Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

What's the weather like over there Andy? We haven't been even close to getting above freezing for a couple of weeks now. Thanks for reminding us there is light and warmth someplace in the world.

Many thanks Brian,I hope your year is better for you,it’s literally a pain getting old, iam getting to dislike mornings.
We are in our cold season now so some nights it gets down to oh maybe 14 or 15c....lol, plants live it though water temps down to a chilly 18c brrrrrrrrrrr.

Ooooh chilly... Only about 30 degrees warmer than here...

We've been as low as about -23C, regularly -17C the past two weeks.

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Well, reading a 140-page thread on aquaponics wasn’t how I had planned to spend Sunday but I’m glad I did. What an amazing read! You deserve some kind of OBE for services to aquaponics for this epic. It’s absolutely fascinating reading your transition from eager beginner to seasoned expert and there’s a ton of useful information here. In fact, I now need to go back and spend another couple of days sifting it all out.

Anyway, as you might guess from my username, I live in Thailand, too….in fact, in Lampang, surprisingly enough. I’m interested in starting up a backyard aquaponics system, though nothing as grand as your most recent build – strictly backyard hobby-level stuff for food for me and my wife. After coming up with an initial crap idea, I’m now thinking of installing what is basically a CHOP2 system. Rather than pollute your thread with my rubbish, I’d be super grateful if you could have a quick look and point out the numerous (no doubt blindingly obvious) problems I’m creating for myself. The thread is viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29397

I noticed a few pages back that you talked about testing. Have you tried Mah Fah Luang or Chiang Rai Rajabaht? Or a little further afield, Maejo or CMU in Chiang Mai? I’m not sure what your Thai skills are like but if they’re not up to the level of discussing analyzing for trace elements (yikes!), even in a crappy provincial Rajabhat, you’re fairly likely to find at least one teacher in most faculties who has a PhD from a European/North American/Australasian university and who thus speaks better English than most of the English teachers. If they don’t have facilities on site (I have no idea how specialized this stuff is but public universities can get surprisingly large budgets to spend on toys), they’ll probably know where to go.

I'm looking forward to reading about how things develop this year. Good luck with it all.

Mr Dasboot, this is indeed an excellent thread. Thanks so much for sharing with us, really inspiring me. I also plan to build small AP on my tiny house in Bangkok by end of this year.

Mr Lampang, I will follow your thread and learn from your experience there as well. Krub

Lampang, Siam Jo thanks for the kind words and my apologies for the delay in replying. If either of you need a hand advice or anything give me a shout iam only to happy to help.
Anywho picture time, Tomatoes have been doing well this time around, we have enough for ourself plus we have good gate sells. I have batched up Tomato sauce for our Pizza topping and frozen in one serving bags, add on top of that fresh Toms and peppers straight from the greenhouse and your on a winner.

More Toms, for the next crop there will be changes as when I planted these I put no thought into how I was going to clean the float face between lettuce harvests,so they remain worryingly dirty between planting’s.

Green oak, Red oak and Butterhead lettuce.

A new lettuce iam trying a miniature Cos,well that’s what it says on the packet, bell peppers and cucumbers.
There’s been a few changes to improve things and I will do a new post with all the little tweaks we have put together,who knows it could be help or give someone ideals.

Great looking Tomatoes, and the Lettuce are all looking good.

Thanks Joblow, your doing very good as well as I can see from your pics.

I'm only small time here, nothing like your wonderful setup, it must be very rewarding pottering around your system, I get a big kick out of my little setup, you must enjoy yours even more than I do and I think most people enjoy working on their system and all love the produce.

How did you C1 bio media go, it would be the exact same produt that I bought and I've found to be as good if not better than the K1.

I have both the C1 and the K1 in the one barrel and i can see that there is no difference as to the way the bio filtration clings to the surface on both types of media, the C1 has more surface area so it should be better than the K1.

Thanks again joblow, the green house has turned almost into a job as there’s always something to do,but it is wonderfully enjoyable in the warmth we have here. I still find I have a list of upgrades and improvements I want to make, the media was one and yes it’s working well, I have been building a system for a customer and I used the media for his system,it works and looks great especially the mbbrs as there boiling away.
Tomorrow is the busy day when I catch up on cleaning and water testing plus I have seedlings to put in the floats, it’s great endless coffee,music in the back ground at I you say just potter until my hearts content.

The background music would very pleasent and a great working environment, I've got background music here but it comes from the 21 year old next door and his mates daily drinking sessions in the garage and it's certainly not my taste in music.

With my MBBF when I only had the 50 litres of K1 bio media I added another 25 litres of plastic bottle tops to increase the suface area but it wasn't a success the K1 kept getting caught up inside the bottle tops so I removed them all.

Bottle tops on their own are OK but nowhere near as good as the K1, C1, and once you try the K1 or C1 you wouldn't bother using bottle tops again as a MBBF.

Yes the bottle caps have been changed ou now for the K1 type media, funny enough today’s job is fitting the air line into the barrel for cleaning, another improvement I made for cleaning was adding a pump,this allows me to drain the tank if I want to and then refill with fresh water,or which ever way I wish to do it,it certainly has improved the cleaning of the media.