Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello fellow gardeners, innovators, inventors, food adventurers and stewards of our fishy friends!
I'm so excited to be here to learn and share.

A little about me and the current project. Recent culinary graduate and former set and costume student I have been interested in culinary and edible gardens, ethical and ecologically sustainable or just plain interesting farming practices as well as historical design.

My better half, J, and I have bigger dreams for this culinary cultivation but are starting off with some baby steps.

A small backyard aquaponics system growing shade hardy edibles, tilapia, a couple of crustaceans and a duckweed production tank.

I'm no expert. I've never had to buy a pump before or used pond liner or raised fish. I didn't know what an IBC was before a couple months ago.

I'm learning all this as I go and I'm happy to share and looking forward to getting some much needed advice.

It's all new to me and hopefully it will vastly improve my garden and what's on my plate.

Hope you are all having a great day.

Harp

Hey Harp, I like your thinking. I wish you all the best with your AP journey. I'm a newbie this year, and can't tell you how much pleasure it gives me to feed my fishies and watch them grow, and pick salads every other day from my system.

Welcome to the forum

Might also be able to integrate chickens and Black Soldier Fly larvae into that mix. Tilapia eat duckweed and Chickens will also eat duckweed (and Azolla as well). Both of these water weeds are high in nitrogen and can be added to the compost heap for worms or BSFL. I've been looking at using them as a simple method to control high nitrates in AP.

Are you planning on bringing the Tilapia in during the Winter or are you going to heat the system somehow? Tilapia don't like temps below 70 F very much.

Joc: Thanks for the warm welcome!

scotty435: Although a more complex system would be interesting it also means more cost, more risk, more space, more maintenance. For a self employed beginner who will be using her parent's land.....maybe not such a good idea. Slow and steady wins the race. I will be posting more about the system in the appropriate thread so you can read more about the details then. Until I'm more established I'll be keeping it very simple.

I look forward to seeing your system Harp. I actually agree with you, especially about cost, I was throwing out ideas to see if you could use them, not trying to say you need to use them now. It's actually pretty unusual to see a beginner trying to grow duckweed

@HarperBug - Hi and welcome, please keep us updated.

Just thought I'd let you know that all the updates are going up here http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24773 instead of the introduction thread.
Many thanks.