Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Good stuff Snakes... aint mucking around are ya??

The funny farm

I don't think the scientists did either! The research they're doing here has been really interesting. I'll take some photos of the cages and the thousands of carp and goldfish coming up the creek to the outlet of the wetlands. Only one big callop so far, last week, and a little one a few months ago. The big one in that photo is the biggest i've seen.



I love sitting there listening to and watching the water move around Love it!


Couple of questions: With the pump running for 15 minutes, should the beds be filling slowly so that the water just starts to run over the overflow and then the pump shuts off, or should the water be running over the overflow for a period of time before the pump turns off?

Also, should I be cycling through the night? If not, when should the system be cycling?

if it over flows without flooding the bed media too high then you may as well just let it do that. you'll be getting extra filtration and extra aeration than you would by throttling back the flow.

Thanks Steve. It does overflow without flooding, but what do the plants prefer? More time with flooded roots, or not?

mines currently overflowing for about 5 of the 15 minutes. plants ground fine and not complaining.

my over flow level seems to be an inch higher than the inner pipe (struggles to get it all down) and probably has something to do with only running three GB's on one of joels pumps

It makes next to no difference snakes. Go with the flow, 15 mins is fine.

OBO, i took it as 15mins was the minimum timer interval she had and that she was asking if she should throttle the flow back with a valve..............might be wrong

Cool, thanks

That would be SHE steve And yes, that was the question, thanks guys

and regarding pumping overnight, while cycling, run your pump as much as you can, allowing enough time for the plants to drain between cycles.

After everything has cycled and settled down, you can choose to pump less, and save power. You end up finding the balance between clear water, and power consumption.

Thanks OBO. Power isn't really an issue as I don't pay for it So i'll leave it to cycle overnight then.

Also, what should I be feeding the goldfish too?

Snakes, those that have switched off pumps overnight have found it introduces other problems (like dying fish from low DO)...so the preference is to keep it running

what what? thats what i wrote, go check it

(one of the perks of being a fourm demi-god is having edit powers )

Keep pump cycling 24/7 for now and until your system finds its feet and you feel like experimenting,

Missed one s Steve

huh? maybe one of my fellow demi-gods took care of it

Update!

Well the carp x goldfish just weren't cutting it for me, and I couldn't wair till the cod are available early January. So I scraped up every aquarium heater I had (3x 250 watt, and 2x 200 watt), got the water temp right, and went to the hatchery at west beach and got 70 odd Barra

I also got 2x 300 watt heaters to be on the safe side, and a big air pump (bit of overkill maybe?! It's like a bloody spa in there!!!).

The plants are still doing well after a week - although a couple that were in full sun struggled a bit today. It got to 37.5!!! and I wasn't home to save them. There will be shadecloth going up there now. Anyway here's some pics