Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Update time - 120 trout all still healthy and doing excellent. Avg 100gm, 21cm in length and being feed 230gm total per day atm of 4mm SS. Increasing feed by about 30gm per week. Fish are measured and weighed once a fortnight to keep the feeding accurate. Ammonia & Nitrite hover between 0 - 0.25ppm depending on time of day the test is done (This is to be expected because the bacteria are constantly playing catchup with the constant feed adjustments).

Vegies taking off now that the weather is warming slightly. Have about 10 heads of broccoli going, heaps of lettuce, spinach and beans as well.

Absolutely love feeding the trout, as they get bigger the splashing increases too! Wish I could keep them year round I hope barramundi are half this good!

Thanks for reading.
James

Looking great there...

Don't expect too much pleasure come feeding time from barramundi...

Yep, trout are the best for live entertainment! Nothing else compares.

my little barra are quite active feeders, not quite as active as my trout but they're not far off! i suspect when they get bigger they will be a littel more controled?

Looks great Mr O

Hmm.. seems I had a ph crash over the weekend. Noticed trout didnt feed with their usual vigor sunday morning, tested the water, Ammonia 4-6ppm, tested ph and it was less than 6

Figured the Ammonia had risen seeing as my bacteria aren't very efficient at this ph.

Pumped out 1000L water, and added that back in from the tap (ph 7.8 ) over the course of about 4 hours. Managed to bring the ph back up to 6.8 and in the process dropped the Ammonia to ~ 2ppm

Added stocking filled with shell grit to the Gb's.

All good in the morning, everything back to normal. Figure the ph crash mustve only just happened, not long enough for my bacteria colony to die, only reduce efficiency. Not sure what caused the crash, should have really checked the KH & GH before adding the shell grit. My theory is all the rain water has diluted my hardness and subsequently ph buffering capacity.

No fish deaths so I was lucky.. Another day or two would have been a different story. Pays to pay attention to the fish hey!

Had to work Saturday so didn't get a chance to do my usual fortnightly weigh in.. plus the dramas on Sunday meant I didnt get around to it this WE

Was maxing my old scales out trying to average 5-10 fish, so bought this off ebay;

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll ... 0650747224

Should be here this week! 35kg MAX 1g accuracy. Will let you know if it's any good.

Last update

Pulled out a yabbie on the weekend and found this!

I got these from my uncle's damn, they used to be a muddy brown colour, now beautiful blue colouring. I guess they're happy.

Trout are really good at showing how the system is doing, if they wont feed like usually, a water test usually shows something wrong

Just read over my thread to find out where I was at. I stopped weighing the trout every 2 weeks as I was in and out of the country and away from home for 5 out of 8 weeks for work Got to go to Cape Town, Auckland and Melbourne for work though.

Harvested all of my winter vegies. The broccoli was great, the best I've ever tasted. Doesn't have that weird aftertaste the shop bought stuff has. Red cabbage is still growing I have about 3 left, picking them as we use them. The peas were amazing, sugar snap - 5 plants produced over 5kg of peas! How's that for yield? VERY tasty and have been giving them away as well as we can not eat that many. I'm drying about 30 pods to keep as stock.

The scales arrived and they are really great too - especially considering the price.

I have been buying my Skretting feed directly from Stirling Bulk Distributors in Tenterden. I've been dealing with Jan and she is really nice and has been sending me split bags via Aust post. I started with 4kg of 3mm from TM, got 15kg of 4mm SS from SBD and now onto a 20kg bag of 6mm FF from SBD.

So far I have harvested 10 trout from the system. I was pleasantly surprised there was no 'muddy' flavour I was worried about. The flesh is sweet and juicy. Not quite as nice as some of the ocean fish but very nice.

I haven't been happy with the sump tank setup since I got this running. I've never been able to get the 4th bed online properly as I would keep running out of water in the ST to fully flood 4 beds. A SLO setup in a tank with a large diametre requires alot of water to get going, coupled with a relatively wide and shallow ST I was not making effective use of the water I had.

I purchased 2 * IBC's and 3 * 200L blue drums from the stock feeder place on gnangara rd. The IBC's were covered with scrap colorbond sheeting and one of the drums was cut in half to act as a temporary sump while I dug out the old tank. Here's the finished product. 1.4m deep, 1.3m wide, and 2.2m long - All hand dug too, what a tiring 3 days!!

Result is now I have way more water than I need, so I can get my 4th bed online and use some of the blue drums cut in half to grow fruit trees and what not. Happy days!

Last photo, all done - need to build a deck over it and gravel over the sand.

One thing with sand, it makes digging big holes so much easier
When its not so dry it pretends to be water.

heh yeah at least its not clay or rock. Though I did seem to dig up a rubble pile, bags of concrete, bricks, small pieces of asbestos fence, fly screen etc. Really annoying, going flat out in sand and then bang into a brick. Not good for the wrists

Actually, it was really weird, about 1m down I found a paved path Kid you not! The house is on a corner block, I suspect they've retained out on the boundry and backfilled to get more usable space at the house level... explains the rubble and the pathway I guess.

Ah.. a system expansion... who would have thought that such a thing would happen...

is it just me or does it look like you need some cross support under your grow beds