Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

awsome setup faye, neet and sweet!it's been a pleasure reading through your thread

do you have some courses there in your garden, teaching ppl?(i remember i saw a pic of a group of ppl on ur garden)? what are the responses, did someone take the lead and start on his own ap, seeing yours?

are you making a living out of this or is it mostly a hobby?my "plans" are to educate, get ppl working on their food, organic, teaching about composting, mushroom growing etc., a pretty wide plan i know, but what do you think a nd what are your experiences in simmilar matters?

i hope i wasn't too confusing and investigating,

keep on the good work and the positive additude!

Hey Molj, thanks for your feedback. My garden is my hobby and my sanctuary created purely for my own pleasure and that of our family, however I love to be able to share with like minded people and have opened it publicly for that reason. The first time we attracted over 5oo people in 2 days. This year we have had over 1700 people in 3 days and raised nearly $7000- for charity. I am a lecturer in horticulture and aim to educate by example. Making a living -um I need to support my habbit - (gardenning and habitat creation- just in case you are not sure) We grow quite a bit of food but our water restrictions are becoming a focus and we are all looking for better ways to do things. I do believe aquaponics is the answer and I am happy to demonstrate to people how to get the most out of their systems. I have been working with Joel since early this year and now install systems and provide people with information and advice on aquaponics. I have done talks at garden clubs and have university and school students come here to view a working system (Joels system design is very efficient and no fuss, minimal maintenance). It is a very new concept to most of them and they are usually impressed with the efficiency and production.
It gives me pleasure to prepare a meal based on what I have grown myself and perhaps to inspire others, money can't buy those things.
My advice to you would be "Do what you love and love what you do and you can't go wrong.

How many varieties can you can in these pictures? I was surprised at how much there was in such a small area. AMAZING!

A TESTAMENT TO AQUAPONICS

FORGOT ONE.

looking good as usual Faye.

have you been feeding the barra heavy?

have you added any seasol/ liquid fish to the tank? you have enough of the stuff to last.

have you been taking notes of nitrate levels?

do you think you could add more growbeds with the nitrate you have?

sorry about all the q's i just want to get an idea how many growbed would be to many for your system, at current stocking density.

thanks Faye.

oops

faye, thank you for those words, i plant to strive on as i'm encouraged every day by my system and by your systems here and most of all you ppl give me power doing what you do with that additude, nice!

what about water? according to what i've learned in the university they use far more water to water a soil based garden then we use in the AP
what were you thinking beyond that?

beautiful garden ms. faye! would love to be a bug eating those veggies now hehe

molj you should she the rest of fayes garden ( the dirt bit ) its bleedin fantastic and huge

That's great Faye.

Well we got a special delivery on Friday just in time for drinks, so we had to celebrate. 50 Silver perch (cause they are bullet proof everyone says) and what a lovely size at around 15+ centimetres. Woke up to find one floating due to as Robyn says transplant shock. They all went in to the 500 litre fingerling tank to see if they like their new abode and so I don't have to lift and separate when catching the Barramundi in the next couple of months from the main tank. I noticed last night that when the grow beds were all flooded the main tank was a little low and so I got up bright and early to top up due to hot weather evaporation. All was well this morning when I went and checked on my babies. They got a little nervous and charged around the tank a bit then they calmedas I moved back.
I probably ran the hose in their tank for about 10 minutes, straight from the bore as usual. I noticed that they started swimming at the surface, either very relaxed or skipping accross the water, I could not believe my eyes as I knew there was something wrong. I thought they might need air so I picked up the hose and allowed it to hit the water and create bubbles.
My life flashed before my eyes as I started to diagnose the situation confronting me. Some began to swim vertically and others were laying comatose on the bottom of the tank. What should I do. Yes, I know, get the camera oh! and the phone. I rang the suppliers emergency contact line but at 8am Sunday he was unreachable so I rang the local fish expert Dr Joel. At this stage there was a mixed status and within 2 minutes they were all on the bottom of the tank and all I could see were white bellies, the absolute whole blinkin' lot. I felt physically ill. Okay by this time I had figured that standing with the hose did not help in fact I think I killed them all. So was it:-
1. our bore water (is it poisonous)
2. the temperature
3. dissolved oxygen or lack thereof
I then put the hose in the main tank
Then I switched the system to start pumping water and get some turnover or exchange of water.
I put the thermometer in the fingerling tank and checked the temp which was 27 degrees. I sampled the water from the hose and found it to be 22 degrees.

Oh my goodness, sorry to hear Faye

Is this story finished??

OMG Faye, how disastrous.
I would imagine some ppl who diagnose better than I will ask what colour the gills are and if they have any other noticeable symptoms.
Perhaps post a pic of a fish so we can see?

I really feel for you, losing fish really hurts.

After frantically putting some into the main tank in the hope of rescuing at least some or determining the cause you will never guess what happened. While I was still on the phone to Dr Joel he said check their gills to see if they are breathing and right before I started the mouth to mouth resusicitation. Well anyways within about 3 minutes they started to move around and they all survived. In fact they all lived happily ever after.