Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Going quite well but still experimenting more than a year later with different valve setups. 1 res is 100 gallon with about 30 goldfish and 4 plecos, the other is 70 gallon with about 12 goldfish and one pleco. More pics to come. The new system has all the electrical integrated.

Ya might want to keep an eye on the copper/zinc levels in your water. It looks to me that some of the plumbing there is copper and brass. As the water in Aquaponics can go a bit acidic, sometimes that mobilizes more metals into the water and could possibly be a problem for some types of fish. I think you can get reasonable priced test kits for copper. If you have unexplained fish deaths, it might be something to research.

Good Luck with it

Fish health is great and since our plumbing is copper to drink out of I thought it failry safe. All of our levels seem to be good over the past 6 months. We test 10 variables and seems to be good.

Two points Elston...

Concerns over toxicity with regard to copper have lead to (at least here in OZ)... all copper piping being replaced by pressure tubing.... even though very few household water supplies would be acidic, as TCL points out...

Secondly, and more importantly.... copper is extremely toxic to fish and crustaceans.... and copper based anti-fouling paints are now banned.... as they kill all marine life in the marinas where boats are moored...

There has been much discussion regarding this point.. and much research.... google "copper toxicity in fish"... and you'll see thousands of hits....

Ignore it if you wish.... but consider that copper, like most metals is cumulative in fish flesh..

IMO... replace your fittings ASAP...

It will depend on your system pH as to how much copper is likely to mobilize into the water but the real issue is the fact that aquaponics is recirculating and any leaching builds up too. When you run water to drink out of the tap, it is only making one pass through the copper pipes and most drinking water supplies are also not acidic. When you are running the water in an AP system, the water probably makes that first pass through your household piping to get into the system which isn't such a big deal but then you start recirculating that water through a system with more metal and the possibly more acidic water of an AP system. It just means you may want to get a test kit and keep an eye on the copper levels. They do make test kits http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/prod/199582/product.web so you could test regularly and if you see copper building up in the system it means you either need to do regular water changes or change the valves and copper plumbing out to PVC or something else.

It looks nice but.... I've never seen anyone use such solid piping before, normally people are using small plastic pipe..

oh lord, let us not start the copper debate again lol.

Copper IS BAD mmkay

Re copper: your household plumbing is leaching a safe amt since 1) your water is probably not acidic and 2) it only passes once. Not so with fish. Don't rush into it, but put on todo list or watch list.

Without dipping back into a full on debate about copper... here's a couple of general links...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper_toxicity

http://www.epa.gov/reg5sfun/sfd/ecology ... les.htm#cu

Noted and thanks, copper gone. Replaced it with PVC.