Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Currently I am raising trout in a concrete spring fed tank. I am going to be adding a few filters, sump tank and a few grow beds in early spring to help keep the trout happier longer into the season. Last year in May the water was getting to bad and I had to harvest all my trout. This year I am going to try to keep them through most of the summer if at all possible. Here is what is currently going on.

A 400 gallon or so concrete stock trough converted into a fish tank with a satellite dish as a cover to hopefully deter the bear. Those are black bear claw marks on the side. He destroyed the previous lid.






Spring Catchment dam. The spring is currently flowing about 20 gpm through the trough but it slows down to a couple gallons during the summer.



Solar panels and spring cistern:



Rainbow trout fingerlings:



Feeding time yesterday. I am trying to get them to use an on demand feeder but they are currently to small to make the food drop out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy2YhVMaDGg

(I cant figure out how to embed this in the post itself so it is just a link)

Collecting things for future growbeds/sump/filters:



I also picked up some 65g food grade barrels this weekend to make radial flow filters out of.

Anyways I thought I should start a thread to keep track of my system.

To imbed the YouTube link hit the YouTube button and between the two bracketed YouTube tags insert Zy2YhVMaDGg ie

Interesting spring system....never see. One before. I assume its a natural spring? What is the function of the catchment dam...besides obviously catching water ?

Thanks for the youtube information. I was trying to use the entire URL between the markup language. The spring catchment is just a dam of a natural spring. It runs down into the cistern that catches it for irrigation and then overflows into the trout trough. During the summer the spring flow drastically slows down so I am looking at a way to keep the fish healthy and happy for those months.

-Mallow