Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looking great as always Jim. Nice brussel sprouts. Wish I had thought to try them in the AP

Inspirational as always jim

Hi All Recieved another 100 australian bass and all looking good, hungry little critters
Pic of grow beds as of 17th Feb.

Looking great Jim. How do you keep disease under control in there

Indeed, looking great... as always...

You're not joking, one of the most constantly productive systems I've seen...

Hi all have been a bit slack lately due to renovations and family stuff but i am still here.
took some pics today.
Jim

The system had a haircut
Still looking great, what are those yellow things? Sticky aphid traps?

You just run around every couple of months transplanting things.. grab a shot.. and post it up so that it all looks good... don't ya Jim...

As always mate... looking good...

Hi Jim,

I am a newbie. Learning from and admiring your set up.

I am about to aquire 3 grow beds.
Bunnings has 170mm deep containers with large area. If this depth were OK, it would make my life simple. But every expert wrote that 300 mm depth is recommended for grow bed. You, on the other hand, seem to have a successful tomato growing in 150mm growbed.

I thought it may be OK for lettuce, but seems OK even for tomato.
These seem to cover most important vegies.

Would that mean 170mm is good enough for most aquaponic needs?

Sejin

Now how come has your system eluded me this long? Looks uber cool! nice greenhouse!

You can certainly use shallower grow beds... particularly for smaller/shallower root veges... like lettuce/herbs etc...

And can use them for stuff like tomatos... just beware that large root mass , or longer term growth veges/fruits... might mean that the root mass becomes "root bound"...

Probably wont be a problem for the vege growth... but could lead to the flood level being raised, and/or possible "dry" spots through channeling of water around root growth...

Also be aware.. that smaller/shallower grow beds... means you need more of them to obtain the necessary filtrationj capacity for your numbers of fish....

Or more correctly.... you must stock your numbers of fish to the filtration capacity that you have.... deeper grow beds means more filtration capacity within a similar footprint...

Seeing how I have no affiliation to these guys I am sure you wont mind me posting it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEAdmSnL ... 3GPCREDRHm

Examples growing a wide variety of fruit and veg in shallow beds.

BTW the youtube embed thing does not work

You might not have a direct "affiliation" with the guys in the video Earthan... but you have and you do, often lend direct endorsement to them... especially in an aquaponics sense....

As the business depicted is in Perth... they are in direct competition to the host of the forum and his business.. which could be seen as a "fine line"...

Also... the video depicts a hydroponic system... yep sure, it shows that things can be grown in shallow beds... but with a recirculating flood & drain aquaponics methodology.. there are some other considerations that need to be taken into account.. as opposed to a "run to waste", or even a direct watering hydroponics type system like depicted...

You just include the video identifier between the "youtube" tags...

i.e .. in the case of this video.... "XEAdmSnLYvg"...