Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

well fer watching heaps of you tube vids I decided to give this fishy, leafy thing a try.
I found a pritty good deal on 10 IBC's on ebay.
not all going to be Aquaponics
Soon ill be setting up at least one though,but will make the plumbing expandable
I have all sorts of questions and will nut out answers along the way.
to the wonderful people sharing their valuable knowledge
cheers
Eric.

There's lots of systems of various types on the forum, you should get plenty of good ideas

Yes! Welcome!

Hi Eric
How's the planing going ? Give us a heads up if your chasing parts locally, might be ale to give you some leads..
Cheers mate

Welcome Rob has a lot of good videos on youtube so check them out, cheers

Hey Rob thanks for the invite.
I've been looking for the best / nearest place to buy expanded clay. Can you help me?
Is there any chance I can come and look at your setup.
Love your vids on you tube. You are always so peacefully mater of fact and informative.

H2Grow out at Raceview are the closest local mob & will do 10 x 45L bags of canna clay for $29.50 each..
http://www.h2grohydroponics.com.au/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=91&Itemid=108&TreeId=33
How many bags do you think you'll need ?

Eric, Bob, if you don't need 10 I'll split. PM me if you want to. Cheers.

BnBob
Don't rightly know.
One of those questions I haven't found the answer to yet but have been putting off asking, Is a 45Ltr bag the same volume as 45 Ltrs of water?
If this is correct then I'm in for a big bill for my IBC system at 500 liters of growbed. But at this point I have a single blue barrel as a fish tank and half blue barrel as a grow bed so 90 Ltrs would do for now but I'm likely to double that soon so 4 bags would be me (mmmm even that's $120 have to see the minister of finance b4 I agree to that)
Tallman how many do you want?
How do we go about getting a bulk buy going on this forum. Do you think they will do a pallet price? Must be eighty bags on a pallet I would think.

Sorry Earthbound I would prefer to get this sort of thing thru you but the freight would be a killer unless you can work something out with a supplier here in Brissy.

I probably need about 6 bags for my next build so I'd be happy to take whatever you don't need.
If a Brissy bulk buy came together I'd be in that too. I assume the seller would just want the syndicate to all turn up at once, pay, break up the pallet themselves, and be on their way.

I have not spoken to them yet but I will talk to them tomorrow. Saturday
Who knows. They may already be at break even cost so.
Worth a crack

It took 6-7 bags to fill our 300L beds Eric so you will be up for a bit :/
A bit of a trick I'll be using on my next build will be to bulk out the base of the bed with large (50-100mm) river rock then cover that with some shade cloth before the clay goes in.. Will give better flow to the siphon base & might also make the solids that tend to settle on the base flow through easier as well..
(Cheers Paul )

Still need to make sure you have enough surface area for the bacteria to colonise to do their thing though

If you guys need under 10 bags I will pick up the difference if you want.. Not really sure how many bags I will need yet for the 2 systems I'm building.. If you want I can buy them & you can pick them up from here..
What ever is easier..

Awesome Rob Thanks for the measure. The rock Idea sounds interesting but from what I've learned from the experienced ones here (like yourself) I will only just have enough grow bed space as it is to do the bactereia thing justice. I will keep that in mind for when I add the next two grow beds though.

Do you get much solids in the grow beds with a radial flow filter? I'm going to start with a 200 ltr drum as rff hope that will get the bulk of it.

Do you think a bulk buy would go ok in Brissy for the media?
I will be stopping into the shop today to see what they say about a pallet price.

My parents system will be running 2 X 300L beds set up as I described above with about 15KG of biomass.. They really need 3 beds to handle the load but just don't have the space.. Will be adding a small Biofilter (one our AP at the moment) to theirs to help provide extra BSS..



I do from the small 60L jobbie on the AP here.. The retention time is just over 1min so a lot of the finer solids get through to the beds.. Will be doing a 100 or 200L RFF on the pears build & will have a 200L on our new one..

Haha. "The pears build". I thought wow, going to try pear trees in the AP, that's out there!
Pears = parents...I'm a bit slow on the uptake today. Need a coffee. :-)