Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hey guys need some advise on setting up a system,i am in the processes of building a big fish bond for my gal,it is 8m long x4m wide x2m deep of which.4m is above ground , it is fully covered by a pergola with a bamboo and 70% shade cloth,also 2 sides are enclosed.It will have waterfalls and all that kid off stuff.I was going to have 2 bio filters and a ro plant but after looking at some of the stuff on this site i think there may be a better option,i live in the central wheatbelt in WA so land and area are not an issue.what i was wondering was how big a system would i need to set up to act as a bio filter and would i still need to run bio filters.my gal wants to breed koi (well my brother breeds them and we will use our pond to grow them out in) and would like good water clarity, also we do work some long hours. so if you guys can help me out that would be cool if you need any info please ask i will try to get some photos to post thanks for ya time
regards Steve.

Sounds great Steve... where abouts are you and Sam?.... welcome to the world of AP...

SS. is that a pond or a pool.
That's alot of water.
As for the bio filter that will depend on how many fish you want. How many KOI do you want.
And pics are always good.....

Rupert, Quairading is inland of Perth, perhaps about 2 hours. Farming (wheat and sheep) country, sporadic rainfall, hope I am right guys.

Perhaps for starters work out the volume of water (litres) and how many fish you may want to stock then we can tell you what you may need to look at in terms of filtration eg growbed volume.

8x4x2.............64 thousand litres by my count, yes it is a big "pond" Jaymie, you've got competition.

The size of your growbeds will not be governed by the size of your "pond" but by the amount of fish in kgs that you intend to grow out in it.

budget on 30kg fish for every 2000l growbed volume. (THERE WAS AN ERROR HERE BY A FACTOR OF 10, HENCE THE DISCUSSION IN THE FOLLOWING POSTS ) you can go higher than this, but its pretty bullet proof at this ratio.

at 64kl of pond and 128kl of growbeds you could stock 1920 kg of fish......... but i guess your brother in law isnt growing that much and you probably dont want 200 ton of growbeds

this is all based on a flood and drain growbed. i like it because if designed right there is no cleaning or maintenance involved. You could get bio-filters and run NFT but i'm lazy and CBF with cleaning biofilters and the like.

SO, to sum up, work out how many kg of fish you want to have, time that by 0.066 and you will have the volume of growbeds in THOUSANDS of litres that you will need to have a maintenance free you-beaut flood and drain BYAP system

Oh Steve, you make it sound so simple aah! And yes if designed correctly, that it is!

well faye, you could complicate it by adding satellite pots and the like

PS what sort of sales woman are you?! you should have jumped in with "the shops growbeds are X amount of litres each"

seriously though, i can recommend the BYAP beds, i have them myself, the are functional and look purdy

lol
Well actually Steve I quite like the KISS method. (Don't misinterprate that.) Keep It Simple Stupid- works for me! and many others because it is all automatic. Like a plug and play system.

samnsteve, you have been initiated into our club by having the first post on your first thread hi-jacked

welcome!

Well now I am completely confused

I was under the impression stock levels could were an order of magnitude greater than what Steve is suggesting

I had thought 6Kg/100L of water or maybe 3Kg/100L for safety using a 2:1 growbed to water ratio. Therefore 3kg only needs 200L GB

Might have been a typo Novaris...

6kg/100ltr with a 2:1 growbed filtration is possible... with a mature system and experience...

But probably needs a reasonably big tank/growbed volume for stability.... trying to run high stocking densities with a very small volume, just puts you on a knife edge... constantly....

3kg/100ltr is a manageable, relatively stress free density.... both for you and the fish... and acheivable with even 1:1... over time...

I wouldn't push much above 3kg/100ltr... unless/until you've got a couple of thousand litres of tank and growbed...

It's possible to run higher densities if you utilise external filtration methods, like trickle filters and/or solids removal... but there's maintenance involved...

Whew, I am glad it was a typo I would be in HSM mode soon otherwise.

3kg per 100 litres is good, 6kg per 100 is a whole step up.

Quairading is a bit south of Cunderdin, I can drive through it on my way to Boddington from Kalgoorlie if you want some ideas

In actual fact, Steve was testing to see if anybody read and understood his posts....you have passed the "Steve" test Nova

this test is on par with gravel washing