Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Here are a few more.
This carnation is not growing, just a bloom I knocked off when I was pruning up the other day. Because there is so much exposure to light I am getting some nice stringy algae in this float bed.
Todd is fishing today, I would be so delighted if he brought me some baby crayfish if he sees any. I like the word yabbie so will probably take to calling them that even if it isn't proper, such a cute name for a cute little critter. Probably won't get any this time though, too cold I bet.


But the carnation blooms seen behind the avocado are new since its been in the AP system, they are so bright red and lots of new blooms coming on, think I will be enjoying it all Winter if things continue to go well. The strawberries are reddening up nicely as well.
Shh..at all the mess in the back gound. Everything is so messy still.


I transplanted some small carrots from my dirt garden, they are still small, but the new leaves are really beautiful.


Some small beets transferred from the dirt garden. I really like the way the new leaves on these look too!


Some dino kale.


The other day I had a small tomato plant cutting that had a good number of aphids on its new growth. Not wanting a lot of aphids, I plucked it out of the grow bed, gave it a good multi-dunk with vigorous shake in the fish tank to dislodge them and provide a little snack for the fish. I fully expected it to die, but since it had already gotten a small root, I stuck it back in the grow bed, I planned to take it out once it died in the next few days. The next day, it was not even looking wilted, which confused me a little bit, since it had gotten such an abuse the previous day. Its been over a week, it is still doing fine. When I was taking photos, I noticed that there were a few new aphids on it, so I will take it back to the fish tank for another bathing session probably later today and will watch to see if it survives another time.
I am certain that I could NEVER do this with anything I grew in dirt. AP is amazing!

New growth on one of the tomato cuttings. Pretty much all of the older growth has been cut off, the roots are coming along nicely. I look forward to being able to transplant them deeply into the main system once it is up.


I was considering cutting this leaf off, but saw there was a little visitor and thought of Faye and decided to let it stay. Maybe it will eat some aphids and get fatter.
Thanks Faye!

Hi Erich!
Thank you very much. We are pleased with how it is coming together, though not nearly as quickly as we would like. Especially me.
Not cheap at all, it is so deceiving since when you look at one or two the price is so low. When we thought about it, we expected that we would be disappointed that we hadn't put in those valves though.
But for some reason when you start multiplying everything by 20 it is a lot more.
Since most everything needs to be glued, our progress has slowed quite a lot more than we had expected to. Think and rethink everything before we cut and glue. We had one, thankfully not terribly major redo of some 1.25 inch piping. From that point we have been thinking a lot harder before doing much.
I did a rough calculation of what each 4 barrel half section costs us, I think at least 125.00 to be fully completed, which is more than I would have suspected beforehand with doing it all ourselves. And this is not even including any fuel for all the trips back for something I forgot, misglued or busted. lol Thankfully very few things were misglued or busted.

But to say that I am looking forward to having all the PVC behind us would be a bit of an understatement.

you might be able to find crayfish at a local bait shop

Thanks Keith, but I have never seen any at any of our local shops. Sandshrimp and nightcrawlers are the only live baits I remember seeing the last times I visited. Plenty of frozen items, but don't remember crayfish being even there frozen.

I am looking forward to going down to pump some fresh sandshrimp and go jetty fishing in a few weeks. I plan to bring some of them back to try to feed them to my fantails, they are such little sharks I think they would love them, and thinking the plants would love the different nutrients from them. Going to give it a try and see what happens anyway.
If it works out well, I will freeze the excess to give to them more regularly. They sure go nuts over the worms, I like that I can overfeed them with no negatives, they get to eat whenever they like and maybe the worms are somewhat processing the small amount of debris on the bottom of the tank, though I am thinking they may be a little too stressed out for that with the 23 sharks watching them. Even a big nightcrawler doesn't stand a chance against them eventually. I had one crawl around for about 2 weeks before they ate him. I had a small amount of ammonia (between .25 and .5) and so had stopped feeding a few days, but didn't bother to remove the remaining worms from the bottom. But after 2 days they they attacked and ate the whole thing. I was impressed since only one of these fantails has any size to it.

The water is crystal clear in the experimental tank now, when this first happened all the fantails hid under the pump, but now they seem to be getting use to seeing me watching them. The ammonia had returned to zero, just prior to adding an additional 10 small ones, I haven't checked it since though. I felt really excited that I had gone through the startup cycle without killing any of them.

I am excited about it, but totally forgot to mention that we have a new pump ordered for the main system. It is about 1200 GPH (4500L) and only uses about 1/10th of the power the one we currently have. And since its a pond pump we won't have to worry about the differing metals in it getting bad or the potential of oil escaping. Thanks TCLynx! I think it will probably arrive sometime next week.
I think I will suggest getting a couple unions for a quick reconnect if ever the new pump failed we could reinstall this big one quickly.

Yesterday I got the Hydroton into one of the beds and hooked up the water to run through the valves and the beds. One thing I am reasonably certain of is its going to be a bit of a balancing act to run well, at least with this big pump. I think the smaller one will be more manageable. I found that I could easily pump the water out of the 100 gallon tank faster than it stabilized throughout the system. When the water got half way down with no signs of catching up, I started diverting a lot more water to the tank with the pump. But it seems to run alright other than needing a little bit more fine tuning and the completion of some more standpipes, prep for the new pump and washing the rest of the Hydroton. Still so much to do before I start digging a hole for some trout to live in.

I am trying to think of the best way to incorporate having light we can turn on in the evenings that is over the trout pool to draw moths for fish feed. And trying to decide between a rectangle/square or circle. I am starting to lean towards a circle since that would be easiest to create a current in I think. Could build a yurt to go over it instead of a greenhouse to keep it warm in the Winter.
So many ideas, so little time.

I smiled to myself when I saw this Beth and it reminded me of an afternnon that I spent photographing the same spider species, (I think?) It mimics a dead tomato flower which often covers the surface of an aquaponics garden. I have spent the last 2 1/2 hours looking at photos before I found these buried amongst the 1000s of treasured pics. Hope you like!

Those are great! Thank you very much for sharing them with me.
But I do confess the need to think the second photo is of the spider dancing for the camera to please you and not that it is threatened by your presence and wants to jump at you.

Please share with me any time you like. Very enjoyable.
Thanks again.
Have a wonderful day!

The last two days have been eventful in progress.
There are now 3 of the 12 beds up and running, though only one has much planted in it. And only that one is completely finished with completed bed water distribution pipe finished. After a couple talks about keeping things as a constant run or switching over to a timer we decided to go with a timer, and Todd nabbed the 10 minute one we already had for starting rooted cuttings. With the big pump we can easily use it instead of an hour one, which we will most likely convert to with the new pump, unless we can make it work. With the way this is set up, we are finding everything is an extreme balancing act and takes a lot of thinking to keep that way whenever we change anything.
With the timer it currently runs for just under 2 minutes and then is off the rest of the 10 minute cycle. Because we had prepped everything to be a continuous flow, it all drains pretty quickly, so there is no worry about the roots being wet too long. I think the whole cycle from fill start to drain end is about 5 minutes.
I have no idea what things will be like when we get the new pump. Easier, I hope.

Here is some photos of things currently.
Chard moved from the experimental bed. Almost big enough to harvest for a green smoothie.

This tomato cutting was rooted and this growth came from AP. I think it looks good.

This sad little mini bell pepper plant was transferred from a pot that was rescued from my dirt garden before the cold hit. Not sure if it will perk up or not, but I will give it a bit before I toss it to compost. Geranium moved from a pot in the background.

This is a baby mango tree that I started in the house. I have no idea if it will grow or not, we are far from tropical here.

And a little fuchsia that I rooted from a cutting last year.

Dino kale moved to more accessible main system.

The big pump really moves the water, this part doesn't even go to the growbeds.

100-150 feeder goldfish to cycle the system with. Not sure what we will move in there once the system cycles.

And lastly, my beloved sharks!

We received the new pump and installed it. It is significantly less volume than the other pump. It doesn't work very well with the 10 minute timer as we had to decrease the exit flow to get the beds to fill and in decreasing the exit flow means there is not enough time for them to drain well. So a new 1 hour timer has been purchased and has arrived and will probably be installed this coming weekend.
So currently, I need to put plugs into the remaining beds that have not had their flow reduced and once that is done, finish washing the hydroton for the beds. I currently have 4 beds with hydroton and have emptied them and refilled them of their hydroton twice already, so I am waiting to fill the rest until I won't be needing to empty them again. But getting close I think. But I have not been spending much time out there currently, and my little sharks are more timid than they had been when I spent more time with them. The koi is very timid and tries to constantly hide. But he loves duckweed.
I think our main system has cycled, though I have not taken the time to test it. The feeder goldfish have pretty much stopped dying, went from maybe 5-10 deaths down to sometimes 1. But some feeder goldfish tend to die if you look at them wrong and others are tougher than anything. So I won't know for sure until I take the time to test it.
I made some of the hot spray for the aphids from a recipe I got here, I am uncertain if it is effecting them much or not. But hopefully, I keep spraying things every few days.
I read an article on raw milk being spread on pastures to revitalize them and it sounded like it made the plants stronger. I wonder if I could put a quart or so of raw milk into the system to strengthen the plants against the aphids?
After things settle down if the aphids are not under control to my liking, I will either put some worm casts into my beds or make some worm cast tea to put into the system to boost the strength of the plants more.
On some good notes, the mango tree is growing nicely, it is still tiny, but its leaves are definitely getting bigger. The tulip bulbs (bless their hearts) are starting to put up small shoots in spite of being moved 3 times already. And the snazzy weather station thermometer reads from the greenhouse to the house, so its easy to know if the fire is burning well or not.
And the best news, though unrelated to AP is tomorrow our son and his wife return from Germany (definitely the best birthday present he could give me) I have not seen him in several years, so I am really looking forward to it. So I expect I will be scarce for a while, a lot of hugs and catching up to do before I get to return and read about more member systems. (by far my favorite part of this site)
Have a fantastic day!

Your system looks great and I love the experimenting with tropicals, was that an avocado growing out of that Styrofoam block I am down in Eugene and I'll be building a 300 gal system this winter, I think I will use blue gill and hopefully run it all year round. Have you guys considered any other fish species? I'm not sure yet if I can afford a greenhouse, but its definitely in the future and I'll have to put up something to get plant growth in winter. Keep up the great work, and maybe I can come visit sometime if you don't mind? If you are ever in Cottage Grove there is a really nice 1000 gal system raising tilapia at a place called Aprovecho. West coast AP!

Morgan

Hi Morgan! Thanks and yes that is an avocado, its one we started from a seed in the house prior to setting up our AP. I moved it into one of the beds a couple days ago, it seems to be doing well. I also have a small mango that seems to be doing well also. I have no idea if they will continue to do well, but so far so good.
Do you have photos of what you are building yet?We would love to do trout, but not in this system, we have decided to look at both this system and my experimental system both as our practice run to try to learn as much as possible in the shortest time. Perhaps we would consider Tilapia for this little system. We have been busy with the holidays but have put together and torn down our system repeatedly. I think we finally are where we want to be (as far as how they fill and drain) and I now have about half the beds filled with hydroton. I have a few things planted, all the planting is still in the experimental stages. I think once things get settled a bit more we are going to link the two systems. Truthfully, for us the greenhouse was the cheaper part of this wonderful experiment. I am sure it is not true, (I hope its not true) but it felt like we spent more on the PVC fittings than we did on making the greenhouse. Might be close though. Send me a PM when you are going to be in the area, if we can make our schedules work out, I see no reason why not. Though its still in a pretty ugly stage with all the tearing apart and reassembly. Its made for not a very inspiring system with nothing exceedingly happy. But give us a couple months and I think things will be looking up more. I am going to be tossing in some seeds soon and I think a couple handfuls of worms and castings to give the plants a boost to fend off the aphids that are having the upper hand in their weakened state.Its funny you mentioned Arpovecho, that is the only AP system we ever saw up close prior to building ours. Its definitely a beautiful system, we went to see it for their last open house of the year, so much of the plants were kind of gangly, but I bet it looks pretty nice in the summer. I think maybe we will try a return trip this year. I think if it was my system, I would have more plants or gravel to keep more of the water out of the light to prevent the algae from stealing the plant snacks. I think when we build our system that will house trout, the beds will look a lot more like theirs than it looks like ours. But we have an entirely different idea for the tank and sump that we think will be much more suitable for trout. We just need to figure out the exact where, since I think we decided where we originally thought to build it is not where we want it to be. We want to be sure, since it will be far more permanent than this system is.
Thanks again for your great message.
Have a fantastic day!

I thought I'd do an AP system for practically nothing by recycling materials; I would only need to buy pump, air pump, and plumbing. Boy was I wrong. I didn't realize how much I would spend on the plumbing. It didn't help that I kept under sizing the pipes, which meant I had to buy a bunch more pipe and fittings than I ultimately needed.

I can definitely see how the plumbing could cost more than the greenhouse, especially the economical method you used for building your greenhouse.

TheNative, I am going to take that as sympathy. Since it is oh my gosh so true. We thought exactly the same thing and it was so unexpected. We figured the blue barrels or the pallet racking was going to be the biggest expense, not counting the hydroton.
It still boggles the mind, how does a little part that only costs a few cents end up costing several hundreds? I think it is the power of multiplication working against us.
Part of me wishes we had saved our receipts to know the exact cost on them, but another part is really glad we didn't.

Now that the craziness of the holidays has settled I had a moment to get the camera out into the very messy greenhouse today.
Its warmed up some, only a small amount of snow outside.

We got this snazzy thermometer that sits in the house and has a remote we can keep in the greenhouse to let us easily know what is going on.

The little mango is doing well and has grown a lot, its biggest leaf in a previous photo was hardly an inch long.

I gave the feeder goldfish some duckweed to munch.

I accidentally broke off a stem of the geranium when I was washing the dirt off, so I placed it in the system, I am in awe as it already has nice roots.

With all the mild neglect the system has gotten over the holidays we have had some not so welcome friends move in, I think they brought their extended familys (or made some)

I have added some worm castings to the beets and chard but pulled out all the kale and tossed them in with the sharks for an aphid snack attack.

Here a few close ups of the beets. I am spraying them with water from a little pump sprayer to give them more of a fighting chance until hopefully the worm casts give them an ability to reject the aphids themselves. I tried the hot spray, it seemed to help, though it tended to mold. I think it acted more like a fertilizer to the plants than an actual deterrent to them. Just a guess though so that is my reason for trying the worm casts. I am hoping it just gives them some strength, the plants that are bigger and healthier seem to be having very few aphids on them, but these poor guys. Well, a photo tells all.