Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My wife and I marvelled at the amazing concept of aquaponics when we first saw Joel's system on the ABC’s Gardening Australia.

Immediately I wanted to fill all the available space in our townhouses courtyard with fish tanks, grow beds and worm farms. However, we started small and set about building a 500 litre system using the green tanks from B. We dug one tank into the ground for the fish and the second we cut a third of the way from the bottom to make a 150 litre grow bed. The grow bed is suspended above the tank on aluminium tubing and filled with expanded clay (the most expensive component!). A small 250 litre/hour pump cycles 15 min on/off.

Original filled with a dozen goldfish the system cycled in 3 weeks but never performed well on no name brand goldfish flakes (go figure!). Switching to sinking pellets for native fish and when deficiencies show the daily addition of a cap of Seasol and a level teaspoon of chelated iron, the system now performs very well. Experienced the normal algal bloom which subsided over the next week. We now have some very fat goldfish (gravid?) and an enthusiastic grow bed with mixed lettuce, cherry tomato, pak choy, butter beans, strawberries and corn, all in 0.6 square metre.

Just imagine what we could do with a couple of thousand litres!

Yay, well done and welcome.

Just a note, in the future, if you shrink the pictures down to 800 x 600, they will fit in the thread better so people don't have to scroll sideways to read each line of text. Perhaps one of the moderators or Adim types might take care of shrinking these pictures for you so that people will be more comfortable reading your first system thread.

I had a similar discovery to yours about how a higher quality fish food will produce better results for the fish and the plants as well as improving the water quality.

Wonderful starter system. So where are the plans for the "next" system? Welcome to the madness, there is no cure.

Welcome guys - Brisi is catching up to the southern states

Wow,
18days from first pic to last if the datestamps are right,
Hope your hungry!!!
Dicko

Well done you guys. Happy to see you both here, it is fun isn't it?
Faye

welcome