Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi, My name is Fred. Today I started the physical preparations for my aquaponics trial. I cut the top of one of my ibc tanks and cleaned the inside of the tank. It still has a bit a funny smell but I hope that after a few days out in the open that will disappear.

Oh, by the way, I am in the western cape in South Africa, and I do have a long history of tropical ornamental fresh water fish breeding. I even was able to breed discus fish. I hope that helps in setting up my aquaponics trial.

Actually, I am hoping that aquaponics will help me to maintain high quality aquarium water, without the nitrates since in aquaria that one can only get rid of by water changes. It would be nice to be able to do without water changes.

The fish tank I am planning to put inside and the plant bed outside. The fishtank inside in order to be able to maintain higher temperatures for the water.

I will keep you informed, and any suggestions and ideas are most welcome.

Cheers,

Fred

Hi Fred welcome to the forum

You are not completely free of water changes I do water change on the aquaponics just not as frequent as on my tropical fish.

Regards

Willem

Welcome Fred,

I'm not sure how cold it gets there but having the plant beds outside will cause you problems with maintaining the higher temps inside and depending on how cold the water gets your filtration will suffer. The plant beds (aggregate type) act like heat exchangers. Might be different for DWC beds but some of the others can tell you this.

Cheers

Hi Fred. I live in George in the S/Cape. Welcome to AP