Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Awesome pics and work!! Do you have anything reinforcing the sand walls? If not, be careful that you don't cause a cave-in with excess water getting behind the line. (There's a reason I recognize that as a hazard. )

I love the lizards. As kids, my sister and I caught some with small fish nets on a vacation to Florida one year. They came home in a cricket cage on the plane with us to live in the greenhouse.

Security officer: What's that? (points at cricket cage)
Dad: a cricket cage
SO: There aren't any crickets in there now, are there?
Dad: no. (walks on through security checkpoint)

He had a back-up paper bag in his pocket--just in case.

Hazard understood!!! Actually the most dangerous part has been us stepping to close to the edge and caving in the sand before there is water filling the tank and providing backpressure. Drainage/reinforcement around the pond/tank is being looked at.

Will be going [s]swimming[/s] I mean finishing filling and shoring up support around the sides tomorrow. I think I'm lucky our well water comes out of the ground quite warm.

I love watching the lizards around here during mating season. All the males are going around doing push-ups at each other.

cute story

LOL, try and get away with that on entry into OZ

they would have x-rayed the cricket cage to make sure you didn't have anything stashed in hidden voids LOL

Great work! How many gallons for the tank again?

I am estimating around 500 gallons for that pond/tank. It is aprox 3 cu yards, which is about 600 gallons, minus the volume of the steps which takes up about half of one of those cubic yards.

I will probably be able to fill above the original planned depth which means I can probably call 500 gallons the base level and allow a bit more water above that to deal with the grow bed flood/drain. Will just have to see.

I wish I had sand to dig in - looks good

I'm glad for the sand thought there are some drawbacks to it. Dirt gardening here is a bit like a run to waste hydroponics system. My "dirt garden" is really more like planting in all organic matter pilled on top of the ground in a lasagna garden type manner. Requires huge amounts of organic matter every season.

I made progress today!

The pond is full. I did add some reinforcement inside the framing to help hold back the top of the ground. Below that I am expecting the pressure from the water in the pond/tank to hold back the soil/water. I just need to not drain the pond more than a certain amount or I risk some caving. I have also put down some reinforcement on the ground around the tank so that a careless person stepping right next to the edge doesn't cause extra pressure near the edge.

Along the side away from the house, there are pallets placed in the "pathway" so that I can run piping through there if I wish and on the other side of the "pathway" there are pallets stacked up as the base for a grow bed. Hopefully this will give me enough fall for the drainage plumbing etc. I have a neighbor that collects, repairs and re-sells pallets. $2.50 each. I was all set to scrounge for free pallets but the other half asked the neighbor and about 5 minutes later, 16 pallets we unloaded in the yard. Used 7 so far. With some plywood and other lumber I should be able to frame out the actual grow bed on top of those pallets. Then I just need a roll of 6' wide liner. Well I still need to sort out how best to plumb through liner without leaking too much and order up a load of gravel!

A few more pictures from today.

Fair days work TC.... did you get to go for a swim

It is about waist deep and it was hot in the sun today.

Todays readings in the barrel ponics system (still no fish)
pH 7.2 quite a drop wow, hopefully it means the bacteria are busy.
Ammonia .5 ppm apparently so at least on the ammonia front.
Nitrite still off the chart above 5 ppm (I hear this is the hard spike to get over)
Nitrate back down between 5 and 10 ppm.

I do have a couple SF of media being cycled connected to the barrel ponics system that I plan to seed the big system with once I have a grow bed done to put it in.

Love it!

The pond/tank has held water overnight! I think I detect a drop of perhaps 1 cm which I expect is due to the settling and compaction of the sand/soil under and around the liner. This would be why I have not trimmed or attached the liner in any way yet. In all that nice soft sand around there I notice quite a few critter prints. Quite certain some are cat but there are a few that I'm not sure of.

I had an idea for a water bed! That whole wire mesh for tank support lined. I was thinking that I could place something like that near the deep end of the pond/tank and arrange a bit of a waterfall from the overflow of it back into the pond/tank. In this I would want to grow pond plants like water lotus, water chestnuts, pond lilies, etc. Just and idea.

Ok, gotta take the other half to the air port today, on my own again for almost two weeks. Back to my own cooking, grumble.

awesome looking pond TCLynx.

you have given me inspiration to dig my own and use it as my sump tank.

great work mate.