Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Since we've been without a decent internet connection for a while, I couldn't post here.

Here's some pictures of the building of our first AP setup in the greenhouse.

and more...

The bottom of the fish tank has gotten a layer of ferro cement on top of the Styrofoam sheets and the tank has been lined with PVC pond liner, our goldfish seem to like their new 3000+ liter home.

About half the grow bed is finished, like the photo above, lined with pond liner. Got some more pictures on the camera, but the cable got lost somewhere on moving day... will post more pics when we are done unpacking.

Its all happening bloke Where did you score the foam Should work well to insulate.

Great work Nico, looking forward to more pics of your progress

+1 for insulation - err, wherever you are...

P.S. Is there a sump tank in your system?

Oops. See where you are now - even colder than Canberra!

Very nice Nico... keep it coming...

The big Styrofoam sheets came out of growing tables in one of the other greenhouses. The only cost so far has been some OSB sheets, a bag of cement and the pond liner. Everything else was found on-site

If this tank holds up alright, the plan is to build the next one a little bigger (2x10 meters instead of 2x2)
Basic construction will be the same, but with PEX tubing in the ferro, so water from a solarpanel can be circulated through it. I bet the fish will love a radiant floor heating!

No sump tank, Uncle Yarra. For now its just a fish tank and grow beds.

I'm thinking about making the second half of the grow bed a bit deeper and try floating rafts. I have a shitload of Styrofoam pot trays that they use to ship potted plants in. The trays are all the same size and can hold 8, 12 or 24 pots (I think their might even be 4 different models of the trays) Each 'cupholder' in the tray has a hole in the bottom to let water drain out, turn the trays upside down and they look like they would be perfect for floating raft lettuce growing. Did I mention that there is a shitload of the trays?

Summer has ended here
I think I have to build some sort of shed around the AP setup to keep the temps up high enough to grow through winter. I probably have to get some grow lights though.

Well done Nico, the hard work will all be worthwhile when you get the fish in there.

One point about floating beds that we learned was to let the roots of the plants grow down into the water for as short a time as possible then support the raft about 50mm above the surface of the water so some roots are in the water and some above. This stops root rot and roots develop in the air space. We used strips of styro. to support the beds off of the water.
We also used old styro.plant pot holders with 12 old styro. coffee cups in, to grow water cress. It worked alright until
the goldies chewed all the roots off.

Keep us up to date.

WD

I like the fishtank construction, can't wait to see pictures of it full of fish.

I'll keep that in mind WD. I'm not sure root rot will be an issue though when the water is sufficiently aerated. Right now the water returning from the grow bed to the fish tank forms a waterfall of about 1.7 meters wide and 50 cm high providing lots of oxygen, but I probably have to downsize my pump or the lettuce will be white water rafting

Youll find that WD is right, unless your water is literally boiling with air, some of the roots will need to be out of the water.

What kind of greenhouse you going to use Nico? Really neat so far!