Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi from sunny Noonamah which is 50km south of Darwin NT. Been thinking about starting my AP system for sometime now and I hope to have it going before christmas. I own a small hobbie farm and have just about every other kind of animal available in darwin, so why not add a few fish to farm aswell. If anyone has any pointers to getting a system going in the tropics i would appreciate any advise or hints. I am not one to start small so I will more than likely go to a Medium/large system straight up and try to make it work.

Thanks in advance

Pasted a couple of comments over to here Moonie... was going to suggest you start a thread...

Humidity and water loss through transpiration/evaporation are likely to be the two biggest problems you face..... powdery mildew will be a problem....

Keep as much airflow going over your plants as possible.... maybe even a couple of rotating fans....

You're going to need to shade everything through summer anyway... both for the plants, fish tank, and fish.....

You face a unique set of problems... but at least you can grow Barra all year round....

Given the amount of rain you can get in a short period of time Monnie... I'd cover the beds... for both that reason and the sheer heat of the day....

Collect whatever rain you can get though.... you'll probably need to do regular top-ups to the system as a whole... transpiration, will be a big factor in your system IMO....

hey Moonie, welcome to our madness

In the tropics one of the things you will probably have to do is provide some cover over the fish tank and as much of the grow beds as possible. When the Wet arrives you don't want to overflow your system too much.

I've also found that shadecloth is essential for our winters when there is little cloud cover and the plants start to fry.

Go big The water volume helps to insulate against temperature swings.

Have fun

, fry in winter, weirdo northerners.................

Spent four years in darwin on patrol boats - bug control is going to be your biggest problem, aside from heat.

I reccomend long narrow grow beds, this will make it easier to apply the dipel, and give the plants more breathing room.

Bury whatever you can, just keep it above monsoon water level.

NICE