Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

thanks ruperto, it doesn't answear my temps question
although i can see it for myself that my carps aren't feeding now when the temps are around 5°C, so i guess the 8°C MINimum temp that i read somewhere must be right..will dig some more into that

Even trout wont eat much at 5 deg c.

hibernation for the carps then!thanks OBO!

hey there

it's been a while since i posted here, my camera stopped working so i stopped taking photos and posting

to tell the story short

i bought 22kg(8 eur/kg --> 160) of carp from an uknown breeder(the fish had all the diseases that you can think off). To give them the final strike i left them starving and ill for a few weeks before i salted the water and started feeding them. So now i'm on 5kg of new carps and 5 old good ones

the next "surprise" was realizing that i only have less then 10m2 of GB space, and that 22kg + fish will overload this system, then the dieing started and the agony...man it sucked big time

but on the other hand i learned an important lesson and i got loads of veggies and a balanced system for now...but still i know i could do better if i took more time

i'll post some photos as soon as i can, i'm supplying salad to 8-12 people weekly right now and it's good to have an usefull system
have picked my first 2 big radishes, eaten my first ap strawberries, picking basil, waiting for the big cauliflowers to start blooming, tommies are blooming and growing good, along with celery&parsley, onions&garlic, even have an water mellon plant(friend's seeds) etc.
goood sh...t

have also planted some vertical growing(planted in tire columns) tomato in dirt and am testing the straw ground cover to see how it does it's job.

have a jolly day!

vertical potato growing not tomato

Besides the fish that died i'm pretty pleased with the system and new experiences learned this year. We've picked quite a lot of salad lately, a few turnips, some celery and cabbage so far



cucumbers aren't doing so good this year, i'm suspecting it's the high ph 7.5 and the 3ppt salt added that's kickin' their nuts.

have added some ph down(sulphuric acid) and brought the ph down to 7.3 then 3 fish died, one jumped our of the FT on the dry, two others died from no apparent reason other then nitrates higher than 50 ppm - mg/l

have tested the water for salt concentration and i measured ~1800 us with 0.7 conversion factor that's 1260 ppm * 3 ( two cups of rain water and one cup of AP water)= 3780 ppm that's 3.78 ppt and about 3 ppt of that is NaCl so that should be enogh to keep the ammonia and nitrite levels down. i've tested for nitrites and they were close to zero, or under 0.3 mg/l on the scale if i remember that correctly

here's a photo of the reconfigured siphones, now working
had a lot of problems with low inflow on the GBs and the 40mm drainage just didn't want to kick in the siphon with the ~300l/h comming in. So the thing i figured out about them was that if actually dosn't matter how big is the standpipe as long as the lower part of the syphon can be clogged with water so that a "water plug" forms and sucks more water down up the bell and down the standpipe. To do that i minimized the diameter of lower part of the syphon and have come up with a quite cheaper solution to beat the low inflows
because of the siphons working i had to install a sump with a flute float valve that empties the three barrels into the FT on the end of the GB rows when they get full of the drained GB water, i think you call this a "chift pist system" but i'm not sure?


all comments are welcome, else just enjoy the not so good photos from my borrowed camera, was our first time, me and the new camera

Good stuff, I don't remember seeing the GB stands before but they're beautiful!

Good to see things are ticking along for you Molj....

Don't be so hard on yourself, the pics look great.

Definitely enjoyed the bo-peep, keep up the great work...

thank you all for your comments!
dave they're quite neat but a little weak, will need to add some tangental support on those tiny legs, like i did on the stands on the last 2 rows.
Ruperto nice to see you mate!
newfarmer thanks, but they'll definetly look better next time!

i'll post a few more!
here



enjoy!

Great pics!

Hey there my aquaponic friends!

I've brought some fresh photos from this year's season of my fish garden

These are the latest photos,
i've planted broccoli, cabbage and lettuce under the old veggies for the wintercrop

I've been harvesting throughout the whole summer, it was not abundant but i haven't bought much veggies this year, thank to aquaponics too. My biggest "sorrow" are the carps, since they are practically useless for food, they serve only as plant feeders so i'd love to get another species that would be more usefull to me too.

Thanks for watching and have a lovely day!

I think you need to change the title of your thread now!! lol! Absolutely beautiful! And that Eggplant takes the breath away!

Well I'm struggling to understand why you could possibly be disappointed Molj....

Maybe you didn't get the abundance you might have liked/thought...

But jezzz... everythings looking pretty darn good mate....