Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

New system finally coming together after two house moves and lots of info from this forum via my brother. I have been building my system slowly now for about 1 year. Consists of two 500lt green fish tanks from B plus two 500lt grow beds made from HDPE kids paddling pools. Have just moved it into it's new home -a 5m x 3m hot house attached to the garage. Current occupants are 4 goldies and an unknown number of yabbies. Hope to get away from the humonia solution and purchase fish very soon, as soon as temp gets to 26 degrees - very exciting!

The sys has cost about $2K to date so I'm looking forward to getting some real produce. Barra appeal because of their quick growth but the cost scares me if I have a HSM which I'm beginning to realise can occur in many unexpected ways. 6mnths turn around is better than 12 -18mnths for other species like Silver Perch.

Resonably confident suitable sys temp can be maintained now it's in the hot house. Any recommendations?

Hmmm, Nice Colours

Ask VB about trying to keep barra over winter, even in a greenhouse I imagine it would be difficult in newcastle.

I would get Silvers now, and get some weight on them before winter, than get trout late march / april.

After a year of operation you will know what temperatures your system will get too, and maintain - and then can get the barra for next year. My system could have quite easily held 200 trout this season, but due to it being the first one, I only got 50, just in case I killed them all early.

Silver perch transport fine from 15 deg c up to 30 deg c.

Good looking system. Probably could have got things up and running earlier if your brother didn't help.

thanks for your advice will keep the order conservative. I'm concerned about the time one's system has to function without a HSM as Silver's are relatively slow growing?

HSM's are not always a major extinction event - hopefully.

The main thing is to keep your system stable, make it very difficult for all the water to overflow or leak out of the fish tank, provide backup aeration via either a battery operated pump or aerator etc.

Just got to think - now what would happen, if *this* happened.