Hi Everyone... Figure i should do one of these just so i'm not another of the faceless masses...
I like fish (and cheese!).
Grew up in Tassie, on a family vineyard growing premium wine grapes, about 40km out of Launceston. 40km is a long way in Tassie, so of course we had our own garden for every kind of fruit and vegetable possible in our climate. We had a small orchard of apples, pears, plums, cherries, citrus (mostly lemons, because nothing else grows WELL in the cold!).
The garden itself was full of all sorts of seasonal produce, more tomatoes than we knew what to do with (which resulted in a pantry more than half full of preserves at times!). The chooks would often wander through freely as they wished, as long as they didn't eat away at the plants too much.
I wasn't really super interested in gardening at that age, i'll admit... Moved out of home pretty early and started my own journey, firstly to Melbourne, then back to Tassie for a few years, which is where i started out in IT.
Pay wasn't that good, and the work wasn't thrilling, with no real ability to advance myself at that stage, so when i got a job offer to move to Perth, i took it and never really looked back.
These days, i do more enterprise IT (networking) and private communications systems work - be it fibre optics (NBN style, but for private business), TV systems, microwave links, or plain old Cat6 Ethernet. More in the telecommunciations trade these days than IT, but still working for an IT/ISP company, so they're quite complimentary skillsets. Mostly working FIFO these days, but otherwise i'm office-based in Perth.
Anyway, long story short is, i bought a house recently, so finally had a bit of a say in what goes on in the garden! Perth soils are crap, by the way. So i could if i really wanted to try and build up the soil quality here, but really... Why use soil if you don't have to?! And, if i didn't mention, i like fish.
In case you've not seen it, i've started with a single IBC system, tucked in under my patio which gets some good afternoon sun (very little morning sun though). It's not an ideal location, but enough for me to test the water, so to speak, in aquaponics.
The system hasn't fully cycled yet (ammonia is gone, nitrites through the roof, nitrates appearing), but i'm already considering how to expand into a decent 3 or 4 growbed system of a decent size, with a maybe 2 or 3 thousand litre fishtank... I've got plenty of space in the back yard, it just needs to be cleared out first, after the people i bought the place off decided that a fake stone riverbed that drains towards the house in winter was a good idea.
So that's the next *big* project for the back yard, clear the whole lot out and start again. And a shed. That's probably first, then i'll throw in the new AP system after that. I've not really done a lot of woodwork or construction jobs, but that's something that will be featuring heavily in the coming months, with a new outdoor kitchen being built, to be quickly followed by a renovation of the indoor kitchen.
My only rule for the garden, and what i grow, is this:
I must be able to either:
a) Eat it, or;
b) Brew with it
If i can't do either, it doesn't get planted. Function over form.
Other interests include:
Amateur Radio (HAM radio)
Beer/Whisky/Port/Ok, alcohol generally.
Mountain biking/Cycling
HIking/Camping
Electronics
Sound engineering/AV
Photography
Homebrewing - Beer, Cider, etc.
Ingress (Ingress Perth)
And finally, thanks to everyone who has helped so far, and will help in the future with some no doubt very silly questions i'll have to ask. Hopefully i'll be able to return the favour for you and others too
Cheers!
Chig.
Missed your intro thread, great to see another ingress player getting into aquaponics.. 
