Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I feel like going for a swim.......

I have seen a similar idea before - in South Africa a company makes a tough net to put over pools (in anchors at several points around the pool) and in the centre they have a huge plastic (air filled) float... I have clawled/splashed across one of these and it held my weight (which is around 90kg)

okay, I'm ready, I think. We've finished our three month travel, we're back home and ready to go. We hung pots of indigenous plants around the side of the pool before we left. Unfortunately we did'nt thinnk about evaporation. So only a few survived.
Now we have a very green looking pool.

So what do I do? We've decided silver perch is our best bet, but how many should we start with in a 40,000 litre pool? Do we need to do something about water quality befor we put the fish in? I'm not quite sure what I need to do first?

Oh yeah, the pool's all safe now, thanks to the suggestion about the pool netting. Found a second hand one through the trading post. Was wrappped, the kkids can't fall in now. It's easy to take off for when we put plants in.

Hi Julie, I kinda disappointed you're back now Jamie and I will lose our place as the folk with the biggest fish tanks!

Welcome back! Was it a good trip?

I've got a 10,000L tank with 250 silver and jade perch. This is fairly low stocking, but good for beginners

I take it there hasn't been any chemicals put in the pool for the 3 months you were away. Have you got grow beds set up? I might be best if the pool is a lovely green colour if you can pump the water through beds for a bit before you put fish in. There should be a good lot of algae and bacteria in the water.

I'll think of more soon

welcome back Julie, I noticed you on line the other day. Gald you had a good trip and best ofluck converting your pool

I take it there hasn't been any chemicals put in the pool for the 3 months you were away. Have you got grow beds set up? I might be best if the pool is a lovely green colour if you can pump the water through beds for a bit before you put fish in. There should be a good lot of algae and bacteria in the water.

We moved here in June and there's been no chemicals added at least since then, we had the neighbourhood kids around the other day spontaneously deciding to clean out the gunk with their fishing nets. I didn't refuse them their enjoyment! I have no grow beds set up, thanks for that. Jaymie is your tank totally exposed to the elements. Altough I guess the elements up north aren't as crazy as they are here. I'm worried that if i got a lot of fish, they'd end up floating.

ours is under a greenhouse roof (like a carport, flat with a slight fall for runoff) that also has shadecloth over it (partly to protect the greenhouse film and mostly for shade). The sides are open, but I'll be putting bird netting around it on the weekend.

Hi julie you are at the right place to start test the water thats in your pool get a large tub bucket or something of water from your pool and put 1 goldfish in it if it survives you are on the right track then you need grow beds you have several choices Murrys or Stock troughs Or bathtubs
When you want fish you cant beat kangaroo ground fish farm he also has made grow beds 12 meter long 1 meter wide worth a look

Yeah, good idea. I''m only about 15 min drive from Kangaroo Ground, so I'll definitely check it out.
I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the enormity of it all and what to do, but with all your suggestions I'm starting to feel less so.

Hi, Talking about using pools we have come up with this idea:

We have the base of an old fibreglass water tank which we are planning to use as our starting point and our plan is to build an internal semicircular frame that sits inside the tank for the growing beds. Our plan is to weld up some sort of mesh that will hold the gravel then have a sump pump in the tank pumping into the beds which will drain back into the tank. We'll keep it pretty low key for a start and we can add beds and increase density as we get a hold of it. Wondering if that seems like an alright idea and whether that helps Julie or not.

Our tank will hold 6,700 litres when filled to 70cm height, the bottom of the beds would sit 15 cm above the water level. The growing bed would hold 1500 litres or 1.5m3.

we like this idea because the big volume of water should be easier to keep a stable temp in our extreme climate, and the beds in the pool will provide shade for the water, sort of like a rock overhang. Our concerns are that having a large volume of water may mean the plants arn't getting everything they need unless we stock the tank reasonably heavily with fish...?

We've been madly reading the forum since seeing aquaponics on gardening australia. Funny thing is, we don't have a garden as we live in the arid north western corner of NSW and rely on bore water.

This aquaponics is pretty exciting stuff!

Chrissy it sounds great. YOu would get away with one pump and having your tank covered would reduce algae and stress on the fish. As for diluted nutes due to a big system, check out the growth of Jamie's system, he has a big tank and little fish and plants are rocking along

Best of luck. Not only is it exciting, it is addictive.

Sounds like an interesting concept to me Chrissy.... welcome.

Can't see any reason the idea wouldn't work, but I'm thinking that you would have to stand the beds in the tank, if you tried to attach them to the tank itself I think the weight would me too great on the side walls of the tank.

That raises the question in itself of how you would distribute the weight of the growbed stands inside the tank so that they didn't puncture the bottom of the tank, again because of the weight of the growbeds...

Perhaps rather than gravel, you'd be better off using a "light" weight grow media like perlite or Hydrotron clay balls

Could just weld lengths of angle on the bottom also to distribute the weight or stand the legs on largish concrete blocks - like you put airconditioners on. I would paint the metal with the smae stuff as you use to treat the inside of tanks (the black tar pottable stuff like Jaymie and Axl used). This shoudl stop the stand from rusting too quickly.

I've just been to the Kangaroo Ground Fish Farm. Glenyis showed me around. Saw their 12 metre grow beds and the amazing growth they've had in only six weeks!! Most importantly though I bought 4 silver perch as an experiment to see if they will survive in my pool water. The SP are about 10cm long, they are in a container about 80 lt. and I quickly bought a pump. I'm just checking the pool water temp, to see if I can put them straight into there, and then see what happens. The boys are excited.