Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Back Yard Aquaponics is so very impressive that the Saginaw Valley State University Green House has started our own 300 gallon system. The beggining of September we started out with only 6 large gold fish (8 inches) to start and if they don't croak we will be adding more. I'm hoping to be able to ask problem solving questions or speak to anyone else in Michigan with a similar system. Here is a pic of our new system.

Hello and welcome!

Please do start a system thread in Member Systems and people will be happy to try and help with any questions you have!

A quick tip. If you re-size your pictures to 800 x 600 then people won't have to scroll sideways to read your posts.

hello, welcome to the fun of aquaponics

Hi . I love the water fall feature Is it solar panalled?? i have been thinking of adding on to my little system. Look forward to reading of your adventures

Hi Jessy,
No its not a solar system, but we do have some small panels at the green house and a small wind generator.
I'm having problems posting on the site. After I have downloaded one pic it logs me out of the site. Any hints for help?
Thanks for the welcome

Welcome Dusty!

Not sure about getting bumped after uploading images - do you have a fast connection or slow? Maybe it is bumping you if it takes above a certain time.

Great way to start, goldfish and rubbermaid tanks will get you going well.

I see the can o worms in the background.

This is a great thing since a nice way to deal with fish waste and old roots left in the grow bed is to put several or a hand full of composting worms into each grow bed. A little bit of worm castings into a new grow bed under the water inlet can also help jump start a good bacteria colony. At least it seemed to work for me.

Yes, that was worm bins. SVSU is having a contest to try to get some of the students to get involved with the green house. You can win $500.00 for the best worm bin. There are four students to a bin (8 bins all together). We have much larger worm bins and an outdoor composting from the cafeteria's thrown out produce, as well as Starbuck's coffee grounds.

i can tell you coffee grounds work well mine gets a KG per month

Does the caffeine make the worms more active.

I don't know about more active, but they enjoy their go joe in the morning. It seems to make it smell better when we started using the coffee grounds.

Hey Dusty, have you read anything about black soldier fly larvae? I would like to see cafeteria waste processed by some of them, then they can be used as fish food.

Hi Dusty!

I'm not in Michigan, but Minnesota, so I can sympathize with cold-weather greenhouses and aquaponics.

Do you know about Growing Power in Milwaukee? They're doing aquaponics on a large scale.
http://www.growingpower.org There's a new group in Madison, too: http://www.skyvegetables.com.

Hey Dave,
I just got done looking at the blackfly soldier larvae site and it looks pretty impressive. I like the idea that they can work in tandem with the worms that we have. Do you know if its expensive to buy some and should they be placed in the fall or the spring since we get all of that nasty snow?