Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all, been learning all I can from this and other forum so I thought ide join in! I've had a fair few years experience growing hydroponic things ,so I felt fairly confident jumping straight into aquaponics. I built a 10x5 metre hothouse out of mostly scrap laying around, layed some weed Mat n gravel down. I dug a hole n sunk a 2000 odd litre spa into the ground and used a bunch of flood n drain trays I had laying around.i got a spongee from a fish shop and a few river stones n stuck them both in the spa/tank .my 8yr old son was delighted to piss in the tank a few times to kick the seeding process off!i then let the system run for around 3 weeks with a few lettuce n kale,then stuck 60 jade perch in the spa. No fishy deaths which was great!watched all the nutrient levels carefully for the first few weeks,ph is a little high but ide prefer not to use ph down n feel fairly confident the system will balance itself out anyways.
So it's prolly been a little over 3 weeks since adding the fishys n they have almost doubled in size!
The plants are also powering, i had to throw in a bunch of veggies just to soak up the nitrates , so its all a bit slapped together til i sought out a grow plan.currentlyI've got some strawberrys,water chestnut, red oak lettuce, kale,2 kinds of climbing beans( the purple ones are yum!),tomatoes ,celery, water celery and a mushroom plant. That's about it I think !
I'm thinking to run a 12v 18watt air pump 24/7 to avoid a baxk up using solar and would love to
Hear about Other people's ideas n experience re soo pump. Falling asleep now so ill load some
Pics

Nice to see you've hit the ground running.

You seem well on the path to obsession

There's an electrical section here where you might get more focused attention on your solar stuff. I'm in the process of trying to make sense of solar tech, and solar charge controllers with an eventual aim of running my system free of mains power. So far the score is...

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