Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hope that wasn't me! unless you meant in with the fish.

We got ducks too hey, 5 X pekin.
dam they are just such messy dirty creatures lol
perfect for aquaponics

jimmy, why where you told duck poo was harmfull to plants? does it give them the fertilizer burn?

Sorry, whoever it was didn't say duck poo would be harmful to plants, they said it might have health implications - i.e. the veggies might contain undesirable bacteria or something.

It can happen around sewage ponds (a friend once ate a tomato that was growing on a very vigorous bush next to a sewage pond - I'm surprised he felt like eating! Any way he got VERY bad food poisoning - almost didn't survive.)

Any poo from warm blooded animals has a risk of ecoli and other nasties in it.. Thats one advantage of fish, no nasties like that in the poo of cold blooded animals..

Hi
I have no problems with duck poo and plants in the rest of my garden. The plants in the grow beds are going great. The water is still very clean.
Im thinking of adding the fish tank in series, a blue drum between the grow beds and the pond.

I was also thinking of mounting an 80mm tube abovethe grow beds with 60mm holes in the top to fit net pots for strawberries.

I was wondering should i T into the 80mm and use that as the takeoff to each tank, or run the 80mm as a seperate section? Ideas??

Isn't your growbed getting clogged with, um, solids?

If solids are a problem, I have an idea for an upstream particulate filter. Basically shadecloth bag in a bucket - every couple of weeks you remove the bag and empty onto your favourite fruit tree. The filtered water, still full of fine particles, would then go through the growbed, which you use to grow fast-growing leafy greens to feed right back to the birds! You could even put the growbed in a coarse mesh cage, so that the lush leaves stick out of the cage and are "pruned" by the browsing birds.

The main function of the system is keeping the water clean, but a secondary function is recycling some of the wasted nutrients, to feed back to the animals.

I like the idea of a duckproof fish tank/pond connected in series to the system. If you have sufficient slope, it could possibly be done with one pump in a cascading fashion.

I have installed the fish tank in line, and it is flowing nicely. I had a pipe blockage from the pump to the growbed, and thought it was the pump not big enough, so i upgraded the pump. Aquapro 12000 dirty water pump. It made no difference, so i replaced the pipe from the pump to the growbeds. The pump is now a bit big for the system and i am having overpressure problems. I have also installed a shadecloth filter and it works very well ty.
I intend to eat the veggies from the growbeds, but the main purpose is to clean the water.
I am having problems with the 80mm strawberry rail above the grow beds. Its 9 meters long, and its not perfectly level, so does not flow correctly. I intend to work on this over the week. Any ideas would be great

Would help if you could post some pictures Duckpond....

The first ones you posted in "photbucket" aren't viewable any more.

Try attaching them directly to your post

regarding the 80mm. found the same problem with the 100mm. its not so much a fact of being level, more so that the pvc will bow. supports work maybe 4 along a 6m length.....................

idealy a piece of angle open end up would be the go.

I used some 100mm bore casing and cut it into 25mm wide rings, then screwed them to the wall, and slid the 80mm through the rings. The rings are about 400 apart. I will sort some photos out asap

Good thinking Duckie....

Question, why do want the strawberry rail to be level, wouldn't you be better and acheive a higher flow if in fact you had a "fall" in the pipe?

I think the terms 'level' and 'straight' or 'flat' have been confused here, as they often are.

I believe DP has a pipe that looks like a bunting, with peaks and troughs at every support.

My money is on the angle iron support (so it looks like a V in profile) as the best method of keeping it flat, if DP wants fall then he just lowers or raises one end.

With the "rings" he has spaced at "400 apart" using 8mm pipe, I wouldn't have thought there would be any "bowing" or "peaks and troughs" KP...

As you say, just increasing the fall by raising one end would surely solve the problem????

i think that lowering one end will work too. The pipe is class 18 80mm retic pipe, and is about 2mm thick. Abit expensive, but very solid