Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone
We have just set up our first system, after some major lurking on this forum to help with any questions we had. So thanks to everyone for all your help

We have 8 goldfish in the tank and 14 silver perch coming on Friday (thats all we can source at the moment)
Still to do : a cover for the FT, shadecloth around the sides of patio and have 2 blue barrels to make some more GB's.

We have a water test kit coming from the BYAP shop so cant post any readings yet but hopefully since the goldies are doing OK, the SP's will be fine.
Any fellow AP'ers in the Great Southern area....would love to hear from you!
Will post more as the system develops.
Cheers

PS...look what someone left in our front pond, future fish food
Nah only kidding, as the name suggests we love frogs!!!

Looks like a fine beginning FrogHollow...

Nice system, beautiful location!

so is that big tank in the backgound of the 2nd pic your fish tank ??

Cheers
pete

Its already got a SLO too

Rain water --> SLO to the GB --> Back to the ST (Current FT )

What sort of frogs do you have there? We have thousands of tadpoles in the raft channel at the moment, and we just love them, ducks come daily for a swim and the sound of what I think is a pobblebonk We have previously had motorbike frogs so we should be able to identify them when they are forgs. We also have lots of dragonflies arriving and laying eggs, quite an ecosystem and before long the dugites will be out and about.

Your system looks good, have fun and keep us posted

Thanks Rupert and Swanberg

Crikey Delgrade...If THAT (23000 litres) was our FT imagine how many fish you would need!!!!

Thanks Faye..... about the frogs, using strictly scientific terminology... we have creekers and plonkers
I looked up the Frogs Australia website, they have audio files and distribution maps for each species and it sounds like the creekers are false western froglets and the plonkers are bullfrogs, the egg masses in the pond belong to the bullfrogs. We had lots of dragonflies here last year too, but haven't seen any as yet....maybe too cold

The water test kit arrived friday (thanks faye) first readings:
PH 8
Ni between 0 and 5
Na betwen 0 and .25
Am 0.5

Bit concerned about the Ph, some of the plants are yellowing (mainly the tatsoi, parsley and mizuna) and some are doing ok (peas, broccoli, silverbeet and beetroot) Strawberry plants look very happy. I have used iron chelate twice and foliar spray with worm tea a couple of times a week.
A week before the fish went in i also added some seasol to the tank.
We are going to be patient ( such a foreign concept ) and see how its going in 2 weeks time, we have used a mix of expanded clay and pea gravel for the media. Checked the gravel with vinegar and that looked fine, our water in the FT is a combination of mainly rain water, some dam water, a small amount of bore water and some from our front pond.

When i picked up the SP on friday, they said "sorry some have been sold" so we only got 7 not a happy camper!!! So need more fish...anybody know where ???

Cheers
Berylee

get the ging ( jelly rubber, leather harness ) ready for the goanna's...best feed ever, Promise