Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I recently moved everything from the west side of my house to the south side. It isn't complete yet, but I thought I'd post some pictures this time. The hope is for the vining plants to take advantage of the cement area. We're renting, so I can't do too much at this time.
Highlights:
50 gold fish, no plants to speak of. Son planted some squash.
Solar panels (60W) powering directly a 12V dc pump. No air pumps.
Rainwater is collected in the two barrels closest to the garage and used for top ups.
Water is continuously flowing through the beds.

I plan to put the green bin as a reservoir for a flood and drain. I'm wondering about using a toilet flusher parts to flush instead of the afnan siphon I was previously using. I don't want the water to come out the bottom of the bin, either. I think I'm going to take it right out the side. Anyone have experience with tubs and flusher like seals?

I think you may have way too much fish considering no plants.

Yeah, 50 gold fish is a lot.I'm not worried about it, though.

1. I'm not going to be growing them out, and they are the really small ones.
2. I'm not feeding them a lot (any yet, actually).
3. I've had more in the system before, and it handled it ok
4. Once the system cycles, the nitrite-nitrate was effectively converted. The nitrates were off the scale with the plants, but who cares?

good to see you stil chugging along there kris!
i'm slowly working on my bigger system in the basement..

How is your system doing? What sort of fish do you have now?

i've got 30 smaller yp and bg, under 4", and about 15 that are 7"+, and at a bunch of rosy red minnows -i've seen a few very small minnows so they must have spawned a little bit, they've been in there for a couple months now
right now they're in 3 55 gal fishtanks on the floor (on top of a some insulation)
i've got tomatoes flowering with just flourescents -t8's and starting to take over the beds..
found ibc's but need to find someone with a truck to pick them up

this is happening alot with newbies recentley


well you should be


well like it or not they are going to grow


well whats the point of having fish if you cant feed them?


but for how long? i garuntee once they start growing it wont handle it ok


it takes alot for nitrates to kill a fish (about 500ppm i think) but if you can read rates, then it is too high. off the scale, fully planted, is a stupidly inbalanced system, and your fish are not living in a nice environment

you do not need a large amount of fish, especially goldies, which produce alot of waste. for your barrel system maybe 20 fish MAX would keep it going nicely and you would not see any loss in plant growth. remember reading rates means that there is not enough plants to take up the nitrogen being produced. many older, balanced systems, do not have readings of nitrates, or if they do its less than 20.
IMHO you are WAY over stocked, and need to get rid of some fish, or increase GBs.

Calm down Freoboy. Newbie? Three years in I admit I'm still learning things, but certainly not a newbie. You know the H in IMHO stands for humble, right?

I have real problems here getting good goldies. Most of them are feeders, $0.08 each, and I've had half of them die the next day simply because.

Read through TLCs system thread. You'll learn a lot about aquaponics there

peace

Yep a i have read tcls system threads. and imHo you are still overstocked. But if it's working
For you then go for it

Lots of huge tomatoes but only one is ripe. Is this a nutritional deficiency or is it because the weather went cool?

I bet it's the cooler weather if it's doing what it did here this past week. If they are close to ripe you could pick them and ripen them inside (in paper bags, thought i read that on here once) FWIW on nitrates I had them at 300 in my basement system with tilapia and no plants and it didn't hurt those particular fish.

Thanks Dave. It is supposed to hit 80 next week, so maybe there is still hope.

freoboy had a good point. All the goldfish died anyway. I blame the store, since the water tested fine. Even with salt. So, I've been running the system on humonia for a while.