Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have a in-ground 100 gallon fish tank that feeds a in-ground 55 gallon barrel that has two 12 volt DC pumps that pump up to two different PVC pipes that have a small hole at the end bottom and a large hole at the end top to. I have a dc timer turning these pumps on for one hour and off for 30mins all day long. This is all solar and battery operated. Almost all of the water is rain water from barrels. I have four barrels that are for retaining heat that are connected and have a auto valve to the fish tank to keep the water level. This is my second year, I got 2 tomatoes last growing season. I've had many of problems with this system. Hopefully this year most of the kinks will be worked out. I'll try to post up some pics and go into more detail.

Welcome to the forum

Day one


1 week

2 weeks


3 weeks

My pumps. They are not very reliable. If they go dry they may catch fire. I have niw put them submerged in the 55 gallon drum. So far ,so good.

My timer. Has been good to me.

Welcome.

I'm not sure I understand your plumbing. Do you have a bio filter to hold bacteria?

What sort of fish are you keeping, how many and how big?

If you post more details, people on this forum might have suggestions for avoiding problems or increasing productivity.

Airpump:


Fish feeder:


Took the batteries out of the fish feeder to run off solar/battery:

My filter material. Its in a gallon jug pumping air though it.


I have 50 small gold fish and 1 adult bluegill.

Most times buying by weight is not a good idea, In this case what is the volume of 500 grams??

it's a good portion of the gallon jug.

One question. should the bio filter be a constant air running through it? cause at the moment I'm 1 hour on 30mins off. I'm probably going to go full time soon.

So the problem I had last year was my tomato leaves had black on them. I'm assuming that was a potassium deficiency. The fruit was also slow to ripen and smaller in size. I think I have most of the other bugs worked out of my system. A lot of the problem came from algae clogs resulting in water level problems.

I now have black lines and a float valve that is gravity feed from 200 gallon reserve.

im also thinking about the concrete mixing tub underneath the end of the pipes(right above fish tank) for a grow bed with a auto siphon.

Planted tomatoes one month today.