Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Visitors are welcome, but Id rather have it planted and growing a jungle of green before anyone comes

BTW, our goat makes lots of pellets. Can fish live on goat poop?

Hay Dan, just had a re-read of your thread and it looks like you have been busy.

I've found that certain crops don't mind freezing so if you can sort out how to flood and drain your growbeds just from the sump you could probably be growing broccoli, turnips, kohlrabi, salad, chard, and several other things right on through winter with your occasional flushing from the indoor operation and perhaps some pee ponics or other ammonia additions into the outdoor sump over winter.

As to goat or rabbit pellets being used for fish........ I'm unsure if there are any pathogens to worry about there. Bunnie berries are probably more use since their digestion is so inefficient. I don't know much about goats though.

I'm thinking about trying to add a duckweed annex to the pee ponic system to see if it can provide much duckweed for the tilapia. I've look a little at spirulina algae production but the pH and chemical side of it kinda turned me off from it.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Yep, spirulina kind of turns me off too, none the less I am going to try growing it in a 9 foot stock tank this year. I was going to include a pond to purge my system waste water into, but time is short before planting season so I have dropped the spirulina pond addition.

Currently the outside part of my system is operating in pee-ponics mode. I now have my tilapia water temps up to 82 so Im not dumping water from the fish system. So, now I am going to add some more light and see what breeding activity I can get.

Wish I had of planted broccoli, turnips, and chard. I love swiss chard. I will go ahead and plant some to see what I can get.

Progress is slower than I'd like on the new addition. I put outdoor carpet down and layed in the pond liner. I am not sure how many gallons the pond is, but it took me hours to fill it.

My grow bed keeps getting downsized

I had to go with a pond liner width that I could afford and not pay special shipping on so I dropped from 16 to 14 feet wide, now to 12.5(3.81Meters) feet wide. To top that off the largest board I can get is 11(27.94 centimeters) inches tall so I lost an inch off the top. That leaves me with a grow bed volume of 2700 gallons; only twice what my new pond volumes.. So I guess that means I will not be combining both parts of the system to use a single grow bed.

One the upside, at least there is progress. Time is short before its time to plant! I have already missed this moon cycle, perhaps I can plant on the next one.

I used untreated wood for the growbed and coated it with a layer of water proofing oil.

you sure do some nice work brother!

sure aint no blind guys working around there hahaha.

with much respects, johnny

Thank you Johnny!

The first half of my system was a bit more technical. This second half is being designed to be a bit more "good looking"..

Truth is, I did not save any money over just buying plastic stock tanks to use as grow beds. Its so expensive to rent an back hoe and buy a good pond liner. Its also a whole lot more time and work. Oh well, my first system will be complete, finally. I started about Dec 26, 2007.

It's always good to complete something you start. Wish I had enough room for a system that big. But right now I'm a city conformist.

This has been discussed many time before, but for some reason it stuck to me this time.. Ferro Cement

Here is a builder making water tanks. They are thin too! Looks like a structural layer of cattle panel and a layer of that diamond mesh for stucco.

This may very well be what I do next time. I like how thin and simple it looks..

That's even easier than a monolithic dome, but without insulation. There's a thought, add a layer of insulation to the screen before cementing it up.

Well, here it is march 6'th and I wanted to be finished with my expansion. However, I still have at-least two more days or work to get this functional.

Well, I have shoveled 10.3828438 cubic meters of gravel twice (2,742.8 US gallons/ 13.58 cubic yards). I am quickly coming to the conclusion that I am not going to do this any more. Its a LOT of work. From here on Im going to use light weight bio filters and floating rafts. They can grow the same things as gravel beds, but require a little more daily task to maintain, but the system would be cheaper, portable, easier to setup and take down ect ect ect..

Pics coming later. I have not had time to take many pics with this spring dead line and I'm just to tired to care.

I need urea to cycle this thing up. The local stores do not carry it. Does anyone have a USA source?

Some pics..

I found a nice drain fitting that had bolts that allowed me to physically seal the liner to the drain fitting. I set it in concrete so it should not move.

Hope it's level

Its not perfectly level. Seems I got one side off by .5 inch, lol.. Good enough for me..


I finished leveling out the gravel, finally. I also installed a pump rated 1/3 Hp which is says will pump 4300 gallons per hour at 5 foot, but appears to be pumping 0ver 5000 gallons per hour.

Daylight saving time has started and I consider this the first days of spring.
The system is now cycling


Its been a lot of hard work to get this finished in time


But it was worth it...

Fish are on order. Now I just have to seed my little 12.5' x 32' (3.81 meters x 9.75 meter) growbed.