Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've lurked around for a bit so have set-up a small solar-powered system. It uses a solar-powered, battery-backed-up variable-flowrate pump with an aerator I am converting to solar. Only have 4 goldfish in a 140 litre tank and a small growbed filled with scoria.

The pump has a timer, 1/4 hr on, 3/4 hr off and the siphon appears to be going but took a lot of fiddling.

Bought some duckweed from ebay to try out. Been running @ 4 weeks so far, goldies went in last saturday.

Lets see how it goes before going bigger.
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bfn

Very nice!

Welcome to the forum.

I really want to try grow duckweed one day, do the goldies like it?

Hello Charlie it's too early to tell yet. Over the past week they have slowly surfaced to feed on goldie-flakes and wifey thinks they are at the duckweed.

I'm unsure @ aeration as awaiting bits to stop the airpump gobbling D cells at a pair-per-day! Intention is to use the 5 volt solar-cell received to charge a 3.7 volt Li-Fe cell to power the pump continuously instead of the D cells.

The 3 tomato plants started-off with white leaves due to sunburn but have stabilised and growing prolly with little nutrients.

Not yet sure @ ph etc but have an electronic ph thingo that tells me stuff I, as yet, know nothing about.

Daughter insists I am growing the, 'naughty-weed' things, as the image of tomato plants seems to give her that impression.

Quite like the solar pump, only cost $170 and for the growbed size it does a good job so far.

We have a small area now disused as bending to grow stuff is difficult. If things go well I intend getting a few IBC'c and using the area. Makes things much more manageable when growbeds are not at ground level.

Will keep you posted.

regards.

[quote="catweazle"Will keep you posted./quote]

Lost a goldie the other day. Think he was ill when bought as he/she had no strength to break water surface tension.

The other 3 doing well considering it's been 44 degs C today and water temp=28 degs C so have been slowly adding cold water to help. Apparently goldies don't like temps > 24 degs C. They are quite small, no longer than @ 60 mm but one flicked my finger as I tested the water.

The first tom plant now has yellow flowers.

Read some stuff today and tried it. Apparently the goldie-flakes when on the surface can make them ingest air which is bad so I soaked them a bit and they tackled the big wet-ones. they never did when these floated.

Also tried cut-up grape and they liked it.

Dangled a segment of orange and they went mad for it, pushing it above the water. Also noticed they've started on the duckweed, the smaller duckweed, and a lot of duckweed roots are appearing in the growbed water-entry. ph @ 8 so dunno if good or bad but duckweed supposed to gobble ammonia.