Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Howdy! New to the forum... I'm going to be getting ducks in the next month or so, and am in the planning stages of turning their pond into a biologically filtered system. The planned setup will be a large pond liner with a drain in the bottom, PVC emptying out to a bucket or something containing the pump (with a valve that will allow me to drain off excess water for my raised gardens), the pump will then feed a large planted basin (maybe an old stock tank or something?) that will then drain back into the pond liner.

I'm interested in using the water and the waste from the ducks to feed some food crops, but I'm not sure what does well in marshy conditions. I found some (actual) wasabi online that I may try my hand at growing, but otherwise, I tend to try for drought-tolerant food crops because I'm not usually great at watering regularly when it gets hot outside. What should I be looking into planting?

Not sure about using land animals without composting first. I think there are some health issues.

I'd be interested to see how it goes - They do this a lot in asian countries with chickens

I think if it was things that you would cook, or fruiting trees it would be ok from a health point of view, or you could just grow food for the ducks. I'm thinking of doing the same, though some good filtration is required before the media beds otherwise they will clog with mud/sand/feathers etc.

I am trying to work out where/how to do my pump setup.... I am going to run a sink drain in the bottom of the pond to drain it using a ball valve, and will have a 1/2" wire mesh "filter" over the drain to keep stuff that's too big from clogging it. I'm just trying to work out where I can keep the pump. I intended to let my filter/grow bed sit at the top of the system and empty into the pond.

Here's how I'm planning to do mine:
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... =8&t=19133

OK, so here's my plan

I have a large "hard" plastic pond liner that I'm going to be installing a sink drain in that runs out to 1.5" PVC pipe and a 1.5" ball valve. The pond will be buried into the slight slope in the pen, and I'll surround it with either tumbled concrete pavers and natural stones, or just all natural stones, to cut down on the dirt/gravel/grass/detritus that seems to migrate into duck ponds (based on my understanding).

Long term, I'm going to turn it into a smallish aquaponics (duckponix) setup where I'll have a similarly sized pond liner/rubbermaid trough buried in the ground outside the enclosure and connected to the drain system with a T and another ball valve (so the pond and the trough/pump enclosure can be drained separately). The duck pond and the trough will be level with each other, so if we do not have power or I decide to take the pump offline, there will be no problems with overflowing. The trough will have a false bottom a few inches up, to allow for sludge accumulation (I'll probably use the egg-crate stuff they use for fluorescent light grilles), then sit the pump at the end of the trough farthest from the input/connection to the duck pond. The line from the pump will connect to the bottom of one of the large $18 fiberglass planters they sell at costco, which will be in the duck enclosure, but not buried. I'll drill a hole in it towards the top to drain back into the pond.


The costco planter will have water lettuce or water hyacinth floating in it, and be filled with furnace filter material.

The trough will probably have a secondary false bottom (towards the top) that I can set basket pots of stuff like pumpkins or something in to take advantage of the rich nutrient content of the water. I may also grow kale or greens for the ducks here?

The benefit of having the secondary tub is to keep the pump out of the duck pond, which should theoretically help some of the weirder solids like rocks and feathers settle out prior to hitting the pump, hopefully extending it's life. It also gives me the option grow stuff without fighting the ducks for it.

The 2 ball valves (one on either side of the "T") allow me to drain/service/manage the pond/trough independently.

Here's my sketch of the idea.



The only other thing that I can think of that would probably be useful, is a few weeks ago, I saw something where someone used a milk crate as a pond pump prefilter by lining it with furnace filter material and making a swinging "lid" out of wire mesh fencing material. I don't know if this would be prone to clogging or what, but it may be a decent option if I find pumps are getting chewed up by solids.