Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello BA members.

My name is MTP and I'm looking to setup a couple of ponds to support Bass, Estuary Perch and native minnows. These ponds would be purely for a feature and study setup, not for a commercial venture. The fish and water will be sourced from a local system that flows through our property, and the fish themselves will be fry or juveniles from the system. I want to try and keep the water, it's microbial content and salinity as close to the system as possible so when it comes time to release the fish they won;t be subject to a lengthy acclimatisation process.

My brother in law directed me to this site and I have done some serious trawling of the pages but haven't really come across something like what I have in mind, hence my post.

Ideally I would like to have a brackish setup in the top pond and fresh in the bottom but I'm thinking this may be impossible to do due to the brackish possibly overflowing and creating a salinity problem in the fresh pond.

Anyway, moving along to the specs and ideas.

As you can see in the pictures attached I have two ponds that are made of native rock surround with a poured concrete form which has been partially rendered and bagged in crushed bush rock. The top pond is the bigger of the two in terms of volume while the bottom has similar dimensions but is half as deep. Top pond is 4m(L)x3/3.4m(W)1m/500mm(D), bottom pond is 3.4(L)2m(W)500mm(D). My plan is to relocate one of the numerous deadfall snags in the creek and place it in the pond, along with some artificial cover as well.







The two ponds have a rock wall spillway/overflow dividing them, the spillway is 1.2m high and is populated with Lomandra which from what I have read would be good to leave in situ as it works as a good filter? I'm also not particularly worried about lime or chemical leaching as these ponds have been in place for over 40 years. I figure any leaching would have been long gone by now, but I will be running a pH test of the standing water in the bottom pond in a day or so just to check.

There is an existing gravity pump system in place but the motor needs replacing due to age. I am looking for info on what sort of pump would be suitable for brackish water and has a reasonably high flow rate (6000-10000L/PH). I'd really like to operate the pump via a solar panel system but I don;t think the minimal footprint I have in mind would power a pump like the one I need/want.

In terms of filtering I have one of these water tanks which I was going to fill with; from bottom to top - Gravel 30% - Creek pebble (from the system down the back) 30% - and some A/C Filter 28/60 Reticulated High density foam 20%. This would be the second stage filter which is fed via a gravity fed, flood and drain tray system that uses scoria/foam/scoria in a stepped stage setup.(If anyone could direct me to a similar rig on here to get an idea how to do this properly that would be great!)

This leads to my biggest query/problem.

Aside from regularly topping up the water how do I ensure that the rain does not dilute the top pond, and create problems of overflow into the fresh pond at the bottom? Oh and should I cover the pond? Mesh or otherwise? We have a good population of native raptors that live around our property and the last thing I want is fish being picked off. Having said that I don;t want to restrict the viewing of the fish themselves either.

Is this sort of setup even viable at all? Am I dreaming about trying to setup something like this? Am I even making sense

Any comments, constructive or not are welcome. I'm going to keep trawling the pages here to try and get ideas on how to make this work.

cheers

MTP

This particular setup[ here is what I meant by the stepped stage setup. viewtopic.php?f=18&t=1618&start=15#p240328

I have a couple of these water containers up the back, and plan to utilise one for the filter system in almost the same way as this guys idea. I have some trays that I can use as the scoria-foam stages.

I hope I'm making sense here, this is my first proper attempt at doing the AP thing, if I make the fish pond work then I'll change to a full fresh setup and grow some veges as well.

Cheers

Only thing I would mention from my own pond experience is watch out for birds picking of your fish, I have just lost another batch of silver perch to our local cormorant. 75 gone in a couple of days, last year I lost 100 over a couple of days. They just eat flat out until there are none left.

Cheers mate.

We have a fair bit of swampland nearby that cormorants, shags, ibis' etc use so it is a concern.

I just wanted to add that after getting through the first 20 odd pages of setups here I am honestly blown away by the different ways to do the whole AP thing. Some of the setups are really cool and i'd like to get something going as soon as I can.

I have decided against the whole brackish water situation as it prohibits me from actually growing vege's, I can run a straight freshwater setup and go down the scary path of doing an AP system for the first time.

Comments are still welcome though people, obviously I'm a first time poster and I'm not sure whether there is some sort of posting etiquette that I am unaware of but the whole setting up phase is proving to be quite daunting.

Cheers