.

We've had the wettest coldest summer in decades.

crazy, we've been dry all summer and breaking high temp records that have been around since the 1890s or something like that...

I've still got a lot going on... not ready for winter yet. Thinking I need to take the day off tomorrow instead of working OT this week so I can get some stuff done while it's nice out!

Wow Jens I just spent the last hour reading through this interesting Aquaponic journey. What a great system you have made. It started small then just exploded into a very professional looking system. I noticed the last post was in October, is it because winter slowed things down? Is everything ready for the approaching season? Well done with what you have achieved!

Thanks Know Expert!

Over winter it's just a matter of feeding the trout 1 or 2 times per week and pick a little Parsley or Chard. :-)

Next weekend I will setup a rack of shelves in the house to begin germinating and growing baby plants for the greenhouse. Hopefully by the end of March or early April it will have warmed up enough that I can begin transplanting into the greenhouse.

If the weather is nice next weekend I'll make a short video tour of the winter time greenhouse.