Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi mtes

yeah ! pretty much,
the main issues are

your system can overflow losing your water when blockages occur, you will get a longer life our of your pump, also it is not so good to have your plants sitting in water all the time.
by using a time this allows the growing medium to filter the nutrients from the water and return to the sump / fish tank.

What we have started looks very similar to Ozzie's first system. I'm going to list a bunch of questions that we came up with in class. Please feel free to respond to any or all you can. My class and myself greatly appreciate the help.

We are going to put in a settling tank to help accumulate the solids so our gravel doesn't fill up with crap like Dave and Ozzie said above. I think we also need a timer to turn the pump on and off to allow air to get to the roots.

Here they are:

1. Do pretty much any type of plants work with fish manure? We've seen some websites that say there isn't enough phosphours, etc. to grow plants other than leafy plants. Doesn't look like the case in all your pictures.

2. Do we need to introduce nitrofying bacteria into the system like is done with biofilter systems for aquacuture? These then would grow and reproduce on the gravel.

3. If we use a timer, can we just flood and dry?

4. If we don't use a timer, should we run the water through emitters at each plant? That kind of looks like what others are doing in pictures.

5. What is Seasol? Sorry, we're new at this.

These will definitely get us going if you can help out.
Thanks a lot!

Thanks, Ruins. What type of timer should I be looking for?

OK I'll try:

1. In a gravel bed system you can try growing anything. Over time there are enough nutrients even for fruiting plants (see tomatoes in my system)

2. Not really they exist all around even without adding them, but cycling can happen faster by adding gunk from a mature biofilter like from an established aquarium. It is also possible to do "fishless cycling" using pure ammonia without having fish in there yet, but you can't use any ammonia with detergents in it. Some folks here are also using naturally-occurring wee to add ammonia to a system without fish to get the biofilter going.

3. Yes, assuming your gutters don't dry out completely.

4. With your gutter I guess it would just drain through and all plants would get access to the water. Continuous pumping without using flood and drain can have this flow balance issue, that's why it's better to do flood and drain if possible. Otherwise you have to do a tricky balancing act so that the gravel gets as evenly-wetted as possible.

5. Seasol is a seaweed extract that has nutrients in it but not nitrogen, to provide any missing elements that aren't in the fish food or are not in high enough levels. Maxicrop is another product like that. I've added just chelated iron to mine to keep the plants going well. Potassium and iron can be low in AP systems sometimes.

They have inexpensive timers that do 15 minute intervals at Lowe's or Walmart. You want one that covers the full 24 hours with the little tabs at 15 minute increments.

Wow! Awesome! Thanks a ton for helping. I spent about 5 hours trying to research and find this information, only to find that you guys know more, have experience with what works and what doesn't, and it only took a fraction of the time. My students will be excited to hear the information. I'm sure we'll have more questions in the future. I'll put up some pictures when we get to that point.

Hey mtes,

i am just using the most basic timer from 'B', it allows for 15min on and 15min off. although i am only running 15min every 1hr.

i am still very new to this whole world- Dave, and i am sure others, will answer you questions with a lot more confidence. but keep at it- it is very addictive once you get into it, you will just want to keep expanding your system once things start to grow.

I have found all the answers to my questions are already answered in this forum, so keep reading the older threads. the people here are great,

have fun, it is free here

ps if you have not don’t already subscribe to Joel’s mag which will help things going and you will receive more info.