Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Karen:

I am going to try making a demo system for a local Earth Day thing, and I was thinking about using two aquaria to do it, since I have several 20 gallon ones. I thought about maybe doing an overflow tube like in Myles' thread, the fish in one tank, then the other tank would have a deep layer of gravel, then lighting egg crate grid to hold the gravel above a sump area under the gravel. The pump would be in the sump area, pumping over to the fishes' tank, overflowing through the Myles overflow tube to the gravel. Maybe on a timer. I'll hook you up with pictures if I can get it going. HTH

Dave, I'd love to see that.

A quick update:
Dissolved O2: 8-11mg/l
Ammonia: 0-0.25
NitrItes: 0.25
NitrAtes: 40
pH: 7.4
Temp: 70-71F/21C

My nitrites finally fell! Fully cycled now, I guess.
My transplanted strawberries are blooming, and growth on a few things is really pretty good. My climbers aren't doing so well, I think because I didn't stake them too well, and they're not getting enough light.

I'm slowly losing my goldies. About once a week, the smallest in the bunch loses its tail. It sure looks like someone took a chomp on it. Then they wiggle around for awhile in the tank, sometimes for a few days, and then they show up dead.

I suspect the catfish are picking on the smallest, and instead of letting them suffer now I feed them to the dog once they lose their tail. I took a close look at one yesterday, and it was missing a few scales by its belly, but I didn't see any ich or anything similar.

I don't think it's finrot, because it's only on their tail, their other fins are fine, and it's always the smallest of the fish who get in trouble. OTOH, I know jack about fish disease. The cats look fine, though, and they're what I care about.

I also got some red worms, so I'm vermi-composting now. Another good source of fish food!

Some pics:
Transplanted strawberries:


Lettuce is going well:


Stawberry flowering:


Sorry for the poor quality, these are from my cell phone, with the red/blue growlights still on.

I have a long weekend coming up (http://www.wiscon.info) but after that, I'm going to go nuts on my AP. I'm obsessed, my friends all think I'm off the deep-end...
More pics if you follow the link in my .sig

We're all planning to go AP nuts on the long weekend!

Looks like you may be flooding too high as well Karen.

Very possible, OBO. What are the signs?

Hydroton wet on top, should be dryish. You will end up rotting the stems of the plants.

OBO - I lowered the level, thanks!

I had my first honest-to-goodness AP salad last night. It was only lettuce and cilantro, and it was only a side-salad, but it was a pretty large side salad!

Things are going pretty smoothly.
Ammonia: 0
pH: 7.0 (I added crushed egg shells a few weeks ago just for some calcium, but I think it may have prevented a swing to a lower pH.
Nitrite: 0 ( )
Nitrate: 40-80ish.

My lettuce and squash are doing well, and my bell peppers have come on strong. My herbs are all pretty pathetic, but they're all in bad lighting. My cilantro is doing OK, but it is really leggy and weak.

A few snow peas have flowered, and the green beans are doing ok, but the soybeans are in stasus. The strawberries have flowered, hopefully I'll get 14 berries.

Oh, and my carrots are pathetic. I might get 2 or 3.
Still, I'm exceptionally pleased with how well this project is going. I knew not every crop would work in my basement, I'm glad a few are!

I'm not sure how my worms are doing. When I expose them to light, they don't wriggle all that much. I have lots of food in the compost, but at first it was only cut up, it wasn't in tiny pieces or pureed, so I'm not sure if the worms could eat it. I pureed some the other night, so we'll see.

I'm just getting over some pretty bad stomach flu, so I haven't worked on the system, but I did order two UPSes and two more pumps, so I should be able to set up another system soon, and have backup equipment.

I'm still drooling over 4 season greenhouses, but I'm not sure I'm willing to pay to heat one through a Minnesota winter, even with solar water heat etc.

I don't know how you guys keep up with this forum!

Nice to hear you're getting some positive results Karen... looking forward to seeing where things go from here...

Thats a great nitrate level to keep it at, K

Well Done

Power went out this evening. A tree two doors down fell on the lines. Which is odd, given that the weather today was about perfect.

The power was out for about 90 min. Good thing my new UPS system keeps the pump running for about 90 minutes...
(yeah, I know, 90 min wouldn't have done much damage...) but tested under real world circumstances the backup works.
I have various plans for if the outage is longer. I'm wondering if a timer would make the problem worse, because of the increased amps the pump pulls when it starts up. Maybe time for another test... Any experience? This is a low-wattage magdrive pump.

My strawberries all died (all 2 of them). They turned purplish-black, curled up and died. I suspect it's a light problem, but I did add iron on the off-chance that was the problem. No change. I think sea-salt is going to be my next additive. They've gone to the great compost bin in the sky (or, rather, the worms right next to the AP system )

3 out of the 4 blue LED lights I bought have burned out. That was fast... Not quite the life they are advertised to have. The guy who sold them to me is shipping me new ones right now. My peas and beans aren't doing great either, again, I think, due to light issues. I'm going to supplement with fluorescent or CFL growlights, I think. And make sure I get all of my insulated reflective panels up. Oddly, the light-hungry capsicums are doing really well right now.

I've also started working on a second system, for my front porch. This system will only be usable in the warm weather, and the warm weather is already 1/3 over, so I suspect that will be mostly greens this summer. I'll start a new thread for that system once I'm far enough along to have anything useful to say. Busy washing gravel for it now.

(something to keep me sane until next week's Doctor Who...)

The power surge is very short term and more a concern (as far as I know) for pump and switch damage than for power use unless you are switching it a lot. I wouldn't think switching it on twice an hour would be significant. Any more informed voices want to chime in?

Nice work on being prepared!


LED life is a function of power. If they are run beyond max current they will not last very long from what I have heard. Could this be a cause? Or are these the new high-power LEDs...."bleeding edge" technology?


All those addicted to Dr Who raise their hands.

this is a great idea... hope things keep working for you

last ep for the season, huh? many developments.............. Shhhhh most peeps here are a season behind

None of those china made LEDs will last as long as they claim.