Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yeh that was fire water! hehe

Kept me going til Mon picked me up from the airport...
and soon back on it! HIC

OK, being of the impatient kind, here is aquaponic setup #1.
Just too hot to dig in the fish tank outside yet.
Chrissy

looks like an aquaponics set-up

who's learning italian?

a nice garden it is!

And the best thing about an "i cant wait" AP system is you gt to dump it all into your proper system later, and jump at least 3 weeks ahead on your nitrogen cycle!

OK after trying to get a clear picture of auto syphons I have some questions.
Do you recomend them because they will hold the water in the grow bed for longer rather than just draining straight through in a continuous flow system? (cooling?)
Do you need more water in your system than what your fish tank can hold, given that a large amount will be held back in the grow beds until the syphon kicks in?


Steve, youngest child learning Italian, labels on everything. He is impatiently waiting on an aquaponic system, that one little tub is loaded up with 8 yabbies, tadpoles and shrimps.
Chrissy

chrissy,

your questions really depend on the sizes of tank and growbeds.

my current set up only floods one bath tub, and with the gravel in it i estimate it only "takes" 100L. Out of my fill of about 800L this is not an issue.

If you run more grow bed litres then you can use any number of combinations of series or sequential floods, or a sump tank, or probably another dozen methods to overcome the problem.

Aquaponics is the concept, the way you apply has virtually infinite possibilities

Steve

Chrissy, I was really worried before I ran the pumps for the first time that there wouldn't be enough water left in the monster tank for the fish.

I have the 10,000L monster fish tank, flooding and draining to 16 horizontal half drums, 6 vertical half drums, the 3500L big grow bed and the 2000L medium grow bed, also trickling to 8 towers and 2 duckweed baths. All drain to a 480L sump that pumps back to the monster.

I was really worried. Didn't have to be Over the pump out cycle to the beds, the monster only drops to a level where the fish still have 2/3's of the tank (in my case that means they still have about 1m of water to live in)

You need to remember that the gravel displaces a lot of water and so the volume of your grow beds won't be the same as the volume of water required to flood them.

Chrissy, here is a pic of this morning's low tide

LOL, in your case the size IS probably effected by the moons gravity, LOL!

It now becomes clearer how the fish easily fell to the sun baking trap

touch wood (hits self on head) no more have decided to try sun-baking.

Thanks Jaymie,
Makes a bit more sense now, Just trying to get it clear in my head before starting construction

The little aqua system is amazing us. Yabbies ate all the tadpoles and shrimps but they look happy
We are amazed at how quickly the seeds have germinated. 11YO runs out of the school room every other minute to see how many more have germinated!
Stuck some sweet potato shoots in this arvo, anyone grown them in aquaponics?
Thanks for all your help everyone
Chrissy

see, its even good for the kiddies

Sweet potatoes do great if you have a smooth grow media. You probably need a longer period between floods as well. (3-4 times per day. I have seen them done in Honduras and they look nice.