Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

In my aquaponics system I have introduced an aquapro canister filter I bought from bunnings for $120, with a 3000 litre per hour pump attached (around $80). It had been working ok for the first couple of months, but as the food levels increased, the water became gradually darker. A couple of weeks ago I added filter mat (from Spotlight) and it has cleared up very well. It needs only a little maintanance, once a week cleanout which takes ten minutes. I plan to add these before all my bio filters in my aquaculture tanks.

Hi Geoff,


Oh! Got pics?

What is a "filter mat"? Did you add that to your canister filter? So you use a combination of the canister filter & filter mat, right?

Scottie,

The filter mat is Dacron I believe and is used to fill quilts and so on, hence my source being Spotlight. It comes in rolls around 1.5m wide and is around $6 to $7 a metre. I add this between the filter foam (which comes with the canister) and the bioballs at the bottom.

I'll take some pictures of my tanks and filters tonight and start a thread if I can manage to download the photos.

pH is buffered pretty solid at 6.6 - 6.8. I also use Potassium BiCarbonate, although that is expensive. So shell grit it is for now. I am happy with the pH as it is a good range for plants, so I don't want to knock it around too much. I realise it's acidic process, that's why I have the shell grit!

For airation I've got a T off my pump which has a venturi which adds a lot of air which also circulates the water and moves the solids into the middle (which then goes up onto the beds), and the otto air pump (battery backed) with both outlets in the water and it cranked to max. There is no way I have a lack of DO.

As expected Nitrite is 0. No more fish deaths either. I wonder what happened?

Pretty confident it's colouring of some sort - probably a combo of food (I'm using Ridleys) and the bitumen - I've had 500L sitting in a completely sealed container for 2 or so weeks and the colour is exactly the same - no light, no movement.



I haven't read much about people using it - for what purpose would I employ it? Do you think it would clean up colour of the water?

The filter wool worked to an extent, it filtered out the solids, but it became clogged eventually, but I really think it's just "colouring" of some sort. My 1000L system which is not under the bitumen roof has beautiful clear water, and I'm feeding those guys the same food. Of course there a billion other variables, but I've come to a sort of conclusion about it. Actually now that I think about it, the 1000L system has a sock filled with this stuff going into the sump....hrmm

I got mine from spotlight as well, don't buy it from the aquarium shops!!

Actually, I think this morning my water is looking a little clearer - definitely try adding socks and filter wool to your return. The other thing that might help is mussels - my 1000L system has about 20 mussels, which apparently filter the water, so they could also be contributing.

Can you fit a mesh bag of Activated carbon into your sock?

Activated carbon has a huge surface area for its size. Organic particles basically get stuck/ adsorbed to the carbon and therefore it is widely used in water filtration/ aquariums/ aquaculture.

Just make you rinse it out bigtime before use.

I can fit it, but there has been many-a debate as to whether we actually need activated carbon in AP. Most people don't use it. I don't have pathogens that the fish can't handle, so I don't need it for that. Do you think activated carbon would do anything for the dark colour of the water? If they're not organic particles then I'm thinking it wont.

Maybe I should give it a whirl and see what happens.

Well gang, it's taken a good 3 attempts, but I've finally got through to the eating end of the season. A big thanks to everyone here for their help. I had some friends around and we fished out 4 trout, smoked them, and ate them with crackers.





Can someone positivley ID that bottom one as a brook trout? It was a completely different shape to the others - are there 2 rainbows and a brown? I thought there were 3 rainbows and a brook at the time (who's flesh was even a different colour).... - Also, the jaw the "brook" had was all hooked up at the bottom and it also had milks -


And this is the glands when gutted:


Spring growth has kicked in, here's me being an idiot in between my two growbeds:


Finally:



I have another 93 trout left.

Mate.... your growbeds are looking pretty darn good there Simon...

How were the trout???.... and when are your mates putting in an aquaponics system...

Gemmel,
They are (were!) all Rainbows, the one with the "hooked" jaw and deeper body shape was the Male, as evidenced by the "Milt" (as distinct from the female's "Roe"). No Brown trout there!
Brown trout do not require a Hatchery to breed, they are now established as "wild" trout in most of the East coast streams of Aus that can support trout. Rainbows and Brook trout must be breed in captivity and then released into the wild for grow out. "Stocking" streams is what hatcheries were originally established to do.

Hope you enjoyed the fruits of your labours.
Cheers Iank

Looks good Gemmell. I might try the smoked trout and crackers this weekend.

Did you put anything else other than the trout on the crackers?

Yeh, soak them in a mixture of water, salt and brown sugar before hand. 24 hours is great, 30 mins is fine though.



Sweet - when I pulled them out I thought the other 3 were all rainbow, but in the photos one looked slightly different, so I second guessed myself and thought one was a brown. Well at least they make it easy to tell males and females appart - they're very different colours and shape. I'm a learnin'.



Tasted great. Went down a treat. Now I am being hassled to bring a whole bunch into work! As for mates putting in systems, I am showing people around my system once a week. There's a lot of interest out there.

Well I have no complaints. I am harvesting about 10 fish a week. They're up to about 30cm now. I have recently cleared out my growbeds to make way for the spring/summer veg. I had a LOT of flowers in there, and when I cleared it out I found celery underneath! Oh and a couple of artichokes which are starting to fruit.

Me and my growbeds. You can see the artichoke leaves sticking out the side there.


This is a shot of my aquaponic flowers in the first bed, with the second bed in the background.


A sweet pea flower.


Some kind of odd cricket on my strawberry plant. I really want a macro lense like faye's or joel's!


This is one of the daisy plants. They outgrew everything, including silverbeet.


Dinner.


5 Trout = 1kg. You can also see one I'd smoked the previous day on the left there.


Me + AP trout = happy.


Unfortunatley because I cleared out some of the bed it now looks like a bomb has hit it and is no where near as impressive. It'll be back



I have about 75 trout left. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what I should do with them all? We're going through a good 10-15 a week, giving away, inviting people over for dinner etc. Anyone know how to pickle them or otherwise preserve them (cold smoker?)?