Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This is how the system used to be configured:



Two IBCs, one raised, the other half buried in the ground, one pump lifting water from the low IBC to the high one, and irrigation lines plumbed in as an overflow from the high IBC.

The first major issue with this setup was the marron attempting to escape via the irrigation lines. I lost a lot of the smaller marron due to them climbing into the PVC and 'drowning'. I blocked the overflow with mesh but this was clogging up with algae and muck and causing the top IBC to overflow.

I was also getting a LOT of algae building up in the IBCs due to the pump being way too small and hence not having enough water circulating around the system. The water in the top IBC in particular was very stagnant, and so when the weather started warming up around September last year I ended up with about 2000 odd litres of pea soup and some very unhappy marron (the goldfish - hardy little buggers as they are - still seemed fairly happy though).

Finally, the 300 litres of growbed volume was never going to cope with this volume of water, even though it was stocked with merely a handful of goldies and 80 odd small marron.

Things plodded along until we had an unusually warm month of November here in Perth and I lost another 15 marron due to the water getting too warm for them. Some of them escaped and I found them desiccated on the lawn or behind the shed, the others died due (I assume) to low DO levels BUT I still had about 50 left and some of them were getting close to legal size. I decided to that I needed to make some drastic changes if I was going to have any success with this system, but didn't have the time to invest in doing it at that stage. For the next few weeks I had a regular routine of doing 50% water changes every weekend just to keep the marron alive while I planned my next move.

The first couple of weeks in December turned out to be cooler than usual and I had some time off from work, so it was the perfect opportunity to reconfigure the system and get things back on track...

It was a pretty daunting prospect though: I had to move the two growbeds at the back of the pic above, which meant removing the gravel manually... There was a lot of stinky green stagnant water at the bottom of them though, so it was no wonder I hadn't been able to grow anything in them. Next I rehoused the marron and moved the IBC off its blocks and out of the way so I could get working with the shovel and wheelbarrow. I had to make a hole for the IBC to sit in so that it was flush with the other buried one.

Once that was done (believe it or not, I filled a 6x4 trailer with the sand that came out of the hole ) I lowered the IBC into the hole and plumbed the two tanks together using 50mm PVC pipe. I filled the IBC with fresh rainwater and put the marron back in and psyched myself up for phase 2 of the project, sorting out the growbed situation.

I had 4 x 220L black tubs that used to be my marron tanks in my old ap system (http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=407 ), I decided that they were going to be used as additional growbeds increasing the overall GB volume to around 1200L. Still not ideal, but a lot better than before.

Problem was I was already pretty stuffed after moving all of that sand and gravel, I didn't really fancy the idea of moving and washing a whole lot more pea gravel, so it was time to search for a cheap source of expanded clay balls.

A friend of mine owns a large wholesale nursery so I got him to ask around for the best prices on Hydroton, I was lucky enough to purchase 16 x 50L bags from Aquaponics in Canningvale at wholesale rates - at $19.90 per bag it was a real bargain - jealous much??? I also purchased an 8000LPH Davey pond pump at trade price through my mate's supplier, proving again that it's not what you know, its WHO you know.

I set up all the growbeds on limestone blocks, plumbed the irrigation lines to them, installed my trusty loop-siphons and the PVC return plumbing back to the tanks. That took me the better part of a day, then the easy part was filling the beds with the hydroton. It was so easy to do that it more than compensated for the $350 in total that I had to shell out for it.

I ended up with a system that looked like this (note: the pics were taken a couple of weeks after reconfiguration, you can see there are a few seedlings that had established themselves by that stage):











It was time for a well-earned beer (or three) and I was pretty happy with the final result... but there were still a few dramas ahead of me...

welcome back simmo

hey simmo.

long time no see. didn't know what happened to you after you suddenly disappeared. glad to see your still alive and well.

how are those auto siphons treating you?

Hey BF, yeah too long, I know... Life sometimes gets in the way if you know what I mean. The siphons are nice and reliable, in fact through all the dramas I've had with the system they have never failed, every now and then I reach into the standpipes to clear any roots & dross but that's it.

Just to hijack my own thread - I had a quick look just now at the link on your sig (I intend to have a proper read through later tonight)... Turns out that "it's a small Perth...". I met Trevor B. last year after he approached my FIL about an aquaculture proposal and we got the grand tour of the facilities at Freo Maritime TAFE as well as his own premises. VERY impressive!

My FIL owns an ice skating facility here and Trevor was assisting another guy who was producing trout here in Perth. They were looking to solve the problem of their water heating up too much for the trout during our hot Perth summers and were trying to see if it was feasible to pick up and transport the waste ice that is scraped off the skating surface each day (numerous times) to use to cool down the water for the trout.

This turned out to be infeasible due to the rising costs involved with transportation, but lead to another possible project: Using the (ample) heat waste from the ice-rink's compressors to produce barramundi in Perth all year round. At the moment most local barra growers shut down when the weather cools and as such barramundi is in short supply over the Winter months. We've been waiting on a suitable heat-exchanger and the ice rink is also looking to relocate to a larger/more accessible location, so the project has been on hold for a while, but i'm hoping that we can get it moving again because I'd love to be able to quit the rat-race and be my own boss.

Anyway I'll jump over and have a good read through your thread, cheers mate...

Trev is a switched on guy and i have learned a lot in the last few months.

a small world indeed. especially the aquaculture world.

big improvement it looks simmo! see ya got some shade for those tanks as well. Should improve the conditions for the marron definately.

Are your return lines 40mm or 50mm Simmo?

A mix of both ROZ, the beds along the fenceline are 50mm, the rest 40mm. 40mm does the job no problems but I ran out and had some 50mm lengths and fittings spare that I wanted to use up.

Well, seeing as I'm still awake and Dan has provided a nice segue, I might as well continue the saga



You would think so wouldn't you... Things went well for the month of December, the new configuration settled in quickly because my gravel (which was placed around the base of each of the standpipes to hold them steady) already had a population of bacteria growing on it. There were minimal teething issues thanks to using the same flood/drain method with the loop siphons and the new pump had more than enough grunt to supply all of the growbeds. I fiddled a bit with the taps on each bed to ensure the siphons operated reliably (and they still need adjusting occasionally) but all in all I was only spending 10-15 mins a day feeding my marron/goldies and plucking the odd caterpillar off of my plants.

I checked ph, ammonia and nutrient levels regularly for a couple of weeks and only noticed the Nitrates increasing steadily (from around 5ppm to over 20ppm), there were no noticable spikes in either ammonia or nitrite levels at all and the ph was a steady 7.5 every time I measured it... I planted out some more seedlings and watched them thrive.







Then all of a sudden Summer arrived... in a BIG way!

Perth roasted through the hottest Xmas period on record with an average three day max temp. of 40.3C from Xmas Eve to Boxing Day. Temps peaked at 44.2 C (111.6deg F) on Boxing Day.

My marron didn't like that one bit...

We had our traditional Boxing day bbq with family and friends at the folks place down the road, everyone enjoyed the relief that their swimming pool provided from the unbearable heat. We got home late that night and found 3 marron dead and dried up on the lawn, 5 behind the shed, and one even made it all the way out the front of the house to the neighbour's front lawn. It was dark and I didn't have a torch, so I disposed of the escapees and went to bed fearing the worst for the remainder of them.

Morning came around and my fears were realised, every single marron was dead, and not just dead but literally cooked. Half were floating on the surface, stinking and already starting to decompose, the rest were on the bottom of the tank, but ALL of them were that pinky/orange colour that crustaceans turn when cooked.

The goldfish, as usual, were fine... and were still hovering around the surface expecting a feed while I fished out all my dead crays.

It was at that point I decided that I needed to change species. Marron are native to the South West of WA and just aren't suited to the Perth summer climate, especially when housed in a small body of water that is susceptible to large fluctuations in temperature.

do you know what your water temp got up to simmo?

Unfortunately, my thermometer broke a while ago and I haven't got myself a new one yet, but when I put my hand into the tank water the next morning it felt VERY warm, about the same temperature as our spa runs at.

I would guesstimate it would have been around 35deg C. near the surface, and the return water was noticeably hotter still due to the growbeds being black and the browny-red hydroton absorbing a lot of the intense sunlight.

We've got some hot weather still ahead of us so I'll grab another thermometer and take some measurements in both tanks; at the surface and bottom and also the return water.

Now we fast forward to about 2 weeks since my marron (may they rest in peace - well, in compost to be precise) died, so roughly 2 weeks ago from the time of posting this...

The yabbies from my (now defunct) system # II (http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=608) had managed to survive through the heatwave in that same 475L glass aquarium (OK, they were under the patio so no direct sunlight, but still...). The 50L tubs I had been using as growbeds/biofilters were removed a long time ago because they were an eyesore, so there was only the one small pump which was turned on only occasionally to provide some water movement and water the top of the potted plant. You can see their old home in the pic below which was taken after I removed them all.



I put all of the yabbies into the tank that used to house the marron. There were about 30 in total, various sizes but 5 were at least as big as my hand, bigger than I have seen at restaurants for example. I suspect there has been a lot of fighting/cannibalisation going on because only a handful had all of their limbs intact. I also netted about 15 of the native mosquito fish that were sharing the aquarium with them and chucked them in too.

As you can see below, the growth of the plants in those couple of weeks is pretty impressive. The Cos lettuce bolted to flower but I've been snipping leaves as required anyway and I also harvested at least a shopping bag full each of ruby chard, spinach, basil and mint. Made lots of YUMMY pesto



The cucumbers have also established themselves by this stage and are flowering nicely...



.. and I start to see my first squash...



... and zucchini fruits developing.



In the photo above you can see the tomato that was planted before Xmas, it has provided about 5 small tomatoes by this stage. Notice though that the growth in these beds is not as vigorous as the other 5 because they don't get any direct sunlight after about 2pm.

I made another modification to the system last weekend due to some problems I was having with the irrigation lines. As you can see in the image below, I was using a 25mm poly tube for my main line with 3 x 13mm reducing tees coming off of that and more 13mm tees feeding each bed.



I was starting to get a buildup of biofilm in the lines and was having to adjust the taps on each bed every day to ensure the rate of flow was correct for my siphons to work properly. I was also back-flushing the lines with the garden hose every few days to try and remove the gunk, but it not really helping. It got to the stage where the end beds were receiving just a trickle, even with the taps fully open.

I had a brief HSM and then decided that I needed to extend the main line and run it to each row of beds. I did that and put a 25mm tap on the end of the line each on row (to bleed off any air trapped in the main line) and then installed 8 x 25-13mm reducing tees to each growbed. It worked a treat I now have ample flow to each bed. After the initial adjustments to each of the taps so that my autosiphons would work reliably, I haven't had to touch them at all.

You can see some of the irrigation detail in the pics below, as well as the monster zucchini that has been growing over the past 2 weeks.



I have harvested more squash, tomatoes, spinach and lettuce, and pulled the ruby chard out because it was infested with caterpillars (the only pest problem I have had thus far). The cucumbers have been going ballistic, climbing their way over everything, and have lots of small fruit starting to form.



We also had a huge downpour here in Perth last Thursday and the system overflowed for a couple of hours so I decided to check my levels yesterday. PH was 7.6, ammonia and nitrites barely registering, but I was quite surprised to find that my nitrates were not registering either. I tested again to make doubly sure, but no nitrates were detectable. Either I lost more system water than I thought or the plants have just been taking it up faster than the system can produce it.

I added a splash of seasol to each bed and will increase the amount of feed in the short term, but I'm curious to know whether I will start to see any problems with my fruiting plants. Has anyone else faced a similar situation before? Will the fruit stop developing or die off? Should I dose with more seasol over the next few days?