Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looking real good Stu.... lots of effort in that one!

Been doing some planting today. I have bought a punnet of cucumbers, tommies, celery and capsicums, and planted half in my dirt bed and half in my aqua. In addition, I have 2 celery in the DWC channels and 2 in the gravel. In the gravel I also have basil and lettuce seeds, and in the DWC I have rockwool cubes for the seeds to sit on, and I have basil, coriander, oregano, and lettuce seeds as well as some lettuces that I grew from seed in dirt troughs. In the back bed I have 2 runty tommies that I have grown from seed and 2 runty cucumbers also from seed. So a variety of different methods to check out which goes best.

ATM, nutes are only around 5, as I transfered water from the barra tank to the poly tank yesterday, but shut the valve afterwards because the water is still too cold in the polytank to have the fish in it yet. Still waiting on materials for setting up my solar heating. Hopefully here tomorrow.

Also a pic of my barra.

Are you going to have trouble harvesting from the middle of those grave beds Stu.

just learn to strrreeeettttccccchhhh out a bit. our big grow bed is 3.3m diam, a biiiiig stretch

I figue if I can comfortably reach to plant, then i should be ok to harvest. if not, it's up i go. Harvesting will be a bonus anyway, i'm sure something has to go wrong soon.

its looking great.

With the solar heating, are you going to use a solar pump so it only pumps water during the day (and so you dont radiate the heat out during the night? or a timer or something else. (looked back a few pages, but didnt see anything on this, so sorry if ya already answered this)

Great work Monya, looks very professional

Explanded clay works well except for plants and seedlings have very little suppport and that's why I use rockwool to plant the seed in. You don't need much, so i often plant more than one seed in each piece and split it when they sprout. Think about support for tomatoes and heavy plants, they will need it growing in C balls

As far as harvest, I think a machete will be appropriate, just watch the walls!

HG

Ilike the idea of solar pump so when the lights are on the pump will work using the lights to power them...
C1

HG, only light stuff in the xclay balls, lettuces and herbs, and followed your lead and planted 3 or 4 seeds on each cube of rock wool. All others are in 14 mm gravel. Took the celery out of the clay balls as Heather asked me what happens when it gets bigger than the net pot (slapped head twice, hard)

As for the Solar heating, I am going to run the pump on a timer during the day only. Maybe I will look at solar pump down the track. I really don't know anything about them. Any links would be appreciated.

Sweet setup. I love going out in my greenhouse when it's cold, so nice in there

AA.....when I last saw photos of your greenhouse, it was still in the framing stage. Have you posted more recent photos?

mmmm....perlite for the top Mon.
C1

a quick update. I have opened the flow between the two tanks. On the weekend I will grade the fish and am hoping that plant growth will take off. Have taken photos, the plants have done well considering minimal nutients in the poly tank. Fish are doing really well too. Touch wood only the 2 confirmed deaths still.

The thing that has amazed me most is how well the plants get their roots ito the gravel. I pull out the smallest capsicum plant to move it to the other bed and it was really deep rooted, a good sign I guess!

Everything is a bit leggy, I still have to get the trees pruned a bit to let in some more direct sun.

and barra photos
Iam still feeding these guys 3 times a day, and they are a hungry bunch! I am going to cut out the lunch time feed pretty soon.

I really need to have them on the bigger pellets, am still feeding them 1.5mm ones. but I have such a huge bag, .......