Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I was looking back and decided I need to clarify my thought here.

Yeah... bluegill are pretty hearty and seem to stand up to a wide range of temperatures so they sound like a great choice.

System rework has been in process for the last few weeks, close to having 2 new grow beds online with 2 more in the near future. My biggest challenge has been trying to work around whats already here. It would have been easier to start with nothing lol.

Without pictures we don't have to believe you. It's in your user agreement.

Here's a teaser. Took this one yesterday, got the flow ratio toned down good with the bypass mentioned.

https://vimeo.com/128280521

Classic Squatch, just classic. +1

Jason,

I would put some type of guard over your pump. Especially when you are emptying your swirl filter. By the way having to work around what is already there is less of an excuse when you have a large jackhammer in the video.

I got the system circulating yesterday afternoon and to my surprise, it works ! Single pump and all gravity from there. I still have some finishing touches and tweaks but the single completed grow bed is online. Now I have to put the yard back together while I wait for parts ....



It will eventually, and I have installed a 90 off the drain to get it into the bucket.



It definitely helps loosen up this desert compaction we have going on !

Been a while since an update, life got busy ! I got the system up and running with the 2 beds and planted them out back in June. Late start for being in the desert so I wasn't expecting much. I planted a pretty random assortment of vegetables as a test run. Most of it took off and showed rapid growth right away which surprised me. Here is a photo from July, the plants are about a month old.


I had an iron deficiency pretty soon after and treated it successfully. All the plants were green but nothing really produced much. We got a few curly cucumbers, a couple squash and bell peppers, and a single honeydew that survived the great squirrel feast of August The watermelon failed to do anything which surprised me. The only things that grew in size were the honeydew, the squash plants, and the mint. Everything else just seemed content with living. The mint absolutely took over one of the beds and I will never ever do that again lol.

Aaaaannd today. I have 2 tomato vines that have recently hit a growth spurt, and a mint forest. There are a couple bell peppers that are taking advantage of the warm fall and have started producing again as well.


One of the tomatoes is a Beefstake, and the other a Roma. I wasn't expecting much from these after reading they require a lot of nutrients, but this morning I spotted a single tomato after watching hundreds of flowers wither and die.


I also noticed I have some purple on the leaves which may be a potassium deficiency ??


These green onions have been in a few months and just haven't done much at all, just like my strawberries.


I planted the left bed out with various greens for the winter, and 2 days later they were gone, nibbled to the roots. Still trying to figure out what got them. I also spotted these droppings under one of the tomato trees. I've never seen them before and they dont look like rodent, caterpillar maybe ? I have been pulling hornworms off the tomatoes pretty regularly. The chickens love them lol.

I am still only running the system with the 11 or so 18" Koi as I wasn't able to get a hold of any bluegill. I have a lead on a local guy that I need to follow up on.

The system has stayed at around 7.0 pH with 0 ammonia, Nitrites, and Nitrates for a few months. It seems I just didnt have enough nutrients to support what I had planted. (?) The only thing I added to the system was iron chelate early on. I fought the urge to add Maxicrop because I wanted to see it perform without it.

Overall I am happy with so far, things stayed green with minimal input from me which is much MUCH better than I have been able to do with dirt gardening here.

I have a few small changes i want to make to the system. I am going to pull the inground pond out and put in an IBC sump. The in ground loses too much to evaporation and is a bugger to keep clean. I would also like to convert the beds to a partial flood and drain from the constant flood. Just a few inches drop in level to pull some O2 in. I had a few seedlings fail to what appeared to be drowning.

Forgive me if this has been covered I haven't gone back through the rest of the thread.

Determining the volume of media required based on surface area of the media and hence its capacity for biofiltration is only applicable if you are removing the solids.

Ratios based on volume of FT to GB are based upon assumed weights of fish and are sized the size they are not for the purposes of biofiltration but rather solids storage and processing.

When it comes to Biofiltration capacity of GBs they are massively oversized but they have to be if you are keeping solids in your system.

holy plant growth Batman! is that 1 months worth? are you sure?

lol sorry Damian, rereading that, it is a bit misleading. That's a months growth in the new system. The only ones that are actually a month old are the cucumbers, and squash. I swear, I could hear those squash plants growing .... Problem was, that's all I got, no vegetables to show for all the growth.


Stuart - Thanks for the comments, I think I see what your saying. I probably do not need the bio filters at all as I do have 2 swirl filters running to remove the solids. The main reason I left them is, is they were already there. The consensus has been they are not hurting anything, do you agree with that or do you think they are removing needed nutrients ?

The swirl filters or the GBs?

If your GBs are big enough you don't need SFs and removing the solids will reduce the capacity of your system to produce plants.

You do need some sort of biofilter. At the moment your GBs are doing that job but if you were to remove them you need something else to do the job of biofilter.

Bio-filter is a bit of a misnomer because a biofilter doesn't actually filter anything. Rather a biofilter processes dissolved wastes principally TAN (Total Ammonia/ammonium Nitrogen) into nitrate. In AP systems without GBs this job can and often is done by the plant roots in the hydroponic components (NFT or DWC). It can be a bit risky though because if something happens to all your plants (like you harvest them) then you suddenly have no biofilter.

Which would be bad!

Sorry, I assumed you had seen the entire thread. My system prior to aquaponics was 2 koi ponds with a bio filter system comprised of severl 55 gallon drums with a filter media. Worked great in keeping the pond water in both ponds algae free. When I "converted" the system and added grow beds I left the bio filters on line.

I currently run from my sump tank( in ground pond) thru a swirl filter>bio filtration>fish tank (above ground pond)>2nd swirl filter>grow beds>back to sump tank.

I cant help but wonder if I am over filtering and losing some nutrients. I started with a cycled system so I never saw any spike readings on water tests. Since May, my Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate readings have all stayed at zero.