Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I keep seeing the coke bottle come up. Seems logical that the shape would work.

Do keep us posted! I was looking at the screen with a bubble stone under it and the versions with the bubbles placed above the eggs to lift water through. Hard to decide.

My tomatoes are growing like crazy and have just started flowering, so soon we'll have a very large crop which we'll use in the restaurant. Attached an image of what they look like now

Can you see the massive banana tree growing quite happily in an Aquaponic environment in the top right of the image?

Also attached is an image of an older bush which is producing a steady stream of fresh tomatoes.

Can you notice how I have trimmed all low branches very severely and only allowed leaves to grow above the level of the first bamboo cross-supports? Last year my tomatoes suffered from a variety of fungal ailments because it got too damp and humid under the tomato bushes. Pruning severely allows a flow of fresh air under the bushes and so far (touch wood) I have had no problems whatsoever.

On the fish side, things haven't been going so well. Soon after using the new incubator I noticed that the baby fry were starting to display strange behavior and then dying a day or two later. We subsequently discovered that they were suffering from an infection of gill flukes and although they can be treated I decided to cull this batch of about 500 babies, sterilise everything and start again. There are loads of eggs and babies ready to be harvested again so hold thumbs for me as I try again.

The Incubator Mark #2 wasn't a great success as I had the water set too hard and as the babies hatched the force of the water started to burst their egg sacs. I will persevere but I am going to have to be very careful with the flow rate.

Nice. And good to hear that you are hanging in there

Some water test readings from today. Temp was 26 deg C, water crystal clear, fish and veggies happy and growing like crazy. I really need more grow beds as can be seen from the Nitrates.

Sounds like every thing is just ticking over nicely Synapto....

Yup, but you can take even more leaves off that tomato Just let the new growth that you want to keep going, then take everything except the fruit off below that. The bushes endup looking like sticks with masses of fruit hanging off

I'm busy planning my home system for Spring. The fish side will still be a Tilapia hatchery, with my target being 1000 fingerlings per week from 1 October 2009 to 30 April 2010. This should give me about 30 000 fingerlings, which seems a lot considering I only produced about 10 000 last season. But who know? I've learned a lot.

On the plant side I am having a total re-look at how I have been doing things. I've had 2 years of "satisfactory" growth and pruduction from this home system and supplied our family restaurant with a fair amount of produce. I just believe that I could do better.

What I am going to try this growing season is to split my GB's into two sections. The first (about 9 half-barrels) I am going to plant with watercress, mint and basil only (all water loving plants) and leave flood and drain in gravel with earthworms for solid removal as in the past.

The remaining 9 half barrels I am going to convert to a "potting mix" wicked system like here;

http://www.growingpower.org/aquaponics.htm

and convert my half barrels into a hybrid of an earthtainer and a normal AP GB, with inspiration from this site.

http://www.earthtainer.org/

Wish me luck. I'll post updates and pictures.

Cheers

Innovative. Thanks for the links.

This is unclear to me.... why the need for wicking up with coir if already pumped up from the gravel beds? Are the growbeds normal soil underlaid with a thick layer of coir which is placed in a tray to receive the pumped up water?


Especially love that Earth-Tainer.

synaptoman, I have added shallow flooded bed with water loving plants like cress also and I know earth boxes preform VERY well. Growing power claims to have grown 1 million pounds of food on 3 acres, 10,000 fish, and 500 yards of compost. Thats what I call production! I think I will also be adding a trial earth box grow bed using fish water. Then I should be able to grow anything.

Have you tried the coir for wicking? I use coir in growing carrots but I have found that the coir does not wick far enough for the carrots I need to use a top feed and let gravity and wicking wet the media.

The watercress I have - obtained from Monya - and my mint took over numerious beds and needed agressive pruning back - they colonised bed after bed and eventually needed to be thinned back - lucky for me my Perch were willing to eat most of what I pulled out! These 2 seemed to love a moist to very wet environment.
The Basil however preferred a slightly longer dry cycle than the the 2 mentioned above. It grew well enough in the very wet conditions (15 min flooded bed, 30 min drain/dry), but grew better in GB's which had a longer dry cycle. Thought I would share...

Your system looks great and I am encouraged that things are going well there for you

Question:
Have there been any tests done as to the effeciency of the wick type system? What I am curious to know is about the amount of nutrient which travels through the wick to the roots of the plants... pluss, does such a system remove as much nutrient as say, plants with their roots suspended directly in the water (such as on rafts), or plants grown in Gb's?

What interesting links I have been in both of those sites all morning.....

Wishing you the best of luck in your new creation.....I will be off to have a go at making a Earth Tainer aswell....I am sure it won't be as sofisticated or overly engineered as yours but it will be some fun anyway

gotta admit, I have been there a lot today as well - even got the school netword administrator to increase my download quota so that I could download the movies

too good AM