Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We threw in a bit of crusher dust to smooth over any 'rough spots' which may puncture the liner...



I seem to be having a hep of probs with adding more than 1 pic at a time, so bear with me and I'll see how I can adjust things...

And just to be sure, Wifey had the idea of chucking in some carpet underlay over the crusher dust, just to be extra precautious for our high end expensive fish tank...



After this we obviously needed to make the sucker hold water, so the proof is in the pudding so to speak...



The first GB, basically a herb garden with easy access to the kitchen for all that good food the boss keeps filling me out with

Ok, so here is the place the boss wants the herb garden GB, she can have easy access to the herbs from the kitchen at cooking times and it's easy to drain back to the FT.



and here is the GB in place ready for media, plants and water



So we now have the herb GB planted out with an assortment of stuff the boss likes to add at cooking time to keep me filled out nicely. The FT has been stocked with about 60 fish from our dam, just gambesii I think, not really going to get much from them, but we know the water is ok for fish at the moment and when we get to stock it with something like jade perch or barra, the dam fish will also add to the food chain, but if we get SP (as I'd like) the little guys can still hang around nicely.

Wifey wants to get some air stones in there to aid with O2 levels and we need to get a test kit to do the testing, but for now it's 'cycling' is that the right term?

Nice sig, the gambesi will make nice food for the silvers, definitely get air, you can get pump and airstone kits from Ebay cheap as cheap, I actually use a air hose about 70" long with a air line fitting each end, you can get them various lengths, seem to keep the crap off the floor better, and trout broke the end off an air stone with all the bouncing around

Love the aesthetics! That GB fits in style and materials/colour. Bloody well done!!
You reckon you might need a collar tie or two to the top and sides of the FT 6x2's?? They may bow with continual hydrostatic pressure? Just an observation, definitely not a critisism!
Great getting the rug rats involved; they will gain a greater appreciation of natural living, food production and general enjoyment of a "hobby" involving Dad, Mum and Fish!

Again, great work, just tell me . . . does your level have a frozen bubble like mine?

Cheers IanK

Some good work going on there Sigidi...

Looking fantastic Allan, you are putting my home system to shame, now I am going to be told I have no excuses, look what Allan did in one weekend

Did you skip dress that timber or is it straight off the saw, looks nice and smooth? What is the grow bed made out of, painted ply or some type of fiberglass container from somewhere?

Nocky,
SILVERS - I was under the impression from the fingerling lady (great place to get 'em - I can get 2" silvers for 50c ea most other places are at least 2x that) that silvers don't eat others and you can chuck fingerlings in to re-stock and the grown up silvers won't eat the fingerlings?

AIR - I've got the compressor rigged to a section of 13mm black poly pipe, blower nozzle on the end of the air compressor hose, sealed into end of 13mm poly pipe, poly pipe has a multitude of of hand pierced holes in it. The blower nozzle has elecky tape holding it slightly on and the regulator on the compressor is dialed down to very,very little. The up shot is I have 1m curtain of air running continuously and the compressor only kicks in every 2h 12min

A big air compressor Sig? if so it will put oil and sludge into your pond, even an electric one
Mate has silvers in his dam, best bait we have caught them with was gambesi, and also baby marron, the marron eating is why we are trying to get them out, mange to catch one every now and then, he put in 100 9 years ago, NFI how many their now, dam is 30 foot deep in the middle

Ian - first of all, thanks for the back pats.

AESTHETICS - Wifey has to get the kudos for the GB look. I was more than happy to leave it the way it looked in the magpie picture - put a dressed hardwood cap on the top to cover the black plastic liner, but leave the outer faces looking the way they where. Apparently it looked too "home made" for her so she wanted to spruce it up - hence the cgi.

FT - I've been a bit lazy - due to my math and physics reasoning with adding ties or braces to the FT. I worked out each layer of the FT would have 450kg of water creating outward pressure in all directions simultaneously and for one of the layers to move laterally it would need greater than 450kg to move it, so nothing holding layer to layer. Also the brief from the minister of home affairs was to have 'clean lines' (can't have it looking too home made! - put that in 'cause I know Wifey will have a read sometime, Love you Honey ) so I orientated all timber with bows facing into the FT, the worst bowed pieces (I don't like to admit it, but sometimes even I cut ones like that ) where placed on the bottom layer of FT and best on top layer as the top layer, only having 3" of water exerting pressure will have much less force 'bowing it out'. So considering the design brief and timber properties, plus some logical reasoning I convinced my self of less work - we'll see how it goes?

KIDS - Burnsy has to take full credit for that, he hooked me into with his school system and getting primary kids to do stuff, I figured our 3 at home could also do a heap and yep, hopefully it will be a long term benefit thing for their formative development.

LEVEL - Ian, the bubble moves on mine, would bloody want to for the amount of ear bashing I took over buying it. LONG story, but suffice it to say it's a DanG good level, 1.8m long and not handyman cheap like 95% our our tools. Hope you get to warm your oil up in yours to get that bubble moving

RoO and Mike,

thanks for the Kudos

Sorry Mike if I've dropped you in it with Erin??? but it was mainly the impetus of Wifey, she can't understand why everyone doesn't get AP running at home. Me, I'm wanting to get it running so I can get back to building this deck I sliced so much bleedin timber up for!

Mike, all the timber is rough sawn, straight off Larry - except the caps (or actually roof battens for the new deck, but I should have extras) I ran over the caps by hand with the elecky plane, couldn't be bothered chuckin em through the planer/moulder.

GB's - you're never going to believe it... they are 30mm slabs of hoop pine I ripped down to 350mm wide for the sides, batten screwed together, with more ripped down, BS'd, 30mm slabs as the base. The magpie pic is the slab GB just primed and painted, but the slabber marks and the hardware were a bit 'home made' for Wifey so we faced it in CGI left from the build progress. I said to Wifey, "Do you know how much 350x30mm sticks of clear hoop pine would cost?!" I reckon the CGI is the budget part of the GB Lined in black plastic as well, it isn't fantastically neat using the black plastic, but it's functional and to get us cycling 1 600l GB and a 1500l FT it took a weekend and $20

Nocky - didn't realise the compressor issues, thanks.

At the mo, it is a stop gap until our Ebay items come through Aust Post, so hopefully using it for a few days won't damage things too much or do you think we should 86 it and get an aquarium aerator hooked up now?

Got a 12v, 4200lph and 5m head (need the head to pump FT water onto nearby roof for solar heating) bilge pump coming, 12v solar panel, water test kit and I think Wifey also has her eye on one of those mains aerators with battery back-up. We want to set the system up so we have no probs with black/brown outs.

Also on the solar heating of FT I can get hold of SP fingerlings now, but the chap reckons to get them feeding I'll need to get water temp up 2 deg and to get 'em growing need to raise temp 4deg...

Don't know sig if you got no fish I would disconnect it, a lot of crap comes out of the compressor in workshop here (electric) no point tainting the water, I have read in the forum about other issues with them, if you get an oil slick you would probably be in for a water change

You will be getting more than enough aeration just from the continuous flow to keep gambusii very happy so don't worry about air at this stage. You shouldn't need air until the fish density (by weight) is a lot higher.

Better get off my behind and get some timber grow beds made up - need to finish the paving first.

gambesi will live in a cup of tea sorry sig forgot about the gambesi, I would disconnect the compressor, in my opinion