Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all!

First post, long time lurker. Really excited to get this thread going as I'm dying for some legitimate feedback and thoughts on my most recent project. I'll pre-warn everyone now that I can ramble at times so I hope you all like details! This is a work in progress project that I'm in the middle of and it's constantly evolving, I'll try adding details whenever something fun happens. I work a lot so I only have one, maybe two days a week of free time to work on anything house related. This first post will be pretty lengthy.

For some back story... I've been interested in AP for quite some time now and my fiancé and I bought our first house in June. We've talked about doing a big project for the backyard so the first thing that came to mind was a nice big aquaponics pond. It was interesting from a design standpoint with me being more of an "all natural" guy and her wanting something more modern and clean looking. I'm also a hardcore DIY'er so my plan from the get go was to do everything myself. As a 23 year old who just bought his first house I can definitely use all the help I can get! We eventually decided on doing a 9'x12' rectangular pond with two large raised beds across the back dedicated to AP. Two more smaller raised beds will go along the sides to be used with soil.

ONTO THE PICTURES

Our backyard was nice and bare but this damn bush really annoyed me. It cut off a lot of the view on the 1/4 acre (pretty large for the area we're in) we have so it had to be dealt with.
You can also see the orange tree on the right that will definitely be staying.




Bush removal. Was actually a bit easier than I was planning. I figured I'd use this hole as a start for the pond.


Note the sand.... the bane of my existence.


Outline of the pond laid out. You can kind of see the shape I was going for, terracing down each foot or so. The middle is about 4' deep. Lower right is one of our beloved Boston Terriers Norma that came out for moral support also.


More digging.... All tamped for the most part. You can see the flat area on the right is a bit different. Here I'm planning on "partitioning" off and having something of a splash pad for lack of better word. Basically I wanted somewhere to cool off during the ridiculous heat FL gets. I liked the idea of having my own little oasis to hang out in, it's about a foot deep so lounging should be quite nice if all goes well. This was something I debated about doing for a while before actually starting anything. Once the time came, I was hooked and had to have it. The practicality I questioned but couldn't seem to find any real answers or examples anywhere so I was going to find out for myself.


Fitting the pond liner. I was expecting to get an thicker EPDM liner, but Lowe's only seemed to have a much thinner PVC mesh type liner that has held up just fine so far. It conforms a bit better than the thicker stuff but definitely isn't as durable. So we'll see. I also made a little cut out in the first terrace to act as a cave for the fish.


All of the rocks have been sourced from an awesome local quarry called Pebble Junction. Can't recommend them enough for ANYTHING rock related if you happen to live in/around Central FL. Found the perfect rock to cover the fish cave.



More rocks. Tried to get as natural of a look as possible by mixing rock sizes all the way from 200lb boulders to small pebbles. Originally I was going to try using the mountain of sand behind the pond for the beds, but later reconsidered and ended up having to move the entire mound a second time Our other Boston Sophie decided to help out that day as well. Look at that smirk!



Onto the beds. I wanted to try going with a pretty simple design seeing as I'm planning on making quite a few of these. All treated 2x4s. I typically don't rely on exact numbers for things so I couldn't tell you the precise dimensions but their both around 4'x2'x1'. (sorry for the dumb metric stuff) For a system this big it didn't seem super imperative that I have a special ratio for the bed media vs amount of water/fish so I just went with what sizes I wanted them to be and will stock accordingly. Sorry for the bad quality in these pictures. It was late and the Stella overtook my patience lol.



So here we are today. One bed is up and running fit with a pond liner and bell siphon. Planning on doing bottom half lava rock top half hydroton. Drain on both beds will eventually meet in the center to a single waterfall point. Planning on finishing both beds with corrugated alum for a nice look. The smaller soil beds will be placed on either side of the pond and the rest of the construction zone will be converted into a gravel patio for other future adventures!


Hope someone finds this interesting. Been wanting to start for a bit and now that I have I'm obsessed so it should be interesting. Thanks for looking!

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Congratulations... that seems to be coming along well...

It should look good when completed ..

PS... what fish are you considering..

As a general thought.... your thoughts on media to pond volume, can be adjusted to take into account all that media in the pond.. you may find that the only purpose in the grow bed, is to use the remaining nitrates, as distinct from providing "filtering" and cycling...
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Looking good!

Looking good Trevronious. A few pointers on the pond. We've built several dozen over the years. Take some(most) of the excavated dirt and create a burm around the entire pond. This will keep water from outside the pond from draining into the pond during heavy rains. Use a water level to keep the sides even so when you fill it up, you don't have liner exposed. Use a variety of stone sizes, and then sprinkle smaller gravel in among the larger stones to completely cover liner. If you can afford it, a skimmer box with the pump mounted in it will go along way toward keeping it clean. We always use a waterfall with a biofilter on the opposite side of the skimmer. In a lot of articles about pond building , they show straight shelves, but it's actually better in sand to have sloped levels and gradual declines. Start at the bottom and work your way "up", using the larger rocks for base, and then filling in with smaller ones. It takes 4-6 tons of stone to rock in a 10 x 12 pond, and if you want a few larger "feature" boulders, you could easily double that amount. Also, be careful of "square: stones, they don't always look as natural, and they can be quite sharp.

Hey trevornious! Awesome pond and growbeds mate
What's the height on those two growbeds? Looks good.

From one of the previous pictures it kind of looked like you would be building a nice integrated "pond growbed" (where Sophie is 'smirking', the rectangular portion of liner left untouched with some sparse gravel)

Thank you! Super excited to get everything finished up. Still a ways to go.
I'm thinking Tilapia would be a great choice, I can't tell you how many I've thrown out of a cast net so I can easily grab some locally. I wanted to give myself some wiggle room and not have to be super tied down worrying about ratios and such so I'll take things slow right off the bat and add more fish as necessary.




Thank you!!




Really appreciate all the pointers. This was my first time even thinking about starting a pond and I sourced most of my info from a guy on Youtube called "Theponddigger". Super in depth video series from start to finish. Definitely going to add the burm and thankfully I sloped each terrace during construction so hopefully everything is solid!



Thanks again! The beds themselves are roughly 3' x 3', with a foot deep worth of actual planting area.
I didn't really think of using that as another grow area now that you mention it haha. My fiance and I originally decided we wanted to be able to do something with the pond besides AP in some way. So I thought it would be interesting if we could have something of a natural "wade pool" to use during the blistering heat in FL. The large rocks will act as a partition and the empty areas filled with nice round river stones. There wasn't really any other examples I could find so I decided to just go with it.

I've been to pebble junction before in Sanford when I used to live up there. Its still crazy to me what it costs to get a few nice size rocks in Florida though. It sure does look nice though... good to see another Florida person here too!

That place is awesome! The selection alone is worth the drive out there for me. Everything I found more around the Orlando area was pretty bland. Heading out there tomorrow to grab a ton of gravel for our patio.

Finished up the second bed last night and put some footers under the first one. Hopefully will have some pictures up tomorrow.

Probably about as expensive as a palm tree in New Mexico

Made a lot of money years ago hauling rocks off from a site and then reselling them to people for feature boulders. Since I actually got paid to remove them, I sold them delivered and set for what they would have to pay for the rock itself at local stone yards. I've only got less then a dozen left, and most of those are monsters. They are about .18 cents a pound, with a decent sized one going around a half ton, you can see why I sold a lot for $150 delivered and set. That is usually another $150.00 more. You don't wheel barrow or roll a 1000 pound boulder very easily. lol

I notice in my new town we find a lot of coral landscaping "stone" because we're right on the beach now. In other parts of the country you could just go down to the local river and pull out a few big ones. Its almost worth the trip up north somewhere.

Boss we'll meet you half way with palm trees and an alligator for that mote you're building... you bring the rocks. I want to see arches national park in Florida.

To get nice "river stones" here, you have to pay for the fright from Ga, NC, & Tn. All we get is limerock ):

yep, that's a bit over the top even for my crew and me. we cut this with an Alaskan Chainsaw mill. It wasn't green, but it was wet after a Summer of nearly four times our annual rainfall. Probably 500 pounds

I gotta say I'm super happy with how well it worked out getting the rocks from them. Prices are awesome for what I'm used too and there's so much more to choose from than the usual 'Florida' stuff. They have another location in PA that has a railroad connecting the two so they just cart stones back and forth. Not a bad gig.
Right now I'm at about 3.5 tonnes so I'm expecting a sink hole any day now

Boss, nice piece of lumber. What did you use it for? Trevronious, looking good...keep plugging away.