Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Travis Hughey has made his manual on how to build a Barrel aquaponics system, available for everyone to download as a pdf file, and it can be downloaded here.

I've had a barrel aquaponics system up and running for a few months now and it has been doing fairly well. My system was based on Travis Hugheys manual, with only a few slight modifications.



One of these modifications was to change the toilet flush valve, to an automated syphon, as I couldn't buy a decent flush valve. The syphon has worked really well for some time now, but in the last couple of days the syphon has not been switching off.. Instead of having flood and drain cycles, I've ended up with a constant trickle of water into the grow beds. Not good considering that the plants roots are all near the gravel surface, and they have been getting no water...

Anyone have any experience with syphons? They are amazing things...

Joel

Yeah we are using two types of sypons, here is a pic on the first attempt



This work alright, but Dan (the other one) came up with a pretty option,,, will have to take a pic of it..

Hi,

Personally i can't see the point of this system,
don't mean to be negative here but just looking at the second picture,
it seems a simple setup.

But for a few bunches of lettuce or anything, is that eyesore worth it?
you have water running into a bathtub resevoir, so your taking up almost 3 square metre of space for a few lettuce, I can grow hundreds of lettuce in that space in the ground for free, no pipes, buckets or bathtubs at all.

The first picture looks prettier, but all that for 1 metre of growin space?
more lettuce?
I see it as an extravagant hobby, you would have to be fanatical about the concept to do it, it's certainly not practicle in any way to anyone unless you were growing a valuable species like $50 note money trees.

I'm certain you could grow in it, and if you left it long enough it would grow huge, yep.
but peak harvest time for almost anything is juvenile, so a massive brocolli may impress your friends sitting in one of them tubs, but will taste like shit.

Also noticing your surounding dirt, I see it is compacted and probably lifeless.
If you spent the time that you do building these contraptions and tried to improve your soil, your investment in time and money will pay off a thousand fold.

We're all entitled to our points of view, guest. But you seem to have bypassed one complete side of aquaponics in your judgement of whether it's a viable thing to do or not. The production of fish from an aquaponic system is the other half of the equation, that bathtub can easily produce about 12 kg of fish

Hydroponics is an efficient method of growing food plants, just as aquaculture is the best means of producing protein in the form of meat. However both of these methods of food production have down sides, waste, water usage etc. When they are combined they form a synergistic relationship that is extremely efficient and cancels out the negative aspects of each. And aquaponics uses about 1/10th of the water required to grow plants, compared with growing in the ground, because none of the water is lost to runoff.

I think that you may be misinterpreting some small experimental systems as shining examples at the peak of what aquaponics can be. These systems using recycled barrels are small experimental systems, a step up to larger more productive systems that are very efficient. If you go and check out some of the pictures on my website, you'll see that there are many further possibilities.

And the owners of both of these systems have extensive 'in ground' organic veggie gardens as well.

Oh and speaking of money trees, there are many commercial aquaponic ventures running around the world at the moment, as well as many aquaculture and/or hydroponic businesses investing millions of dollars into converting their farms into aquaponic systems. One commercial aquaponic system that has just been established for an initial outlay of around $40,000, is expected to not only pay for the initial establishment cost, but also produce a $30-40,000 profit within the first year of operation.

Have a bit more of a research into aquaponics before discounting it straight away, I think you might be surprised how the figures stack up.

Joel

Gee some people have a great way of communication ......

Maybe he saw Dans Photo and thinks that hes just a mug


Tezza


Maybe hes a mate of Biofarmag

ok, I will look into it further then, thanks.
oh Fish! i didn't think of fish, oh yeah in the barrels.

fair enough. poor fish though, living in buckets.
I'll go see your website and be back later.

Thankyou Tezza too, your input is priceless sweetheart.

Am hoping guest is female, or else Tezza....................

Well Guest thank you posting the obvious...

The photo I posted was after 3 days after setup... The bath tub now hosts 4 Bass 35 Murray Cod and 10 or so yabbies. The 4 tubs, host Strawberries, 5 kinds of lettuce, brocolli, capsicum, some trial chick peas and one tub is being setup as an experiment to see if we can grow a citrus tree...

The dirt around the aquaponics system, is actually the road and the septic......... the system is setup underneath the carport, ok so watch where you throw stones.

We also wanted to build it with recycled materials, rather than spending hundreds of dollars making it look pretty.

Our system as Joel said, is an experiment before we go ahead and build something bigger.

How about you give it a shot, and post your pic of your system..

Touche

he he..

I've found a local source(read...free!) for 55 gal containers from a lawn service company. The containers were previously used for liquid iron and fertilizer. Should I pass them up or could they be cleaned well enough for use in a Thomas Hughey type system?

Sorry, in my attempt to give Travis Hughey credit, I managed to call him Thomas...

...and to top that off I forgot to log in....geezz, time for bed!

G'day Hank....

A barrel that has been used for liquid iron and or fertilizer would be fine for making a system, just so long as your sure it wasn't any insecticide or fungicide, and you give them a fairly good clean out. Other drums that are usable are any that have stored food products, and drums that have had acids in them.

really, acids?