Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

A lot of progress in the last few days. Some of my seeds are comming up. I can't tell which ones but i think cilantro and basil so far. I threw in a few starts off a spider plant. I am thinking about taking a bell pepper plant out of the garden, cut it all the way back and wash the dirt off the roots. I have heard of people overwintering hot peppers, but it should work with a bell too.

I also have 5 goldfish from outside in the fish tank. I'll test the water again and see how much progress the bacteria has made. Another week and i might be able to throw some tilapia in the FT. Pretty cool and I enjoy the progress.

Recent water test:

Ammonia <.25
Nitrite 1
Nitrate 10

Up from last week in Nitrite and Nitrate and down in ammonia. Getting there

I took some pictures this AM. I made some adjustments to my fill times. I reduced the time to lower the fill level a bit. I was not draining as much as I like, so I also opened up the hole in my drain pipe cap. I added tilapia to the FT and I am down to 8 fish left in the aquarium. That is a more manageable quantity in the 75 gallon space. I would like some more fry, so maybe with less crowding this will happen.

Here is the aquarium shot.



Speaking of Fry, they are doing great. A lot of these are 1/2 inch long already.



For the overall GB, I added a little supplemental lighting in the form of a Metal Halide 400 watt fixture with reflector. I get some sun through the south facing windows, but 4-5 hours of extra light will defiantly help. This fixture is just about right for a 4 X 4 foot area with the correct Lumen s.



To get a little kick start on the plant growth I salvaged a couple of pepper plants out of the outside garden. One bell pepper and a jalapeno. I cut them way back and washed the roots off real well. Hopefully they will make the transition. These plants are very woody now as I started them inside last winter, grew them all summer and now back inside again.




This is a lousy picture, but I have 15-20 sprouts up at this time. The additional light will help a bunch and I will have to add a couple more plants to fill out this grow bed.




All is well for now and some more water testing later in the week. Over the next few days I will tidy up the porch, so Kerri stops calling it the big hole. More later

What part of Indiana are you in? I will be moving in May from El Salvador to the fort Wayne area. Not sure I will put in a system as I will only be there for a year and in a rented house to boot.

Wrong end of the state. Fort Wayne is 3-4 hours north of here. A good day trip away!

I wanted to work on some insulation for the top of the tank, but I really need a lid. I found a fish on the floor tonight, been there several hours. I have some floating film that looks like bubble wrap with foil on the outside. I wanted to make a blanket similar to pool covers that I have seen. Maybe I need a more rigid system like plastic panels that sit on the metal frame around the IBC. I need to keep the heat and the fish inside while trapping the water vapor to cut down on overall evaporation. I'll think about it this week and hit the box stores for potential solutions. Any thoughts out there?

I picked up some 24 X 48" acrylic today and it works out very well for a lid. The two small pieces slide around easily to get access to the tank, but they fit very well to keep flying fish and evaporation to a minimum. $28, so the investment was low as well.

Another development in the aquarium, as I noticed one of the females carrying around a mouth full of eggs. It looks like thinning out the aquarium population did the trick to get another batch of fry. In about a week, I will try to move the female to the brood tank. It is probably a little early to put the first batch of fry in with the adults. I wonder if the small fish would eat the newborns? The mom's are pretty protective, so I might give that a try. With another successful batch of fry, I should end up with 150-200 little ones. I will try to get a good picture of the mom with eggs in her mouth. It is real interesting to see.

Adults don't eat the fry but the bigger fry and fingerlings will happily eat smaller fry. Any Tilapia under 6 inches long should be getting fed a fairly high protein food if it is warm and you want the growing fast. The fry and small fingerlings definitely need high protein to keep them from eating each other.

It gets really tricky here though as tilapia can start breeding while they are still fingerlings.

Thanks TCL, you always provide such helpfull information. It sounds like I should take the larger fry out of the brood tank and put a few in the aquarium and some in my big FT and let mom have the tank to herself. I will add some clay tiles to the FT to provide a little cover for the smaller fish, just in case. With what I have now, I could lose a few and it is not that big a deal. My first group is probably 60-80 fry and the second group will be 50-100 more. I found a few small fry in the aquarium a few weeks ago, that must have been from the first brood and hid in the rocks/tiles for the first 6-8 weeks. The goal here is to grow some fish out this winter and then stock the 1200 gallon pond in the spring and do some outdoor aquaponics over the summer. I have already concluded a solar water heater is going to be important early on to bring my pond temp to at leaste 70/22 as quickly as possible. The wheels are turning already, lots to do.

These are not the best pictures, but I wanted to show the female tilapia carrying egss around. It is fairly distinct in the aquarium, once you know what to look for. Here is a regular tilapia for comparison purposes.




The female carrying eggs keeps her mouth closed all of the time and her entire lover jaw area is bulged out in the middle to hold all of the eggs.




On top of all of this I can now see that two of the tilapia in the aquarium are carrying eggs around. Two batches at once. Wow! I hope you can see the detail in these pictures. I am having trouble getting photobucket to upload these pictures in a larger format.

You can certainly see the full mouth & pursed lips.

Here are a couple of more pictures of some recent updates. I stopped my flying fish problem with a couple of sheets of clear acrylic. They really fit the tank very well. I cut out an area for the drain pipe and overall it works very well. I added a center brace to keep the sheets from sagging in to the water.



The seedlings are doing well with some good growth out of the spinach basil and cilantro. My habenaro pepper plants are just coming up. I do see some real nice new growth on the pepper plants i salvaged from the garden. One already has a nice flower on it



Here is some brand new growth in the last week and the invasion of the lady bugs. They are really aggresive this time of year getting in the house whenever possible. I go not mind them at all on my porch with all the plants.



I moved one of the fish back to the aquarium as she dropped all of her eggs and would not pick them up again. The other female actually picked some up and I can see that the stragelers are actually hatching and starting to swim around. The female that is left now REALLY has a moth full. I also noticed another female in the aquarium is carrying eggs as well. What have I started?



More later.

As I clean up the yard this fall, I keep finding things to bring inside. Our weather here has stayed warm and a lot of the plants are still doing OK. Some New Guinea impatients near our garden pond are still prolific and I noticed at every joint in the stems they were sprouting roots. Cut a few off, put them in the grow bed and they seem to be doing quite well. My orchid sat outside all summer, doing nothing. A few weeks in the grow bed has kicked off some significant leaf growth. Maybe I can even get it to bloom this year. It was a box store reject that looked horrible. Bought it off the damaged rack for $2. All my seeds have sprouted well and seem to be adding significant root growth, without adding a lot of leaves. I expect some better growth after roots are established in the grow bed. The pepper plants are flowering and I might even get some peppers off of them. I still have about 1/3 of the bed open. I will try some more seeds in the next few days. Maybe some more spinach and some lettuce of some kind. My flood and drain has settled down in to a nice rhythm, with 14 cycles over the course of the day. I need to test my water and look how that end of the system is progressing.

The female tilapia in the seperate tank has finally released her fry to swim around on their own. I have been giving them brine shrimp and they really attack it. I took a still picture this AM to count them and added up about 175 little ones. A pretty nice batch.




They really don't show up real well in the picture as they are so small, they just look like little specks. temperature on the porch has not been a problem yet and I still want to rig up a simple solar water heater. Maybe just a simple 100 foot black hose coiled on the inside of the window with a timed circulation pump. Lots to do, some water results later today.

Water temp 80/26

PH 7.6
Ammonia .25
Nitrite .5
Nitrate 10

How does this result sit with everyone. Ammonia and Nitrite fairly low, but not gone. Should the nitrates stay that low or are the plants as meager as they are, just doing their job? 25-30 fish total in 175 gallons or ~ 600l of water. Thoughts?

I'd say that the ammonia and 'ites will probably continue to drop. Since you have tilapia and they are tough and tolerant fish, you are probably fine. But levels should drop to zero.

'ates are probably low due to the plants. I like to see them at 10ppm or above, but only because I like to make sure the plants have a little left on the plate after taking their fill.