Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This was an extention of the small desktop system mum and I built, we wanted to try something bigger.

Basically it is identical to Travis's design from his Barrelponics Manual, however we had trouble finding some of the bits and bobs and ended up modifying it slightly. We scrapped the toilet flushing valve concept and went for a continuous flow setup, which was a lot simplier. We used two halves of a barrel as the growbeds and filled these with crushed pea gravel. We made a external standpipe which allowed us to easily tilt it to what hieght we wanted the beds to fill up to (see pictures).

The top tanks plants have been strugglling for a while - due to the high temperatures they receive (they are about 300mm from the greenhouse roof). They went to seed very quickly. We also experienced high algae in the top growtank.
We have since removed the top grow tank and replaced it with an NFT style system made from 90mm PVC pipe cut at 3000mm. With small holes cut in the top for the growpots to sit in.

We had a few startup mishaps . . which involved the grape vines recieving 12 dead fish as fertilizer.
After that incident we replaced the fish with black brim which seem to be doing well now.

We do however have an infestation of cabbage moth and powdery mildew. Which I have controlled to great success with a foliage spray. Which is made from tomatoe leaves, rosemary, chillies and garlic boiled in a pot and then diluted 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 depending on the concentration.
I spray every second day, which keeps everything looking happy and healthy.

I have attached some pictures and will attach a water test spreadsheet and growth rates soon.

Dipel (yates) for the moths

just curious, where is Jandakot?

Jandakot is just south of Perth in West Oz.

Ok, I thought it was in Oz but wasn't sure.
Thanks

Keep up the good work there Mitch

Wow look at those pipes!!!

Don't worry the majority of the pipe work is left over from previous experiments and changes in the system.
I could remove over half of all the pipework from the system and it would still function perfectly.

This is more or less my test system for trials in different plants and media . . . as well as the effect of a continuous flow system as opposed to ebb and flow. At current this system is continuous flow . . . all the plants seem to be growing fine.

I'm a bit of a greeny . . . so i don't like buying anything that comes in packets or that has been processed in any form. So home made sprays are the go for me.

Although we do use dipel at work (BYAP) to control the moths . . and it seems to work just as good as the sprays I make up.