Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The ABC accepted my comments on the Ecocity Farm, but, not unexpectedly, deleted the reference to this web-site. ... Goshdarnit.

Good try Bid - what got me was the colour of the fish water (very quick shot in the beginning), certainly not crystal clear, they were not thinking of the fish and what they would be swimming in - AAANNNDDD - they were cycling the grow bed water back through the effluent before returning to the fish -YUK!

1st thing I did next morning was to check the clarity of mine in a water glass, bloody fantastically clear and no guilt complex here on how I treat my 10 wee goldies

Les

to true Les..
Hi Ya by the way
C1

C1 - g'day, you missed a fantastic afternoon hosted by Murray last Sunday, met some wonderful people and we all offered Muzza's our condolances in acquiring a new fish kill unsurpassed by none

Oops off topic again

Oh! doesn't sound good.
what was the number?

Too many - tried using "thrive" in lieu of seasol and found it has a fish killing agent snuggled in the formula - bit of old news really as Murray has already detailed his suicide remedy on the other forum.

Its funny now but Muzz was panicking a bit as he "dosed" his system the day before we all arrived and we all felt sorry for him - didn't spoil our day tho.

Muzz was hoping one of us wase an expert fish doctor, we all conferred and decided an expert wasn't needed

Yeh - not hard to diagnose death.

It was kind of obvious, (the state of my Jades that is) but I was expecting a resurrection of some sort.....I thought VB stood for “Veritable Bollicks” and I was sure one or another of you would have Pontifical or Ecumenical connections of some sort, but woe is me, you were all just very ordinary.

Wrong thread........

The concept was good; but I didn't like their choice of filter. Looked like a rotating drum filter to me (aka used in aquaculture), this may be why they have to process the solids using a worm farm, rather than processing them in line?!? A bio filter capable of handling the solids (or at least some of them) might have been a better idea (bead or dynamic sand filter). Also putting the worm casings back into the system would lead to nutrient spikes unless handled carefully. Didn't like the extra complication of the moving plants either; but then again I hate added failure points.

Weren't these guys from Nimbin - ie dope capital of Oz?

Hey what's the record for fish kills (in one go), I'm still waiting to get my new house on the 24th of this Month so I can go beserk and build my planned system. If it all goes pear shaped then at least I can aim for a new low

Hmmm very tempting, but I'll refrain from commenting

I got the feeling those guys hadn't looked into the subject widely enough, maybe they'd spent ages reading the scientific literature. Personally I've found a lot of good books on hydroponics and a lot of good books on aquaculture; but very few on aquaponics. I did find a book with a whole chapter on aquaponics (under recirculating aquaculture systems); but they only talked about the Virgin Islands setup, which seems to me to basically throw away a lot of the potential nutrients due to their solids filtering techniques.

I've actually gained about 50% of my theoretical knowledge (yep still an armchair AP until the 24th of this month) from this forum.

All of the above aside at least they're pushing AP, and I suspect they'll improve their design as they go along (maybe join this forum )

Yeh - keep saying to my self to look at it objectively but I see complication and potential failure areas also - the mention of tomatoes & cucumbers were "off the cuff" comments and couldn't be supported with there system (pun intended).

I get this mental picture of the pipe spinning 180 degrees and tom plants hanging upside down due to the weight of the fruit, cuey vines tangling around the mechanics of the rotation system.

Look at it objectively Les

That's what it looked like to me too eame and I have to say from speaking to aquaculture people in the past, the things don't work very well.

I should point out that i am a very "visual" person.

I now have tears of laughter