Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Also removes money from your wallet when you are not looking.

I have a therory..........Somthing that was said by the good doctor from the U of VI

When i first started reading about AP, most of what was around stated "good for leafy greens" "not viable for fruiting crops due to lack of phosphorus and potassium"

Now we have all seen the pics from joels place. Fruiting plants- no probs.........but WHY?

The good doctor, while at NMIT in melbourne, stated that they found that if they left the solids in the seperator instead of removing them daily they would get higher levels of P and K, proportionate to the lenght of time. And they found that by doing this they could tailor the nutes to have high N for leafy crops or higher P and K for flowering and fruiting.

NOW, when you consider that ALL of our solids remain in the gravel and get broken down................it all makes sense! Once again, it seems that the LESS you do with AP the better it is

The solid matter is probably broken down by an array of bateria and microbes in a process called mineralisation (i think) where the only things left are minerals.

Brilliant use of the old disk box Daniel. I only have about 10 of them laying about and you have saved them from the land fill.

if only we could find a use for the DISKS

Thanks, yeah disks do seem pretty useless now days.......only thing i can think of to use them for are maybe coasters...but then they would be likely to melt

I read somewhere that someone was working on a food specifically designed to be fed to the fish, and as a result releace all the specific elements and minerals needed for fruiting crops into the water to become available to the plants. Any news on this? i have no idea where i read this though...(im pretty sure it wasn't a dream)

Tomato plants are in now.....and looking for a quicker way to make the holes bigger.

For those using poly pipe, what did you use to make your holes. I was going to use the solderer to melt the holes bigger but it seems to be broken.

I just used a 6mm drill bit, then a 8mm one when i found they were clogging.

for drilling PVC pipe for planting into use a holesaw on your drill

Gah! I'm going to have to buy a drill aren't I?

Beg, borrow, steal, mmm forget the third one.

Cool, a drill should do the job pretty quickly. And i can just disconnect the pump to use it (there is the cordless drill, but i don't like it...not enough power). And i wont have to steal it either

Forgetting to check the weather for rain, yesterday i chucked in the old yabbie trap and bait trap to try and catch some yabbies. The water rose about half a meter when i went to get the traps this morning, but i got them back luckily.

The catch, 4 small yabbies and 2 small shrimp.

Has anyone tried breeding shrimp as food for your fish?
They are small, so their reproductive effort (im guessing) would be greater, and then they can feed on algae and stuff as well. They are also totally aquatic and so they wont escape (like yabbies).

I've had shrimp but there are so many shapes and sizes...

Get an id on them, most are easy to look after/breed. Fish will eat them if they can catch them, they're a good supplement keeping your fish busy, they eat all sorts of undesirable stuff, including parasites.

well i tried to identify it but as said in the yabbie article "there are 120 known species of freshwater crayfish and more being discovered."
They are small (under 2cm) and fully transparent (except for their somach, intestines...digestive tract).......

Oh ond i got some silvers today. I am going to be getting a couple at a time, and build the population up to 100ish slowly. I couldn't find any people with fish atm that sell with a quantity discount.

Sound like Paratya, glass shrimp. They'll grow to about 7cm max, that's the big'n's. Is the place you got them linked to the ocean at all?

If so you get them to 3-4 cm's and seperate out a dozen or so. Put em in 20 litres with a tablespoon salt per litre. Few days you'll get an orange film on the bottom, remove adults. Few more days they'll hatch. They can breed really prolifically.

They can carry parasite and disease problems but so would wild fish, so can any fish for that matter.

Safer to culture shrimp seperate, feed to a small tank of fish for a few generations of shrimp at least, then, if the fish are ok, you can feed them to general population. The beauty of shrimp as a feed is they live in the tank and so there is no waste, plus those who are fast just clean the place up rather than clutter it.

Just followed dry creek from my house on google earth, and yes it does eventually get to the sea although its a fair way away (half an hour by car...)

i got about 10 i am going to grow up and try and breed. Are they fine eating detritis and the such?