Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Susan,

that wouldn’t surprise me if he were referring to HIS setup.
He is using different AP concept.

He has got a shop in the Garden World on Springvale Rd.
Not that far and well worth the trip.
Cheers, Steve S

"Feed the man meat" Rupe, but haven't seen a cow in an AP system so far
No worries Susan glad you had a look at my idea's, Blue Marron are great looking and taste as good as they look, on the you will want bigger thing, I think start small and end up big, better than start big and run out of room, as for council well........... better off saying nothing, it is only the honest ones that pay

Once a system is up and running, fully cycled and has an appropriate amount of fish and plants in it, monitoring (as in testing) is only occasional (about once a month for me.) I'm currently testing daily on the quarantine part of my system as I've just added a heavy load of fish for the small amount of beds I have there and I want to make sure the beds are keeping up so I make sure not to overfeed that section until it catches up.

Once things are running solid, you really just need to train a neighbor or the kid who feeds the dog to check and make sure the water levels seem right, the pump is running and feed the fish. If there is a problem, have a contact who knows a bit about AP who can be called in an emergency.

As to draining and cleaning, not normally needed with flood and drain media bed systems. The media in flood and drain beds provides the nitrogen cycle with surface area for the bio-filter along with the aeration needed for that to function. The media beds also provide good solids filtration so no need to clean out filters regularly. And because the beds provide good bio-filter all one needs are enough plants to use up the excess nitrates and one normally does not need to do water changes, only top up the water in the system as the plants use it.