Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone at BYAP!

Thought I'd better join after seeing so much useful advice here.

I grew up on a farm (equine centre though) and to date, have done some vegie gardening in peaks and troughs over the years (as in some years very busy with growing vegies, then years of not doing any gardening at all just due to life circumstances...). I don't really know that much about gardening and maybe that's why it's taken so long to hear about this AP business but I still manage to have some success producing food for the family.

We had a good worm set up on the farm but after a few years someone accidentally fed horse manure to them from a Nag that had just been drenched and we lost the vast majority. Fast forward a few (many) years and I'm getting back into the swing of vegies.

The past few months have been quite exciting in researching AP. I really do wish I'd heard about this amazing system earlier! My wonderful partner is very supportive and has let it drop that we have a very special xmas present coming in the form of an AP system! What a wonderful woman I have here!

I'll leave it at that as I have a ton of work to get into to start preparing the Area which includes removing some troublesome trees but I look forward to being a part of the AP community and while we all may have different approaches or requirements the underlying reason why we produce our own food unites us all in a special way and the fact I will now be able to feed my fast growing 5 young boys with our own fish is just awesome!

Ciao for now...

Welcome aboard.

There are a number of dodgy system sales out there so I hope you have done your research there. There is a lot of great information and members here willing to help you along the way.

Thankyou!

We've been looking over the Practical Aquaponics website (amongst others) and have watched Murray's dvds (or one of them at least).

As this was purchased without my knowledge I have loads of questions... I understand we ended up with the Black Beauty so I'm not sure if there is much of a difference between the poly and fibreglass tanks or pro's/cons. I realise it's a smaller system which is good for us atm so I can learn more and make smaller mistakes. Once we can get it performing well I would like to expand it.

I'd say my biggest question so far is how to power it all. I'll set up a redundant power supply but the area we would like to set it up in doesn't have easy access to power so need to research how I can run it differently....

Wish I'd known what my partner was up to as I'd have liked to have looked at the solar ready kits but I guess that's probably doable a either way.... Anyways they might be questions for me to ask once I see what I have on my hands and I can start a build thread.....

Hiya Cunning, welcome to the forum. I've just googled your new system and it looks like a really nice and neat little system and should be a great starter kit for you. Not sure of the tank(ft) and growbed(gb) volumes as they weren't stated on the website. It does however say that it has over a metre of growing area and will accomodate 30 fish. As you are just starting on your AP journey I would be cautious of the stocking rates. Research on this forum is your friend. Good luck and enjoy.

It will certainly compliment our current vegie patch. I'll keep them both going until I've successfully managed the AP system for a while and look expanding from there. Not having some of the finer details for it I'm not sure how big, exact where to put it but I will take the slow and steady approach after all its about having some fun along the way

Little update...

The small indoor system is going ok. Cycling took a little while to sort out but everything is 0's and pH 7.0.
One fish death during cycling.....

Larger out door system, cycling with 10 comets. Well... Same as above, I lost one comet early on but as of yesterday the system appears to have completed cycling as well. WOOT!

So now the big decision. 10 trout or 20 silvers.......