Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello.

I'm Bow and I'm in Yuma, AZ (yes, there is a good reason they built a territorial prison here...)

I am wanting to give a Aquaponics system a try, starting out small on my back patio and see how it goes.

So far, the plan is a Half Whiskey Barrel sized Resin Container for the fish, and 2- 24"x6" window box planters to house the grow media in a Ebb and Flow setup.

I picked up all the hardware today, so I'm hoping to get it plumbed up tomorrow.

For fish, I'm probably going to start with gold fish, only because they are inexpensive and tough as nails, but not for a while as I need to see what the water temps are going to be.

My only concern is the heat, as we are running above 105 F daily... The setup will be shaded from direct sunlight

So here is my little setup that I constructed yesterday.

The pump is on a timer... 30 min on, 2 hours off for now. I'm doing an Ebb/Flow. I would like to find a shorter cycle timer, something like 10 minutes on, 1 hour off.

I may put a second overflow on that back box, it is only fed by a 1/2" line from the pump, the Exit in the front box and equalization tube between the tanks is 3/4", but it doesn't equalize out between the 2 tanks...



So much for water equalizing itself....

The water is settling this morning and getting clearer.

It was 105 yesterday, but I never saw the water get above 90...
The setup is on my Patio, facing West. Due to the depth of the patio, it only gets the Scorching AZ Direct sunlight for about 1 hour. around 4:30-5:30 PM

also, the slip in there is a Mint.. it looked much happier this morning....



I know its a small setup, but I gotta start somewhere, and prove to "The Boss" that this is doable...

It's a good start

Welcome to the forum Reverend Bow

Thanks Gents!

The water is clearing up nice. I'll give it another day or 2 before I go looking for fish

I'll bet this time next year your backyard will be full of beds fish and plants....... Good luck Bow. KE

You might want to jump start the bacteria colonization (cycling) by adding a small amount of ammonia. Do you have a test kit like the API pondmaster to monitor your water parameters? I prefer cycling without fish, but with goldfish in such a small system it probably won't matter. You do want to have some nutrients available for the plants though.

Good luck!