Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

One more

Update.

pH 7.8
ammo 0
nitrites 0-.25
nitrates 10-20

nutrients are low, I think because its been raining a lot. Hard to tell how well cycled I am.

Veggies are slooow growing. A lesson of patience I guess.

Ok needs some suggestions. My original plans called for 2 DWC beds with the skippy filter and a gravel bed which you can see in the pictures. So far I have only built one DWC bed. I have 2 questions you guys might be able to help with:

1. I already purchased the lumber and pond liner. Using this stuff, should I make another gravel bed instead of another DWC bed? I hemmed and hawed over this an am leaning toward another gravel bed. The only drawback is I have to buy a lot of gravel which can be expensive.

2. If I do build a gravel bed, will a 20 mil pond liner be strong enough to hold gravel?

thanks!

I like gravel beds: I believe that they purify the water more reliably than other methods (lots of bacteria) and deal with solids better. I may be wrong.

Our first growbed with 4mil visquine (LDPE) seems to have held up ok, but those were smooth pebbles. If yours are sharp they may puncture it. 2 layers? Run a quick test by piling 6" of gravel on plastic and walking on it for a minute?

Thanks hydro. I'm still deciding what to do about the next GB I add. The cost is a concern cause gravel can get expensive. I also have 4 55 gallon barrels lying around and I thought about using them as GB instead of building with the pond liner.

This week the weather has cleared so I hope to see the veggies take off. It sunny and no rain to dilute the nutrients.

ammo 0
rites 0.25
rates 20
pH 7.8

Would you consider these roots dirty or clean? It looks pretty brown in the pic but upon close inspection they don't look mucked up at all.

What do you guys think?

Its 3 weeks of growth. Not bad I guess.

They look fine to me. Nice growth.

They're OK....

I would say start setting up barrels as gravel grow beds to help you keep on top of those nitrites. Then once you have those down to 0, and once your Nitrates start getting too high, you can worry about setting up your other DWC bed.

I use really heavy duty EPDM liner with gravel but if there is a leak, it will be far easier to fix if the bed doesn't have to be emptied of gravel first. I think the pond liner for the DWC is a better choice.

Thanks for all the feedback. Very helpful.

Here's the plan. Today I picked up a 50 gallon oval pond. What I plan to do is:

Pond---Gravel GB---DWC bed---Pond. The gravel bed will overflow into the DWC and have a second drain to slowly drain empty. The DWC bed just won't have a 24 hour flow of water but I think it will be OK without it. Hopefully the gravel bed will catch some solids to prevent it mucking up the roots in the DWC.

So I add 50 gallons of gravel and keep my DWC as planned. I'll be running out of room but I think I can squeeze in another 100 gallon gravel GB if needed.

Here's some progress. Going pretty good, definitely need to get more filtration because I have so many damn tilapia and they are growing FAST.

Between rain and it being a young system growth is a little slower than I'd like. Posted pictures so you can see the progress over time.
First pics are 1/31/10.
Second pics are 2/21/10

Added more aeration to the DWC bed and it stirred up all the solids that had settled on the bottom and mucked everything up.

second set...

Check out the new additions! Adding 75 gallons of cinder GB space. Need more filtration!!

Dreading washing the cinder. Trying to put it off but needs to be done!

Also check out the progress, I'm pretty stoked.

Great job HN!

It's all starting to come together HN....