Hello from Adelaide, South Australia

Dooobs

Hello Everyone!

To start with, I would like to thank you for having me! This forum seems to be a fantastic place to share knowledge and to discuss the lovely system that is Aquaponics with like minded people.

A little background on myself:

As the post subject says, I am from Adelaide in South Australia. I have very little conventional gardening background, however about 3 years ago I stumbled upon a video on YouTube of a miniature Hydroponics system. From there I was fascinated that you could grow plants with no soil and have amazing results.

Of course, I had heard about Hydroponics from the local news in regards to drug production etc, but had only known Hydroponics to be of use in that 'field'. So on realising that many people were producing fantastic yields (of vegetables!) I decided (after a fairly decent amount of research) I would venture in and give it a shot myself.

Starting with a manually watered bucket system to Deep Water Culture/Floating Raft and eventually to the Ebb & Flow (Flood & Drain) system I had running up until last year.

Through the years I had some minor success with the systems, my main drawback was the expense of the nutrient and the fact that I wasn't always as attentive to the nutrient levels and water quality as I should have been (I believe having fish should be a good motivator for keeping good water quality!). In end, I found the science of the whole process a great learning curve.

Through my research I had found Aquaponics and thought it was a great idea, but my interest was with the nutrient based approach at the time, so I didn't really consider it. However, after a years 'rest' from it all I decided to clean up my equipment, get organised and to start afresh with the addition of fishies!

At the time of writing this, I have had my system running on Seasol (Seaweed Extract) for about 2 weeks. The system is composed of two 100L storage containers acting as Sump and Fish Tank, and then I have a Growbed full of clay balls. I have planted it out with seedlings I germinated and I also added some store bought seedlings of Strawberry and Basil. As of three days ago I had yet to see any spike in any of the water levels, so I added two gold fish to the system and with daily water tests all my figures remain at 0 PPM with a PH that I try to maintain at ~6.6. Today, I added an extra four gold fish and will continue with daily water checks.

I would like to make some videos of my progress and to share my learning and overall aquaponics experience with the masses to hopefully inspire others.

An overview with pictures (and perhaps a guided video tour, if there is demand for such a thing) of my system will be coming shortly and I will post that in the appropriate section, so keep an eye out for that.

But I did want to introduce myself, thank you for reading my short novel of an introduction and look forward to getting to know you all.

Regards,
Dooobs