Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

big question is where?

I've noticed that few fish farms are good about keeping their web sites up or answering e-mails. Sometimes if you look in agricultural news papers/fliers for the area, you can find fish farm listings and then call them direct. Sometimes takes several calls to actually get some one though as they don't often have excess staff and much of the time they are out by the ponds working and no where near the phones.

Good Luck in your search for fish.

Big day today! Grow beds arrived so off to the garden supply to get besser blocks and sleepers. $400 later, and enough material for 6 stands at home. After a long day with some "help" again from the boys, the grow beds are on their stands. I will plumb them next weekend as I am carless for tomorrow and am on camp with 120 odd year 9 students (happy happy joy joy). Here are the pics. I have decided to go with 2 yabby tanks under the grow beds, these will slow drain to about the 250lt mark and will help to "top up" the sump. I will also bury two 220 lt olive barrels and equalise them with the big sump, so total sump of almost 1500lt with an extra 500lt slowly topping it up (maybe even a float valve for this?). I will build a kiddie cover for the yabby tanks not too dissimilar to the sump cover and have the top removable.

more...

I will wrap the treated pine sleepers above the yabbie tanks to avoid crap dripping into the water.

And it continues....

Not mucking around Quachy... mind if I ask the current price of the Tilkey troughs??

$130 each, so not too bad at all for a budget system!

... they've held the price from last year....

Hey Quanchy time for an up date hows it coming together

Going to be a very neat system, what is the volume of the GB and where do you get them from?

More work to be done this weekend. Got back from yr 9 camp. Pissed down rain all week...nice! Dug trenches so far and purchased some 90mm piping for return to sump. Hopefully all plumbed by end of weekend. Photos to come!

Quachy

plumbing is taking a lot longer than I had hoped! Had a few issues so far, a couple of slow leaks whihc are now patched up. I wasn't going to glue some of the piping, but have thought, bugger it, I may as well. So some are glued and some dry fit to make sure of config and proper drain and inlow, then glue. Should be glued and ready for full dry run 2 mo/this week end (pending on children and sleep times). Had another issue, made an affnan siphon and tested. damn bell floated, realised that back pressure in a u bend caused this so have made a "pressure release breather" now works fine. Will have to do the same for 2 other drains.

Photos to come hopefully tomorrow.

The aim is to have 4 of the 6 beds online by the weekend. The yabbie tanks and the growbeds above them will have to wait until I build a kiddie cover for the tanks.

Silvers in the first sytem now hitting the food pretty well and the trout are going nuts. Water temp in that system at 15-19 night day temps. Readings are ph7.4 ammonia 0, nitrite 0 and nitrates are up to 40. My basil hasn't taken off yet but the seeds are sprouting. Hopefully they kick off soon and suck up all the extra nutrients!

Quachy

Where can I get some of those growbeds?

Ballarat landmark

Finally the growbeds are online! I have 4 out of 6 operational with the remaining 2 getting ready. The Yabbie tanks under the 2 non-operational grow beds need a kiddy cover before I get them cranking. Got a few trailer loads of gravel from a mate for free (big thanks Paul and Olivia) which was enough to get 5 growbeds full. Have had some plumbing issues and a few minor leaks, all of which are now fixed (touch wood). Water is very very cloudy and hopefully will clear up in a few days. Will run the pump during the day only at this stage and then 24/7 when I get the fish in there. Heaps of oxygen as I have run a bypass from the sump back into the sump and this also acts to regulate the follow into the fishtanks. Will need to increase the fish tank inflow to get the water to circulate more, but this also means that the bell siphons will have to get bigger breathers to stop the siphoning. Might do a couple of test siphons and breathers. I have 3 that work great but 1 that takes a while to stop. Will increase the flow maybe tomorrow and add bigger breathers and see how that goes.

The star pickets are there to help reduce teh bowing (which I knew would happen) plus I will be running some wire as growth supports for melons, cucumbers and other vine plants. They will grow up, along and then down to the ground ( well thats how I will try to train them)