Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all

There I was dreaming of grand aquaponics systems yet again when I slapped my forehead in disbelief ...... why not build one that fits where I am now???? Absolute brainwave.

So, a year and a bit of planning/scheming, months of building and the last few months of fretting ....here it is. Its a bit different - see it had to fit in what I had...and of course had to tinker. I haven't eaten any fish yet (they're slooooooowly getting bigger but its colder now... xmas I reckon/hope), only one has died (choked on a worm that tried to back out of its mouth.... he looked very surprised ) but I have been harvesting lots and lots of greens, herbs, beans etc etc its been great - there's always something ... i am in and so are the bees that visit

Below is the growth in the first 2 months of my aquaponics system... planted immediately (it 'cycled' in week 2) peeponics till week 8 till the fish arrived (4 goldfish + 100 puny silver perch... some were just 1.5cm!). I planted it far too densely to start with.... but how was I to know? Every seed decided to germinate - I never get that in the dirt garden.

The growbeds are on a 1st floor balcony and drain to a 700Lt rainwater tank in the courtyard below, the pump is on for 5 minutes every hour (with a few extra pumps during the middle of the day and only a few at night). There is about 800L of media in the growbeds (recycling crates ) which is a mix of perlite, vermiculite, biochar, worm castes (and worms) with clay balls on the top.

The reason for that mix is weight.... its on a concrete slab so gravel was out of the question (plus I would have had to carry that stuff up the stairs).

Anyhow - Photos!

Cheers
Ichsani

And Week 8....

What it looks like now... ok last week. The rain has been too much for the system.... something like a 300% water change over the week! Grrrrrr. I need a roof for it.

And some random photos

oops - forgot a picture of the tank

Will try for fishy pictures if it actually ever stops raining in Sydney.... my water goes cloudy when it rains for some reason - otherwise its clear all the way to the bottom. Does anyone know why it does that?

Love what you've done there Ichsani. Great use for a balcony.
The weekly progress photo montage looks awesome.

If you don't mind me saying, your stocking density seems a little extreme if you're planning to keep them all in that 700lt tank till fully grown.

Is your kitchen on the 1st floor? Just walk out onto the balcony and pick some goodies for the pot. Way to go!

Pete

is anyone else having trouble with the photos?

Yep, I am;
can't see them and can't display when selected?

Thanks aquapete It definitely a better use than the nothing the balcony was doing before. Yes I agree stocking is too high (I think?)... I calculated yonks ago that at 5 kg/100L (found that number somewhere here ) I would need 70 fingerlings if I ate them at 500 gm each ....Which is probably flawed/unrealistic... I ended up with 100 fish because it would only cost ~$5 more compared to 70 (how could I resist?). I do intend to add another tank (actually a sump) to bring it up to about 1200Lt all up. .... what would you put in 700Lt? Or better still - 1200Lt? And how much do I have to add to cater for 100 fish? (sorry 99 fish).

The kitchen is sadly on the lower level... it would be much cooler to walk straight out into the herb garden

I haven't had nary a whiff of NH4, NO2 or NO3 in the system since a week after the fish went in - but there's also ~20% biochar in the media which holds N like you would not believe (at least in soil anyway) and it appears to be happening here too. I have even liberally dosed with hummonia in an attempt to get a reading (stupid I know) but because I could see the plants needed it (I got a reading for ammonia but that was gone the next day and I never got any readings for nitrite or nitrate.... always, always 0 since it cycled... am starting to think I've done something wrong!). I'm used to nutrient cycles in soil systems but aquaponics is new.... other nutrients run out very fast (K and Ca, sometimes P) and the plants always seem to keep running out of magnesium... I've been hoping the media will 'saturate' with salts at some point....Maybe I should get an EC meter... it did take almost 300gm of iron sulphate to bring the pH down to ~7 because of the biochar... I live and learn.

The Hopefulls - are the jpegs not appearing? They are already pretty fuzzy - sadly I haven't worked out how to get a montage out of illustrator into a jpeg that's both the right pixel dimensions and small enough to load up (any ideas?) ....Sorry. If it keeps stuffing up let me know I'll load them again in some other yet to be determined way (eep!)

Gracious knows all I'm doing this week is waiting for models to finish running on the computer, pushing a few more buttons and then waiting again.... yawn.... I'd much rather play around with images and talk to you guys

Cheers
Ich

Me to what photos

Well that just sucks .... can you see any of them?

Just tried to add them as pdfs.... not allowed... hmmm.... at the risk of repeating myself.... how about tiffs?

and the rest

Nup , Nothing.
Try JPG at Maximum 800 X 600 pixel resolution, non-interlaced.
You are using the "Upload Attachment" procedure at the bottom of the Post a Reply dialogue?
Cheers IanK

Ichsani,

I can see the pics at the top, but not the ones at the bottom. The quality of the pics may suffer, but clearly, the system is rocking!! You have a very nice set up and it is growing like crazy.

My system is planted fairly densely and the nitrates stay very low... Seems the fish need to grow to poo and pee more! Ammo and Nitrites stay at zero, so everything seems to be doing the right thing... Looks like yours is much the same.

What all do you have planted there?

Keep up the good work.

CB

With Firefox I can see the jpgs but not the tiffs, with IE I can see neither.