Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

As I find the writing interface to this forum tiresome, and the 3 photo limit, here's a quick write up on my blog:

http://njhurst.com/blog/20070209

Warning, lots of photos.

As the comment system is turned off on my blog (actually, it was never turned on), best to post your flames here.

Certainly have alot going on there
I like the look of the living wall, it would make a great feature at the edge of an ap tank.
Well done

cool

I like all the little prairie/desert/mountain-type flowers. It's much nicer looking than plain grass!

Lots of variety there, and a garden that is thriving despite our drought. Top stuff.

gnash:


My life is one big experiment



Yeah, I'm very pleased with the living wall - I use the one in the greenhouse to strike certain tricky desert plants as well as growing a nice living carpet. The other nice thing is that the felt provides an excellent medium for the various oxidising bacteria (the black slimy stuff).

I'm covering the whole garage in an open loop version (plants are much more interesting than textured cement, yes?). I'm using about 1L/m^2 day in the open loop version, but I'm having trouble with short term dessication (one day of strong dry desert wind wiped out most of my first planting





DD:


Yep, our neighbours have all been trying to grow english style gardens and are all now looking like deserts. I figured I may as well go straight to the desert case and save a bob

There's more than enough practical application there to win my admiration njh....well done.

Love the natural "unstructured" nature of many of your plantings

Edited :

forgot to ask njh... what fish are you stocking and how many in the tank??

What sort of liner did you use in the tank NJH - and did you bury the ply?

Rupert says:


%Blush% It's not my first fish system, but rather my third. My first was a two level pond with a creek, powered by a swimming pool pump. It developed a leak, or tree roots got into it, and I lost my fish (4 murray rainbows). Then I moved house and put a bathtub in my greenhouse and filled it with murray rainbows, a galaxia and yabbies. The yabbies were all eaten by the fish and the galaxia escaped to the floor I topped up with silvers.

That was in use for 5 years, then we moved house at the beginning of last year (so this system and garden is less than a year old).

So this is my third attempt, and this time I decided to think the problem through before acting Of course, I've done things wrong again, but they are hopefully less wrong



Yeah, my wife and I are enamoured of the bush and particularly like heathlands with their tens of thousands of species per km^2. Our front yard is based on that idea and we have over 300 species of plants (most propagated in the greenhouse).



Well, as you can see, it's hard to count them, but I've put in 1 goldfish (to prove the system), 89 silver perch and 10 bass (without fricking lasers). The silvers and bass were from glenburn, but in fact the silvers were really from lindsay, who came to visit the day after the vic meet (he wants me to look at his heat flow engineering).

No dead fish seen so far (but sometimes they sink, so who knows). I've got them trained to come when called, and we do the fish feeding frenzy, but it's really too hard to count them (hence my post a while back .

VB:


I was told it is 1mm polybutylene, but I now suspect it is 1mm PVC. It cost about $10/m^2, and was the most expensive part of the tank. I'd probably use EPDM if I did it again as it is stronger (hence thinner and easier to work with).



The ply is indeed set 50cm into the ground, but it has weedmat, a triple layer of plastic film on the ground, I then sprinkled borax and CuSO4 on the surface, there is a layer of waterproof cement sheet and finally the wood is open to dry air. So far I have not detected any signs of rot, after almost a year of use. If it lasts another year it will have paid itself off compared a commercial tank.

The bog garden sits over the top of the tank:



The water mostly travels along, but as the suspension is shadecloth and carpet underlay, it does leak a bit. I've so far scooped about 5kg of black sludge out of the pool where the water comes in (and the solids settle).

My next tank will probably be ferrocement, dry stacked besser with reinforced concrete infill on a slab, or another plywood and membrane. I've been very happy with its performance, but I would not use it outside. If the ply rots below ground it probably won't matter, if it rots too far I can replace that portion easily enough.

When I designed it I did all the structural calculations and worked out it would bow 1foot in the centre of the top of the long side. I went 'nah', and built it anyway. First time I filled it with water it bowed out 1 foot in the centre... I since added a steel beam on the front side and a structural handrail along the top edge which has reduced the bow to a gentle curve. (which adds to the mystery

lookin good

Very very cool!

For the living wall, what are you using to adhere the plants until they adhere themselves? As it matures, will you have problems with plants at the bottom not getting enough water?

feelin great



Velcro.



In the case of the recirculating one, I don't think so - the material is very wet (perhaps too wet, although the AVs seem to like it - they're growing in full sunlight without problems, which is unusual for AVs). In the case of the open loop satellite sequential ones it's a good question, but I'm probably going to just let things settle to an equilibrium.

I've been pondering using a PIC micro to regulate the water, perhaps using a conductivity sense across the bottom to measure the dryness, put that in the driest spot and assume they all need an equal amount of watering time.
Currently it is all uncontrolled - the spreader at the top is constantly running at a very very low flow rate.

Hi njh/s did you put up the pictures of the fish farm

food&fish: I had a look, I've only got pictures of the hydro stuff - we were too busy going 'oh ah' to actually stop and take pics!
Here's what we did take:
http://njhurst.com/blog/kangaroo-ground-fish

Just beautiful! Congrats