Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We discovered the concept of aquaponics when we watched a television program last month on the topic of survivalism/disaster preparedness and instantly fell in love! Over the last month, we have spent countless hours researching every avenue we could find and found wonderful, helpful information here on this forum.

We have our first system built, and it is up and running! Things are going quite well so far. After weighing the options, we decided to pursue "fish-ful" cycling and now stocked our 125 gallon pond with about 20 feeder goldfish and 5 tiny bream. Our grow beds are roughly 100 gallons and we have planted: cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, squash, green beans, sugar snap peas, along with mustard, turnip, and collard greens. Our fish were introduced 12 days ago and cycling is in the works. Today's testings have shown us that nitrates are now present and growing! I can't believe that it is going so well. Our ammonia and nitrite levels are still raised but I should see them start to fall really soon. Fingers crossed!!!

Our fish seem quite content in their new home and the plants are looking healthy and happy. We can't wait to finish watch this beautiful project grow (and yes, we already have plans to expand!)

Thanks to this forum we were well educated on what to expect and are off to a tremendous start! Happy farmers are we!

G'day and welcome honey&powpow
sounds great dont be shy show us your system every body likes pics

Howdy Honey&powpow..... Welcome to the madness, and yes please, pictures if you can...

Pictures will be coming soon. We are out and about today so perhaps tomorrow. We are proud of our system and eager to share and learn more!

Thanks for the warm welcome!

good luck and have fun!!

Welcome to the addiction.....

looking forward to seeing your system...

jT

+1 for pics!

I'm a newbie as well. Can hardly wait to plant my seedlings!

I am having a little trouble resizing some of our pictures, but here is a quick peek at what we have going so far.

We are truly loving the process and spend A LOT of time just sitting around the FT listening to the water runnning and talking to our fish and plants. Hope everyone is enjoying a fabulous weekend!

The plants shown were transplanted on 9-30-11 and are showing nice growth so far. Our fish are doing well after last week's ammonia catastrophy. We are learning a little more everyday and loving every step of this journey!