Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thought it was about time I started a thread in here instead of General Discussion.

Here is my little tomato and yabbie system (no yabbies or tomatoes yet! )

The frame.

Early stages. Grow beds in (not plumbed and we changed them a little). Some plastic on the hot house and the dirt garden on the way.

Where we're up to now.

All plumbed up, Yabbie tank sunk and covered so no escapees!

Grow beds and shelving in the hot house, yet to be painted.

Babies!

The dirt end (this bit is my other-half's end) Still one more bed to put in up the back but looking okay.

looks good Imy

have you thought about putting small drums of water in the greenhouse as heat sinks? 20L drums look like they would fit in the triangle section behind the shelves.

Nice setup! I look forward to seeing how things go.

i love the GH top job how much did it cost ya?

i look forward to seeing the growth of the two styles side by side , will you be watering the dirt beds with FT water ?
well done keep it up , im waiting for the rain to go away before i can make somesorta start , its so frustrating , but we do need it(the rain).
thanks for sharing.......

Thanks guys.

The greenhouse cost $5000... well, not really. We bought a quaker style shed 2nd hand but it looked dumb up against my A-frame house so we chopped the top off (it WAS double storey) and made that into the hot house/veggie patch, you'll notice we used the old windows from it too, they were pretty banged up and no good for anything else. The plastic is from eBay (redpath 180mic duratough) and the bird netting we had left over from doing our fruit trees. So all up, who knows what it cost! LOL
We'll use the bottom of the shed frame for a garage later (priorities!)

The veggie patch will probably be watered by part grey water, part rain water and part FT water. We will hit it with some seaweed tea too because we're close to the ocean. Gotta be careful though, there's more cow dung in those beds than dirt at the moment, we don't want to burn the plants too much!

As for the drums for heat sinks... we hadn't even thought about it! I guess that'll give us something to think about when next winter starts to roll around. The FT and hot house will get more sun in the future as we will be taking out a couple of eucalypt saplings which have come up as suckers off older trees.

Fishlips- I'll look forward to seeing your setup when the rain stops... fun, fun, fun (work LOL)

No Yabbies yet Imy... thought they were arriving on Friday... ?

Nope, not yet.
Since they will take a while to get here, it was decided thay should be posted on a Monday (just in case) and that way they won't be sitting at a courier depot on a weekend if some more delays happened or something like that.
So, I should see them Wednesday or Thurs next week... fingers crossed.

I just had to post this... now that the veggie patch is pretty much done, just a few finishing touches, my partner is on the reno-bandwagon.

We've been planning to redo the downstairs bathroom for some time since its all bright peach coloured laminex and stuff, not to mention painfully small, the guy who built the house didn't like the 'toilet in the bathroom' idea so he added an extra wall... this meant that the bathroom is tiny and the light switch is in the hall... not good. I guess he drank too much of the neighbour's home brew while planning that one!

Anyway, our first plan was to just take the bath out and put in a shower. We happened across a custom shower base which fit the spot perfectly. It was an order someone didn't pick up at the shop. This was years ago and we've had it sitting in the hall, waiting. On Saturday we cleaned out the store room to make a preserving pantry for all tommies I'm going to be preserving LOL. The dogs broke the base.

The only thing left to do is either order another custom shower base or block in the door and change the shape of the bathroom.

My partner took the hammer and....

I think its his hormones, I think I'll have to get him 'the snip' it seemed to calm the dogs down.

Guess what we got today?!

4 deaths out of 40 (not too shabby for a 3 day trip) and even those ones I think they were killed by the frozen 2L coke bottle rolling around in the box with them. The chooks liked them!

We acclimatised them by tipping cupfulls of the tank water over them over the period of a few hours. Then, when they were finally covered by the water, chucked them in the tank. They were well-fiesty by then but I'm still nervous about them!

I have popped some peas and corn in with them and will have a go at pumpkin as the corn etc disappears. What else should I try them on?

Sorry about the pic... forgot to take one before going into the water.

Congrate's, well done, 3 day trip would be rough on anybody and anything. A word of advice, for what ever it is worth, dont care for them and smoother them with too much love and care , cause it can kill