Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi, I'm from Suriname, South America. It's located near the equator, so nice and warm all year round

This is my system. Running for about 2 months now. It does OK. But not great yet.

Overview: I guess it is a 500liter pond


My first 'growbed'. I tried to do ebb-flow in the pipes. But the gravel and roots and dirt makes the water flow to slow. At the loop-siphon end it works, but in most of the pipe is more a constant-flow


2nd experiment: Bottlephonics. Works ok. Bit of algae though.


More after the break....

The last one is a 'normal' growbed with ebb-flow


My secret wapen is this sand filter


After I cleaned out the filters, I pour the dirty fish-poop water in this filter. The idea is that the nutrition's stay in the system. Does this make any sense? Does the poop break down fast enough to pass trough the sand filter in a reasonable amount of time? (days/weeks)



Oh, about the fish. I have 9 big ones (15-20cm) and maybe 100 or so little ones <1 cm. Tilapia mostly

Welcome Flexter,

For algae problems, try excluding the sunlight where the water comes down from one bottle to the next. I heaped up the media in my strawberry towers which had the same problem with algae.

Maybe someone with more knowledge can help with your other questions.

Cheers

Either putting a wrap around the bottle or painting them would also help with your algae problem. I am not sure if the sand filer would grind the fish waste faster than it would disintegrate in a mineralization tank. Especially as I do not see piping to keep a steady flow through the sand filter. But that is MHO. There are well more qualified people on here than me. That will probably pop in here and comment.