Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am trying to convince SWMBO that we should expand our system at home, bite the bullet and get some grow-beds and stands.

She was wondering what to do with the space under the grow-beds. It's a fair question I s'pose.

If we get, say, four beds, I will consider placing two of the 500L grow-beds with adjoining edges and use the space under these for the chook pen (we now have two, looking to get a couple of more bantams maybe next year) I have also considered a worm farm under another grow-bed. BYAP Jandakot has a yabbie tank at ground level under some of their beds, this might also be another idea for us?

What do you do with the space under your elevated grow-beds? Install cupboards/storage? Plant flowers in the dirt underneath? Paving? Bare earth? More systems?


(Can I request some photos too please -- we are trying to convince the reluctant here! )



Scott

P.S. SWMBO = She Who Must Be Obeyed

That's the place for your sump ,, sump+yabbies ,, Quail pen and where the Mrs sleeps after you use her half the bedroom for your indoor system:)

Or where you sleep after she reads the previous post

Duckweed growing tanks.

Garden and bucket storage.

all good ideas.

Yep , I'm in the dog-house:(
Lucky my girl-friend is there also ,,,LOL

I made the doghouse big enough that we could both fit... still not 100% comfortable though.

I like the idea of animal pens under the GB, especially avian pens. This should if designed right, reduce the number of pests.
I'm being plagued with big caterpillars snails and slugs atm. If they had to pass through a cordon of chooks to get to the GBs then I doubt they'd be so successful.

If you do go down the path of having a 500L growbed under the stand for a yabbie/duckweed tank, REMEMBER to put the 500L growbed (yabbie tank) in place first and lower the stand over it. Downside is that it will be hard to remove that yabbie tank without cutting up the edges of the tank first.

I learnt it the hard way and had all my system setup already before thinking about the yabbie tank, hence I had to twist and force my yabbie tank in between the stand legs and my cut-out of
the edges were bigger. Almost could not make it happen.

As for things under the growbed, I would suggest not to put anything that requires a clean-out every now and then, the support beams under the stand could be quite nasty to head and shoulders. In addition, the spraying of water during a clean-out may contaminate the fish tank if it is close by.

Personally, I am not sure about dirt garden. One of the reason I went with growbeds was that I was sick of weeding. Plus again, planting under the growbeds, support beams are nasty.

I reckon, yabbie tank, duckweed tank or otherwise, pave it or put a weedmat down and put stones over it. Rainbow stones, pea gravel, etc...

Yep Bunson

Good thinking. EB has many of his GBs used for other things beneath his GBs on stands. He simply cuts a little bit of a corner out of the lip and they fit fine.

The other option is to use round sumps (500 L or 1000 L) under there, as in the below diagram. The scale in the diagram is all correct and the ponds are all 500 L - I've since determined I can fit low-profile 1000 L tanks under the beds but haven't got around to updating the diagram yet.

Yes , that what I mean Butr some of the sumps can be quail pens,,, all the water sumps should have yabbies etc.if you can get the filtration good ,, yabbies in the bottom and floating raft lettuce / basil etc on top.

Do you think the plants in the sump tank under the grow bed recieve enough light to grow plants? I have placed floating rafts in my sump tank but they are shaded and haven't grown at all. The plants in the floating rafts in my fish tank are growing quickly.

If facing north ,, winter sun will be at about a 45 degree angle so underneath sumps should get heaps of light.