Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Dan
Nothing is like adding fish to your system.
It comes alive! Brilliant
Gold fish are not my speciality but they are pretty hardy
As with all fish, try and smooth out temperature fluctuations.
I have no experience of the ,”Little black beads” but the bacteria we are interested in are slow movers in cold water. Patience.
Start thinking ahead for seed germination.

Got some watercress already on the go, mainly because I was chomping at the bitt. All my other seeds are still firmly in their packets. I am planning to have a separate shallow gravel bed for the watercress as it would take over the normal beds.

Fish shop had some great mirror carp that would be used to my water temperature but they were last years stock and were big, at £20 each they were a bit rich for the risks of cycling.
Dan

Hi
I bought my first two lots of trout from Bibury trout farm Nr Cirencester.
I paid around £1 per fingerling. That included packing them in oxygen filled bags for transportation in my car home. Good fish. Nice people.
However I have just discovered a trout farm less then ten miles from me in Hungerford. Berkshire trout Farm.
I intend to phone them next weekend when the grandchildren are here.
Trip out look at the fish etc
I will update you

Thanks that's great, I hadn't quite worked out where I was going to get them from. Are you going to try and run trout through the summer then?

Dan

Hi Dan
Yes but in FT2 which is in the shade and heavily insulated. I also plan FT3 which is indoors.
Thinking of about 30

nice system mate really neat and tidy, cant wait to see it finished.

I have found a Trout farm about an hour away who will sell me fingerlings. They laughed when I told them how many I wanted. The diesel will be more than the fish. Going to see if I can buy some feed off them as well.

The two goldfish I have are still alive. Fingers cross I think they may be getting used to the temp. Water test today shows no change PH 8.2 0.25 Ammonia 0 Nitrites 0 Nitrates.

Dan

So fish are still alive! They arent doing a lot and still dont look happy but I intend to pick up some trout fingerlings in a week or so time anyway.

This week I have been working on the start of my raspberry pi monitoring system. So far I have set up the raspberry pi in a weatherproof case in the greenhouse and have a video feed going. I have also set up 5 temp sensors that post results to Plot.ly. The sensors cover the outside temp, inside temp, fishtank temp, growbed temp and sump temp.

Link is here if you want to have a look > https://plot.ly/~reddan/103/dans-aquaponics/

I had some issues early on with the inside and outside code which is why they look all over the place. The way the code split off the temp result from the file meant that it crashed under 1 c and went funny over 10 degrees as it was a length that it wasnt expecting. I think I have corrected this now.

I have seen the thread on the fish feeder in the other section and like the idea so may try my hand at one. I also want to add relays so I can control the heater, turn the pump off if needed and control lights.

I know that other members have used DS18B20 Sensors with success and there is loads of example code on the net but in case anyone was interested but thought that it was too complicated to do I have taken some pictures of the setup build. If interested let me know and I will put something together. I had most of the bits but I think I could build it all for under £60.

Dan

Plot.ly shows only a log in page for me.

You can close that down Brian it's just an overlay trying to get you to sign up. My graph is behind it.

Dan

So I decided to wait to do trout and have gone with goldfish to start with. Bit frustrating though I have had two fish in for 3 weeks now and bought another 9 last Sat but have no real change in ammonia or in fact any reading. They have been feeding, am i being too impatient here?

Just would have thought that I would have seen something by now.

On another note I have now hooked up the raspberry pi to give me twitter alerts if the temps go outside a certain range which is cool and appears to be working well. I want to get a flow meter next so I can tell pump is circulating, this way I don't feel like I have to check it every 5 mins

Dan

doh! now there's nothing listed.

The link works for me. Strange. I have removed the tin foil hat wearing comment as I got scared.

okay got it

Inside is the greenhouse temperature?
Now you've done it ...
I think I'm going to have to do the Raspberry PI. I'd add voltage and current sensors for my solar powered backup system then I'd be set, ha

Yep you got it, inside is greenhouse. Ignore the annoying two really big spike readings on there. I think I got a couple of false readings when I rebooted the Pi.it annoys me because it's messed up my scale.

Now I have Twitter alerts I feel like the graph is old hat.

I intend to add power monitoring as well.

Dan