Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

That composter is cool, BW. Very productive. So you just feed some occasional scraps into the pipe?

So far I haven't added a lot, just some dead lettuce leaves, but I might make a bigger one that can cope with all the household scraps, and grow a serious quantity of worms for the fish.

Silver perch wake up for worms, but dont really eat anything else through winter. If I could have enough worms to feed silvers, I might be able to grow them out in a year.

I'm looking at my old system that's been running without any fish since I got my new system started, and I'm thinking it might make a good worm farm.

But I make a lot of plans that never amount to anything, so ....

If you would manage you truly would have a self-sustaining system!

+1 on the composter idea BullwinkleII. I have a 100mm pipe with a screw cap in each bed that I drop banana skins into. Great for harvesting worms.

I have worm towers in the soil but you are using these directly in the growbeds?

I guess you could make a 100mm guard and a 90mm removable canister?

Yes, directly in the growbed.

A removable canister might work well, because I could bring a clean, empty one into the kitchen.

But I think the next one will be two half blue barrels with a half blue barrel sump.

I think I might have to keep it separate from my main system because I'm not sure what chemicals might be on my potato peels, and I wouldn't want them in the system.

I just looked back at my post on the composter, and it's been about a month since I added the duckweed.

It's now nearly empty. So it's taken quite a while for my worms to eat around one and a half cups of dried duckweed, and half a cup of dead lettuce leaves.

I'm guessing that means I don't have all that many worms.

Gardening Australia (tv program in oz) had a segment on a nice sized aquaponics system last night. You can see the video on their website (for a while at least)


Does anyone know if Peng from Victoria is on the forum?

Bullwinklell he has quite a few short videos on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... aquaponics

Cool thanks

I just uncovered in my pantry, (and also ate) the last Twinkie that Geek2Nurse sent me. I finally realised what the ingredient is that I've been struggling to put my finger on.


Sweet-Polyester 231!


Now I can stop my Cronut research and shift back to something that matters! ie. Making whatever that white stuff is that's in Twinkies.


For a minute there, my life had no meaning.


Whew!

Shortening, sugar, air.

Now that I think about, probably some propolyne glycol for good measure.

You can get the recipe for Twinkies in the movie Die Hard.

Mrs. Bullwinkle just re-knowledged my brain with the fact that my intention was to send that last one to Charlie.

Sorry Charlie

But Geek2Nurse runs the Trans-Pacific Twinkies cartel, so perhaps you could score there. I'd try to get some for you myself and send you some, but it turns out food is actually much nicer than Twinkies, and I really don't ever want another one in my house in case a visiting kid accidentally eats one or something.

Having Twinkies in your pantry is like have a swimming pool without a safety fence. Or a rusty 18th century straight razor collection stored at knee level. Or a hungry lion kept in a Wendy House (just trying to be multi cultural with that last one. I had to look it up to make sure my vague memory was correct)

But enough on-topic stuff. It's time for an aquaponics update.

The new location for my system is a total bust.

It's on the wrong side of the house, where the sun don't shine except early morning and late afternoon, and I always knew it was a risk to put it there.

I figure it should be great in summer, but it turns out to be almost pointless in winter.

The result is we are buying salad greens from super markets.

On the upside, it was probably good that I never got around to buying any trout.

So...

I guess that's a win all round.

Which is nice.

Also I've been thinking that I might make another fish feeder with a (reasonably) simple robot arm to to lift my compost canister...




And dunk it into the fish tank for a few seconds when ever the fish hits the "feed me lever".

And the answer to your query is.....



Because I can (maybe)




Then again, I might just mono-crop a years supply of garlic for everyone I know over winter, running the system entirely on compost, and run jade perch or Barra for the other 9 months of the year.

Or I might try putting a heater into the system and turn the grow bed into an exfoliating expanded kaolin float chamber.

Or maybe just retire on the profits from running a book on how long it will be before "exfoliating expanded kaolin float chambers" become popular in pet boutiques.

Either way.

You cant make hay where the sun don't shine...

But you might be able to make garlic.

Or an empire based on exfoliating expanded kaolin float chambers for pets snakes.

It's too early to call.

Silvers eat Kale even when the water temp is winter cold.

I grew some that only has a texture, and I was going to feed it all to my worms, but it turns out my silver eats it. I thought it would only eat worms during winter. Nothing else has tempted it so far. Although I'm guessing it's eating duckweed.

I wonder if my duckweed time lapse is still running