Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

2.2kg.... The only thing i can think of which might have killed the fish is a missing air stone but that stone could also be sitting on the floor of the tank.

So... We chucked some lures in today and caught a 55 and a 56 cm barra. I will post some pictures tomorrow because the beer did some things to my abilities to use a computer and i don't feel like resizing pictures...

Cheesrs

Love the system Im up from Adelaide (have been for a couple of months now) so any chance of coming out to have a look?

Cheers

Yes sure, Erich. Send me a private message with your number and we can arrange a time. This weekend i am on call but if it is quiet t should work out.

Cheers

Here some pictures from the catch.

We had a whole baked Barra (Scales off, parsley, lemon, salt, pepper, in aluminium foil) on Monday and today we had fish cakes with the leftovers (combined with some potatoe, peas, egg and parsley). yummy...

I would have liked the fish to be a little more fishy. The taste was quite mild.

The new food has also arrived. 30kg in 9mm pellets left and than i have to start a new batch.

now that is a tubby barra! Nice work Gwydion... how are your plants holding up to the build-up?

Hello myst

The tomatoes are still going strong, the cucumber plant is on the way out and i waited a little bit to long with the new seedlings, have to start again.

Today was fish on the menu... 26 to go... We tried it with a smoked paprika, lemon, bell peppers and chilli spice rub (from Jamie Oliver) and it was really good. 10 minutes each side on the hot bbq (approx. 210 deg c with the hood closed). The second half will go into fish cakes again for tmorrow evening.

By the way, the first picture is the reason i dont have much time for the aquaponics at the moment, another 3 days art work and on call, after that i have 3 weeks off to finish the building project and spend some more time with plants and fishies.

Cheers

My wife's fish project, not really aquaponics or is it? Water potatoes (edible) and water lettuce (not edible), we haven't decided on the type of fish yet... maybe something the barras would like for a snack...

Hi Gwydion,

Great looking system mate, keep the updates coming!

I'm starting to compile all the gear to build my first proper system (in Tiwi, Darwin) and I remembered reading somewhere that you found a supply of IBC's for $100. I got a price on 500L troughs from TerraCorp Plastics that look the goods, but I'm not sure if I can afford the $385 each...

Look forward to seeing how your system evolves.

Cheers, Simmo.

I know i have quiet for a while but a little bit has happened.

First i had to finish a bigger project which is only slightly related to aquaponics, building a15m by 6m shed, which took me 11 full working days after the concrete was finished. The roof of the shed now houses the new power supply for the aquaponics (5 panels at 250watt each feeding through a 40amp pwm controller into some old solar block batteries from gumtree and than into a 360 watt pure sinus Inverter). The system will need an upgrade in the future of either more batteries or powersaving during night time but it is running since nearly 2 weeks on pure solar power because even on an overcast day the panels generate enough power to charge the batteries for the night and run aeration and water pumps and even the gold fish pond pump and irrigation controller.

I don't think the power saving will pay back the $2000 investment but it gives peace of mind that the fish does not suffer during power black outs.

I think i have 22 barramundi left which are roughly 600mm each. I have tried to catch one yesterday but after i lost the first one because it was not hooked properly, the other ones were not biting any more. But i am going to try again today.

Wish me luck.

I spent also a little bit more time in the dirt garden as i need to relocate a lemon tree from the aquaponics to dirt because it has grown to fast (2.something m "dwarf" lemon) and the grow beds are only housing kang kong, stringy beans, some leftover tomatoes which don't set fruit (too hot) and some young chili plants. The cucumbers didn't turn out well this season unfortunately.

We have removed the Eureka Lemon out of the half blue barrel as it has grown too big and new had any flowers on it.

We removed the blue gravel around the roots first with an wet dry vacuum cleaner until the tree was light enough to be lifted out of the tub. But i got also told yesterday that it is the wrong type of lemon for Darwin climate and might stay an ornamental tree all its life. But i bought some more trees (Finger lime and a bush lemon) which went into dirt right away but next to the car port so i can keep an close eye on it. So far non of our citrus trees had any fruits on it and i got told we are overfeeding them yesterday.

Guess what's for dinner...

A couple of updates... Part 1

Part 2

Part 3