Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

...enjoys...

Broccoli has very loose heads, have to get on in to keep the flowers from blooming totally. The heads of this plant have never been very tight, I think because this was planted in Summer and it's only now getting pretty cool around here. Anyway I harvested some and was worried that it would be very bitter but it cooked up really well and tasted great! The color was very intense dark green, not like store-bought. Little dog dug up the dirt garden today.

Might be harvesting the adult tilapia over the next few days, now is the time, want to shut the system down to see what effect it has on the electric bill. The babies will still be around.

I'm interested in variations on aquarium-based AP this Winter, until ground can be broken for the next full-sized system. Put the demo fish in the kid's room, with a net basket with grass in it to use the nitrates.

Bad Dog!

Big changes over the next few days, taking Monday off. Working up the nerve to harvest all the adult tilapia. Knife didn't seem sharp enough last time.

I noticed one appears to have the clamped mouth like Janet talks about, kind of puckered lips horizontally. Heating up the 30 gallon aquarium and may try moving her to it, but if she's packing she will probably spit them out. I'll post pictures of this tonight.

Don't have spare money to get some pond liner or I would just do like the design posted before, enough for a 12'x4' bed would be about $120 at the warehouse in Baltimore, $170 at the local garden center.

This is where I get my long narrow rolls of the good firestone pond guard liner. 5.5 foot wide is just about perfect for a 1' deep 3' wide bed.
http://www.justliners.com/aboutus.htm

Your diagram has some similarities to my monster bed. If I were to start all over I might try and do something where the fish tank is high enough for CHIFT PIST but instead of a sump tank, I would do a bit of a well in the far end of the on the ground grow bed. Instead of a solids settling bucket, I would probably just try and cascade an extra grow bed. Biggest challenge would be to get the "well" in the on the ground grow bed big enough to act as the sump.

Good luck with it and the babies!!!!

Yep exactly, I want the solids accumulated though so I can put them where I want, which for me would be on top of the gravel, in the air to dry out before they work down into the lower parts. Might put a side flood and drain bed next to the large patio bed so that the water level rises and falls a bit.

The advantage of the Baltimore liner place is that I could pick it up and not have to pay anything for shipping, their prices are similar around $0.46 per square foot.

Three fish for dinner tonight! Got the biggest ones out of there. The remaining ones are not big enough to eat really, may send some emails around to see if anyone is interested in them.

Pictures from the German exchange student's camera instead of the usual crappy phone camera.

Picture of the one fish whom I think is holding eggs?

Those rocky mountain whites are so pretty. The Blues are only really pretty if you have them up in an aquarium. Down in the black tank, they tend to be quite dark and difficult to see.

All the largest ones were the white ones. Only one or two of the blue or black ones were as large. Our batch was pretty mixed though so the remainder are too small to eat still.

Looks like your fish are just about the right size to eat

Is that a kind of tilapia DD? Real pretty...

Hi C: The tilapia we have are called Rocky Mountain Whites, they are supposed to be more tolerant of the cold than regular ones. Janet Pelletier and I shared a shipment from Miami Aquaculture of about 120 about 1 1/2 years ago.

I have noticed that the white fish grow a LOT faster than the orange tilapia. Perhaps even faster than the black tilapia. You have good fish there. How much do they weight and how old are they? I would like to compare the growth of your fish to my white fish.

Have you heard from Janet?

The dozen babies in the little aquarium are so fun that I could see growing nothing but the little ones!

They have exploded in growth in one week. They were just larvae basically when they went in and they are now about 1" each.