Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Unfortunately the bug bit after seeing a friends system in action and we had to find out more about this Aquaponic thing. I had heard of it before but didn’t take much notice as I thought it meant large $$$$, And here we were looking at a couple of IBC’s with their lids cut off and turned upside down growing heaps of vegies and Trout....Bitten BAD!!!

We have around 1/8 of a acre not getting used for much so decided to start off small but overdo it so if we decide to expand (Bitten by bug so that should read when)we won’t need to re plumb anything . It’s a CHIFT PIST system with the grow beds gravity feeding back to the fish tanks and the fish tanks gravity feeding back to the sump and pumped up to the GB's.

We started by clearing a couple of trees and digging a trench to bury the Fish tanks and sump. We decided on buried tanks to try and reduce the temperature extremes and fluctuations we get in this area.


The plan for a start was to put in 2 full IBC’s as fish tanks and another for a sump tank, we used Uniseals to plumb the 100mm DWV pipe for the SLO from the fish tanks back to the sump, They work a treat but a bit of a Pain in the A with the 100mm pipe, Plenty of KY lube some clamps and pushing the pipe through with my feet got it in the end. The 40mm standpipes were as easy as wetting the pipe and pushing it through.


We decided on 4 grow beds to start with for the 2 fish tanks, later we will plumb all 4 into 1 fish tank and set up another 4 grow beds for the other. For these we cut the IBC frames and liners vertically either side of the outlet to give us 300mm deep grow beds and the largest surface area without having lumps and bumps in them.

The pump is a submersible Davies good for around 9000LPH @ 2 metres, Overkill for what we have but perfect for future plans, its feeding 40mm pressure pipe spreader bar and 25mm taps to the grow beds, there is a 25mm bypass tap that we need to run almost fully open to reduce the flow to the grow beds, we were going to run spreader bars around the grow beds but a visit to see OBO’s system changed that (and gave us an information overload, what a system and thanks for the info OBO and Co) so now we have a pipe with holes in the bottom of it that feeds the nutrients from the bottom up. The standpipes are 40mm again running through uniseals in to the fish tanks. We probably should have spoken to OBO before lashing out on a pallet of expanded clay as the system would have cost about 1/3 of what it did had we used road base/stemming..... but the expanded clay is easy on the fingers though.


Last week we got 40 odd SP’s flown up from Perth for the system, we added 3ppt salt before we got the fish and watched the Peas instantly die and the Cucumbers are witling away, the fish are happy though even though they are still not taking food, Water is looking OK, clear as a bell but the PH is a around 8.2 and there is 0.25 ammonia and nothing else yet. How long will it take for SP’s to come at food

I'm not sure how or why your trying to have a sump in the system there...?

And personally I would leave it as is and expand with more fish tanks, the more water you have in a system the more stable the pH/nutrients/oxygen, etc are, and as such the happier the system is.. You guys also get some big swings between day and night temps so larger water mass will help that.

If you can have 2000 or 3000L of fish tank instead of 1000 you'll have a better system..

Cheers Earthbound,

Its more to keep a constant height in the fish tanks and somewhere to keep a couple of Marron, there are already 2 IBC fish tanks gravity feeding into the sump (2000ltrs in fish tanks) and the holes are dug for another 2 fish tanks so the entire system will get fed the by 1 pump and indexing valve and maintain a constant height in all 4 fish tanks and feed 16 grow beds through the 1 sump (as centrally located as I can until I install the other 2 fish tanks). I am always open to ideas though

I think that you plans should work nicely Sav. Certainly 1 large tank is easier to manage, but 4 smaller ones will still do the trick. With the added advantage of having different sized fish. 1 tank with fingerlings, one with harvest-able sizes, some yabbies and a trout tank. Winning.

PS if you didnt have a Mitsy, you wouldnt be missing any bitz...

Too true thats why the number plates are on it, although some will say its the nuts behind the wheel thats giving us grief

The SP’s got fed for the first time in 3 days about a desert spoon full in each tank, I should have tested the water before not after feeding them but about an hour after feeding the readings were
Ammonia 0.5
PH 8.2
Water temp 28
And nothing else yet,
It puts it in the Toxic zone on the Chart

The fish still look happy enough and not doing anything weird, is there anyone out there that has cycled with fish in warmer climates that could tell me if I need to start stressing yet

Oh... SAV! I'm in love!!
What wonderful property, what a fun system. Good move, sinking your tanks.

Out in Vegas, we have a thing labeled caliche... ie; natural cement. Digging here is a royal b**ch. I do intend to sink my IBC's when I ever find 'em.
I have a fantasy of creating a deep trench round the property (got a 70' x 50' back yard...) and trying to do trout... If I can build a grow wall/ chiller... I have lots of dreams.

Good to see you are looking at the basics testing the ammonia levels.

They are Silver Perch, I would not start to stress yet (if at all). If they start gasping for air at the surface then do a partial water change. With the small amount of feed you have given them and the volume of water I could not see that happening though.

Don't feed again until the ammonia level drops back to 0.25 (there was one test kit recently on the forum which gave a reading of 0.25 for tap water so don't be afraid if there are traces of ammonia).

Get prepared to panic when the water turns green though. It is totaly normal (panicing and the water turning green) and is not too big a concern. I am sure you are waiting for it and know that you just stop feeding the fish again. I say this as you appear to have done your research.

I am in awe of the work you have done and am in fear of what you would have done with a couple of thousand dollars.

I could not see it noted anywhere, how much air are you pumping into your fish tank?

dancinhrblady have you checked Craigslist for IBCs yet?

http://lasvegas.craigslist.org/search/? ... catAbb=sss

I can only imagine that there has to be a stash of them out there SOMEwhere in the desert with all of the hotels and the volume that they all purchase at...

Thanks dancinhrblady, with some luck Fishbits has helped you out there, we are lucky here the ground is not that bad but watch out for underground utilities........ found out the hard way when digging the pods in.And it was only being greedy digging the trench for the future expansion that landed me in the S#!t, or a sewer line anyway Dial before you dig doesn’t seem to work here

Thanks JeffJL reading that post was a sigh of relief,
Didn’t know that, you just averted a future frantic post, Cheers


We hace an ACO 388 pump that is good for around 40LPM @ 1m, originally as it was advertised as a deep water aeration pump and 90LPH I thought it would be big enough for the system after its expanded, but since getting it found its only good for 40LPH at the depth of the air stones so am looking for another pump if anyone has any ideas for a pump that is good for 90LPH(ish) @ 1m preferably a little quieter than this one

On the System front,
Added about 100ltrs of water,
The plants are looking better, the SP’s are looking happy and fed about a desert spoon again in each tank, they were hitting the food well, and no signs of stress.
PH 8.2
Amm 0.25
Temp 24.2
No Nitrite or Nitrates in the system

How long have you had water in the system?

I would do as you have been doing, small measured feeds, maybe every couple of days until system has cycled. Monitor your ammonia and nitrites closely. You will see it all happen.

I dont think your fish will be gasping at the surface due to ammonia poisoning. That is lack of air. If you have not done so yet, salt your system to 2-3ppt to help mitigate the nitrites that will be coming.

To avoid your water turning green at all you need to remove sunlight. If you stop feeding till it is gone you are only removing the food source for it as well as your plants. Kind of defeats the point of AP

Hi rsevs3,
The water has been in the tanks/sump for around a month with a couple of goldfish keeping the mozzie larvae at bay the system had been running with plants/Sea sol/goldies for around 2 weeks (not enough to produce recordable ammonia)

The SP’s have been in for a week and so far so good the fish aren’t gasping or flashing, I was getting a little worried with 0.5 ammonia with the high water temp and PH but the fish are looking good.... so far
We have shade cloth over the fish tanks and the tanks themselves sit under the GB’s so with some luck we won’t get too much green in the tanks.

And looking forward to getting to the AP point instead of a couple of fish tanks and a large Hydro set up

Not much going on with the system still no bacteria

The water temp and ph are up a bit today but the ammonia is still around 0.25
The SP's are happy and the tanks look clean.

There is a bit of lightning around and a cool change on its way so hopefully the water temp will come down a bit over the next few days,

The plants are doing well on the sea sol diet though!

Got busy over the last couple of months but thought I would do a quick update on the system,
We ran it C/F until it cycled then changed to timed F/D. May have been other factors but just visually the plants seemed to like the F/D more than constant flow.

We have also added another 20 S/P’s since the system cycled and to date have not lost any fish and now have 60 all up.
The timer we are running (Bigelow Brook LLC) hase given plenty of problems stopping intermittently and rates right up there with the Harley Davidson for the most overpriced piece of crap to come out of the USA, currently it is holding us back from extending the system as its a fundamental piece of kit for the extension. Saying that it hasn’t stopped this week.......Yet
As a test we planted some Beetroot and Rockmelon seedlings out of the same batch into the AP and in Pots, the growth rate in the AP needs to be seen to be believed
There are some aphids getting around the grow beds, we were thinking putting some of our lemons through the juicer and spraying that on them does anyone have any remidies

I have a chilli /garlic mix that I spray on the aphids. Seems to do and ok job. Also, I know we get a lot of ant here in Kal and Ive found that by contolling them, you also help your chances with the aphids as they harbour them.