Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I think that is fire, not a sunset like you may have thought?

I hope you guys are safe Capncoke.

Indeed it is a fire. Thanks Asitis, we are safe for now. Haven’t had much sleep this week.


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Good to hear you are fine.
Last year we burned, too.
100,000 acres. They finally got control of it, 2 miles from my farm.

Thanks.

This fire is about 260,000ha or 650,000 acres. And it’s not going out any time soon.

Here’s another pic taken from my roof this morning with the AP system at the bottom and a plume of smoke from the fire in the background.




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Latest update: if you add the area of all the fires near us that have joined the total area is 460,000ha or 1,150,000 acres. That’s a lot of burning stuff.


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Holy crapper, batman. Come on rain! I lived most of my life before children in forests prone to fire. I'm thinking of you mate. We have 42deg c forecast tomorrow on the murray river. After high of 15 a few days ago. Hmm, algae having a feild day.

That is to darn close.
The 100k fire was just one of many we had in the erea. We have Ponderosa Pine forest with a oak brush undergrowth. The oak burns extremely hot. The fire close to the farm created its own weather with huge cumulus clouds. In the evening the winds would die down and the fire would burn less hot. The cumulus would colaps and hit the ground like a bomb. Suddenly we would have 40 mph winds for 10 to 15 minutes with thick smoke and ashes. Very eerie, as the red night sky. We had pre- evacuation orders and my farm was considered as a defendable space. I do a lot of work in my forest. That summer I had plowed the ground in the forest, with a large disk plow and had cut down and removed most under brush. I was the only one who did not get the red ribbon at the entrance of the drive way. Instead I got a troop of fire fighters from Montana.
Great bunch.
We were in extreme drought and fire danger this year again, from June to middle of November.
Only 15mm of rain during that time.

Hope you stay save, cross fingers and toes for you.

Hey mate, I've seen that you are back on the forum, how'd you go with the fires? All good.

Hey mate. Yeah we survived :-). Lost power for 3 days due to emergency repairs. No phone, internet, refrigeration, or water (our tanks are 20m below house level) so went and bought a generator. Got home with it and the power was on! Returned the generator as it wasn’t what I wanted but it was all that was available. Will look at buying a decent sized one in the new year.

Lost 2 gold fish and the plants weren’t too happy with all the ash in the air. I need to get a battery air pump for the fish.

We’ve also temporarily inherited the neighbours’ cows as their paddock was burnt out by the RFS to create a fire break. They seem to get on with the horses ok.

Very worried about next few days with 43+C forecast and strong wind.


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Good to hear from you.

+1. Summer can be crappy time of year.

Thanks all for the positive vibes.

Now that the fires have subsided, we’ve got an issue with our system.

We lost power for 3 days and no I don’t have a backup pump. During this time we put the grow beds into constant flood mode by pulling the bells out of the siphon and filled the beds to overflow with buckets. We also did our best to aerate the fish tank by pouring many buckets of water from as high as possible.

We ended up losing a couple of fish after the power came back on. The air quality has been atrocious due to the fires and the temps have been quite warm (days over 40C).

Now some of our plants are not looking too good. I wonder if it’s some kind of deficiency? pH is 7.9, no ammonia or nitrites and nitrates are between 5 and 10.

Any ideas from the photos?



Cheers!

Great to hear that the fires have subsided.
I had a similar problem last year in the aqua and dirt garden. Caused probably by the crappy air quality and the heat.
My cantaloupe died, strawberries never produced, some went just brown, tomatoes had no taste, brown and yellow leaves.