Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

agreed, VB. My system now runs at 5-10 nitrate with dozens of fish.

if it stays at 5ppm hten you're perfectly balanced

What I'm aiming for

Simon, mate.... how's your system after the massive hailstorm today...

Still intact?

Hi ROZ,

Thanks for thinking of me. I was lucky with the hail storm (from the perspective of my AP system). It came in from the West and my system is on the east side of the house.

The only parts of the system that were exposed to the hail were the 2 grow beds on the balcony and the bucket. The combination of the eaves and the shade cloth cover protected the grow beds and the bucket was fine.

From a personal perspective, we were not so fortunate (though at the same time we were not as unlucky as some).

I was out in my car at the time and all I could do was pull over next to a small tree and sit it out. If I had continued to drive to try to find cover I am sure that I would have smashed my windscreen. The tree offered very little protection so I ended up with dints on my car. Fortunately my car is a crappy car so no big deal. My wife was working in Ballina so no damage to her car (which is the good one).

I had left a window open when I went out. Of course, it was one on the West side of the house. When I managed to get home, I found that we had 1 broken window and hail all through the lounge. I had rain water on my computer which is approx 5 mtrs away from the window.

We are still waiting for the window to get fixed. All glaziers are working flat out atm so we have no choice but to wait.

The most tragic thing that we have suffered is that the TV got wet and now the Remote Control doesn't work!

I tried purchasing a universal remote yesterday but it doesn't work. I called the manufacturer of the universal remote and they told me that their device does not support my TV. I tried calling the TV manufacturer and they were not sure if they could help me. They told me that they would call me back but I have not heard from them yet.

All in all we were fortunate. Some houses have been badly damaged and I saw a new Subaru Impreza yesterday with some pretty severe dents on it. There are a couple of car yards that are having Hail Damage sales. And of course, there is the church that had the slate tiles damaged (after they had spent tens of thousands of dollars restoring them).

So, all in all I think I am pretty lucky.

Simon

Hi all,

Just thought I would post an update. System running fairly well at the moment.

I went out and purchased 10 SP this morning. They were approx 10cm (ish). I got up at sparrows and went down to the Lismore Car Boot Market. The guy there was selling them for $2 each. I tried to haggle but he wouldn't have a bar of it, saying that they were selling too well for him to lower the price.

Still, $2 each is better than $4 at the aquarium.

They went into the tank and seem to be fine for the moment. I now have 8 Gold fish and 10 SP. The goldfish were feeder fish so they were all black. One is now completely orange.

When I was having problems with the debris blocking the pipes I came up with the solution of putting fly wire screen over the intake for the pump. While I was look at my fish this morning I noticed that my overflow pipe was not overflowing much. A small amount of investigation found that the fly wire screen was blocked up with debris, restricting the flow. A quick clear up of that got the pump running nicely again. Need to remember to clear that out on a regular basis.

We had a moth invasion here in Lismore last month. Thousands of the little buggers. The off-shoot of that is that I now have caterpillars all over my plants. They have damaged one cucumber to the extent that I don't think it will survive. Initially I was panicking about all the caterpillars. Then the Permaculture philosophy kicked in. You don't have pests you have opportunities.

Caterpillars are little wriggling protein bars. Now I just pick them off when I find them and throw them to the fish.

Harvesting lettuce, zucchini and rocket at the moment. Most things are growing well. I have found that the spring onions seem to suffer in direct sunlight because the gravel is black and gets hot so I have to keep them under shade-cloth.

That is it for now. Will keep you informed as my system evolves.

Simon

Hi all,

I am thinking of making change to my system with will result in having to remove plants from 4 gbs and starting again with them. Before I do it I want to get peoples thoughts & opinions.

When I built my system I put 4 brow beds under the balcony. The issue was raised regarding sufficient sunlight but I was of the opinion that there would be enough sunlight. I was actually concerned that the direct sunlight would be a problem which is why I decided to put them under the balcony.

Now that I have had my system running for a while I found that I was right and wrong. I am right in that the direct sunlight can be a problem, particularly with the gravel heating up and damaging seedlings. I am finding that the lack of sunlight is also proving to be a problem. A lot of my seedlings are very scraggly which I attribute to the limited sunlight. I have attached a photo which shows the sunlight at 10.30am. As the sun rises the light will get less.

So I am considering moving my grow beds forward about a half meter. Due to the weight I would have no choice but to remove the gravel from the beds. Naturally the plants would have to go with them.

There are pros and cons with this move. I think that the pros outweigh the cons but I want to throw the idea onto the forum to see if there is anything that I have missed. Please feel free to give feedback as you see fit.

Cons

- Losing all my plants in those beds. I have considered whether I will be able to replant them but I now think I would be better starting from scratch. I will lose capsicum, eggplant, a zucchini (producing), lettuce, strawberry seedlings, tomatoes, cucumber (badly damaged by caterpillars), spring onions. The only things that I am getting yield from atm are the lettuce and a zucchini. I have a 2nd zucchini (which is producing at a more consistent rate) and lettuce up on the balcony so I am not too worried about the loss.

- Reduced gravel to remove ammonia from the system. When I make the move I will only have 2 gbs to remove the ammonia. In the best situation that will only be for a few hours. In the worst case situation I will break some of the silicon seals which would mean a minimum of 3 days with only 2 gbs. With 8 goldfish and 10 small SP in 500ltrs will that be ok? I think yes but am interested in other opinions.

- More exposure to sunlight which would mean problems with the gravel heating up. I have added some shadecloth which will help overcome this issue. I would also like to leave a layer of white gravel at the top of each growbed to see if that will help reduce this issue

- The risk of breaking the silicon seals. They took me a while to get set up so they don't leak. It will be a pain in the bum to have to deal with all that again.

Pros

- Better sunlight across the grow bed. This will hopefully result in better growth across the GB

- I will be able to replant in a better manner to get better value of the GBs

- I can add shell-grit halfway down in the gravel to help with acidity and have white gravel at the top to help deal with gravel heating up

- Now is the best time to make the move. I lose plants but there is only the zucchini and the lettuce which are producing. The fish are still small so the reduction in biofilter during the move should not be too severe on the fish.

So that is my thinking. Please feel free to comment.

Thanks

If you don't feed the fish during your move, the GBs that are still running can handle the reduced ammonia load.

Possibly move your beds in sequence. Move #1, discarding the plants. Move #2, re-planting the good plants from bed #2 to bed #1. Move #3, re-planting the good plants from bed #3 to #1 or #2...and so on. I can't tell whether your support structure could handle that.

A few hours with the GBs out of commission will be fine, again, better if you didn't feed on the previous day. I have about 500 liters of water and the same amount of GB. I have had pumping issues a time or two where I wasn't moving water to the growbeds overnight. With 60-ish half-grown tilapia, the ammonia got to 4 overnight. With your fishload, I think you will be fine.

Simon, can you arrange and setup totally new beds with new plumbing, then disconnect the others..... limiting both the number of existing seals broken and possible downtime....

If not you could always setup a temporary bio-filter... ie a vertical half blue barrel which you could seed directly from the gravel removed from one of your beds as you disconnect it..... to remove and deal with the ammonia and continue supply of nitrates to the remainder of your plants....

personaly i would go with janets idea of a staged re-build best of both worlds in my book and if it takes more time than you thought no big deal as you still have most of your bio filter in place

thats if you can manage it i guess, would be tricky to asemble new stands infront of the others and then later get the old ones out

OR............. just get a bigger fishtank and make new beds infront and plant low light plants in the back

Cheers

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies. Unfortunately they were not really possible options. I only wanted to move the beds forward a small distance. To set up a new bed or stand or any of the suggestions would not have been possible because where I want to move it to would have resulted in the existing beds being in the way.

In the end I made the move today and it went better than I had expected. It took me about 6 hours to complete the process but I am pretty happy with the outcome. I think the time and effort was worthwhile. It was also cheap which, considering that I am unemployed atm, is very important.

So here is what I did.

Firstly I removed all the plants. The ones that I was most sorry to lose were the eggplants and the tomatoes. Anyway, when I was removing them I had a flash of inspiration. They are growing in the gravel with the water flooding them on a regular basis. So in theory they should survive a small period with their roots in the fish tank. So I place the eggplants and tomatoes in the fishtanks.

All the other plants went to my newly restarted worm farm. Then it was simply a process of removing all the gravel and then shifting the stand & grow beds. One of them has sprung a leak which I have siliconed and am waiting for that to dry. One is pretty good considering I was preparing for the worst case scenario of all 4 leaking.

After I refilled three of the grow beds with gravel then topped it off with a while quartz gravel that I purchased at $8 a bag (purchased 2 bags and have only used 1 so far).

The tomato & eggplants were looking really good so I replanted those after trimming them a little bit. I then went to a couple of nurseries and Mitre 10 and purchased the following seedling & seeds.

Seedlings
Coriander
Strawberry runners
Capsicum
Spring Onions
Cucumber
Lettuce
Mazuma Lettuce
Basil
Zucchini

Seeds (Diggers)
Chives
Garlic Chives
Spring Onions

My GBs are overflowing slightly atm because I have 1 out of commission. I am not too concerned because it is a temporary issue. I would rather put up with a small amount of overflowing rather than start messing with the flow rates again.

Tomorrow I will complete the 4th GB (assuming the silicon has dried sufficiently). After that I should be running all full steam ahead again.

I had one SP try to commit suicide today. I was walking past the fish tank and I noticed something unusual in the long grass. On closer inspection I noticed it was a fish. I picked it up assuming that it was dead and it moved so I quickly put it back into the tank where it swam away. One lucky fish!

So there you have it. Another blip on my learning curve.

Simon

Well done Simon, glad to hear it all went (relatively) smoothly...

Just warn that perch... "one more time buddy and it's the bbq for you"

Well, after moving the system the water has clouded up and doesn't seem to want to clear. I am not concerned because the fish seem to be happy enough.

I did a test the other day and the water was about 8. I am wondering if rainwater is alkaline. We have had a heap of rain recently. It is either that or the white granite has done it. Anyway, some of my plants are losing their colour which may be because of an inability to take up nutrients because of the alkalinity. I have sprayed the leaves with seasol which will help provide some nutrients. I am going to try to leave the system as much as possible. In theory it should achieve its own level. It the alkalinity gets worse then I will have to interfere, but I would much rather leave it atm to see how it goes. All part of the learning experience.

When I was replanting the system I purchased a punnet with 4 zucchini in it (blackjack). 1 went into the AP system and another 2 went into the ground. Because of all the rain I have not had to water the ones in the ground and they are easily outgrowing the one in the AP system.

Maybe not enough nutrients in the system. I have added some worms today which will help add some micronutrients.

Other than that I will be sitting back and watching.

Simon

If that's limestone granite then yep that'll keep you down around 7.5-8

Have you considered adding some iron ? i had a similar issue appearing in my new leaves and a quick spray with chelated iron fixed them up. everything is lush and green now. my PH was also up around the 8 mark, though it's started to come down on it's own, my last test showed 7.6
I'm with you on the rocks over heating though.my baby spinach keeps getting toasted on the rocks, and strawberries not shaded by leaves get burnt a bit on the bottom.