Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Have you added any seaweed extract for your plants. It will add the minerals that are missing from the fish crap and give your plants a boost. Start with 40 mm per IBC bed.

Are you keeping a record of your water temperature over the dry? Would be interested in seeing what the lowest and average is. Cheers

yes, I am using Dinosaur Pee for the missing minerals. It is a formulation for aquariums.

I keep log off all temps, water min-max-actual when making water tests and the with air temps.

Here is the temp log and some other information...

Water temp is nearly up to the temp when it came out of the tank, the first 7 days was just one FT and one GB. And on the 28th i had the heat coil running but it was very windy and the temps dropped lot, i covered the coil with acrylic glass temporarily after that day. I have to find a nicer solution for that.

Cheers

Nice log, never heard of DP . You have to remember you are not running an aquarium with a couple of plants. What you are hoping to grow needs a product developed for the produce.

How much ammonia is in the DP ?

and here some pictures of the GBs...

i know some plants might not survive, as some experience reports say here in the forum, but i try it anyway...

cheers

Quote from manufacturer homepage:



Quote from aquariumlife where the manufacturer posted his recipe:



There are other recipies for similar products, but in their list is ammonium sulphate, so i guess this one is without. Or is it hidden in some of the other ingridients?

The CDU and fisheries are using it in their aquaponic systems, so i thought cant be all wrong then...

Cheers

Nice work on the system. If I still lived out that way I would love to set up a system the size of yours.

Where did you get your canna clay from? I have only found one source in Darwin and they want $85 per 50L. Were you able to find it cheaper?

Hi,

Nice work, great looking system you've made

Hello dauntlessnt

Thanks

I ordered the clay from Backyard Aquaponics, a couple of guys from the uni and I have put our money together and ordered a whole pallet with 55 bags for $40 each including transport from Perth. unfortunately I kept only 20 bags and that is only enough for one more ibc grow bed.

If you aregoing to organise an order like that I am in for 10 bags.

Cheers

Hello Tom

Thanks a lot. And I am sure it will grow bigger soon. When you can watch the plants growing it just asks for more grow beds. I was also thinking of some miniature lime tree or similar.

Cheers

System is coming along very nicely Oliver!

DauntlessNT, i'm in Darwin too. Couldnt find a reasonable price on the canna clay so i've used gravel from Finlays (If you mention aquaponics to Tom he knows which gravel you are talking about). Its about $70 per trailer load and doesnt seem to affect the PH of the water at all. Mind you, mine is a microponic system, only one grow bed and one tank with some cherabin in it!!

Thanks myst

looks like maybe one day we get another order for a pallet of clay together.

When i went to the uni to do the information session there were another 7 or 8 people willing to start a system.

We have to try to have a get together sometime.

Cheers

Those are going to be very full grow beds there mate

I bought two blue plastic barrels today, because I need something to do this weekend... now that I spent $60 on a set of barrels I bet I will find some for free tomorrow...

The ammonia is down to 0.25 since over a week and the nitrites are coming down slowly (the color is much more pink then the purple on the chart, but I have seen some online pictures of charts were the match is better, I guess badly adjusted printer during chart production), but the nitrates are doing funny things. On day the test shows between 40 and 80 and the next day only 5 and after that back to 40. Weird or isn't it?

Just decided I start raising the salinity level a little bit as the nitrite level are still not dropping by much, just to keep the fish safe. Just separated three smaller fish into an indoor aquarium (the Barra retreat) this morning. They were the smallest fish in the tank, one of them has scarring on one eye, one of them is very restless and was chased by the other fish and the last one had some scarring on the side and the fin. Unfortunately the relocation came to late for the last one and I had to move him into the big farm next to the pineapples.

The salinity is calculated at approx 1ppt and will raise tomorrow to 2ppt.