Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Your system is beautiful.

So much inspiration! Thanks guys xx

-K98

Any more systems to show off.

Late to the show, but here are a few images of my ongoing project. I just got it cycled early September so it's pretty new still. I harvested the large outer bed greens once, so those beds are freshly planted. I just got done ripping out the center bed plants. I had a potassium deficiency that i figured out too late and the plants couldn't recover. I have bush beans, pole beans, and romaine in the grow cabinet that should be ready to go in the beds in a week or so.

The system is a 2000 gallon DWC system which includes a 600 gallon fish tank with 40 tilapia. I have 40 more in the aquariums growing out a bit more before I add them to the main tank.

This system is truly impressive.

It is currently a work in progress:

The two tank's are about 2000 Litres each, and in their former life were abalone tanks

Growbeds currently are 4 black 50 litre pots, so far only one is filled with mature gravel from my old system, and a couple of plants (also from my old system. The growbed in the foreground is fitted with an experimental device for flooding and draining (discussed page 3 of my system thread)

Fish are 13 goldfish, and were all from the same spawn....

Hi all,

Some really inspiring systems here. Thanks to all for sharing.

I'm in rural Ireland. Ireland's climate is defined as a temperate oceanic climate, or Cfb on the Köppen climate scale. I start with this, as in my limited knowledge, it's maybe the most important if you are growing in a greenhouse, which I am. My latitude is 53 North which is pretty up there, I think. My altitude is not very high at all, 170m but I am on a frost plateau which is challenging. Ireland is super super humid......which is also a challenge. It's also not very sunny....it's not called the Emerald Isle for nothing!

My full scale system will be:
- 13000 litres in total
- 2000 litres of fish tank
- 400 litres filter
- 400 litres biodigester

- 12 m2 of DWC
- 12 m2 of media bed

Right now, I'm operating at half capacity only as I ramp up with some smaller fish. Got about 4.5 - 5 Kg of Koi in there.

Most of these figures are subject to change, according to the data I harvest and the experience I gather. I designed it to be quite modular so things can be swapped around and have left some scope for a phase 2, where I add more trickle/DWC beds.

The design is maybe 30% from Murray Hallam, 30% Timmons RAS, 20% what I learned working on AP farms and then my own few bits.

I inherited a 80% ruined polytunnel (hoop house) but now my reconditioned greenhouse is a mixed media affair of polycarbonate, polyethylene and then insulated marine plywood. I do hope to add a manually operated heat cloth at some point soon.

I've loved building it. I've got some letters after my name and I do ''get'' science and engineering (blah, blah, blah) as well as business but this is a whole new ball game for a lad who works in global telcoms.

I finished the build (all my own work) and started cycling two months ago and put fish in around one month ago. Got great growth on certain types of lettuce and herbs already - the aphids destroyed my cabbage. I later learned I put that in too soon anyhow.

Why am I doing this? I dunno, it just snowballed. I learned about it 2 years ago while dressed as a cowboy at a fancy dress party at an ungodly hour of the morning and loved the idea. ''That's a pretty wicked feedback loop''. (Revealing that I'm an engineer there!) Then I read, read, studied, travelled, volunteered in as AP farm, ate the produce and then said to myself when Covid hit, ''let's go''.

This post now almost needs a publishing house so I'll leave it here.

Basically, I've learned a lot from this forum so now that I know a little more, I want to contribute myself.

Bye for now

Phionawn

PS All my pics are massive files and not in the right file format but will post some very soon.