Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

cool, i have a chilli tree, i'll make some, at the moment i am squishing them, every morning there is at least 1-3 eggs per leaf, if i miss them they are like a plague on my plants, im surprised some are still alive that much has been eaten.

hopefully my chillis arent super strong and burn the fish.

they'll be right

EB, it might also be worth to add that it is not necessary to stock fishes to the recommended level for good plant growth... as I believe some may have thought that they need the recommended level to get the plant growth...

Sounds like a good recommendation but it is also true that more than 3KG per 100L can be OK in some circumstances i.e. I don't feed my fish heavily so the lower daily feed rate means my supposedly overstocked tank/system is chugging along fine.

OK, give the recommmendation but there is more than one way to skin a cat. Some people like to experiment and push the boundaries. Should they refrain from posting their results because they don't fit the norm?

But thats the thing FF, this is about a recommended figure for people that are new to AP. Anyone who needs to ask the question should be stocking at a reasonably low level. Anyone with enough experience or knowledge to stock heavier, doesn;t need to ask about recommended levels.

This is about the "oft repeated rules of thumb" for people who need this info because they don't know better yet.

No issue EB, agree that in this particular thread a low recommendation is a good thing.

I thought you question related to the whole forum in general ans it seems that some people get upset if ideas and possibilities are posted that sit outside the their accepted norms.

Carry on and good luck.

Yeah, just for beginners... We spend all day everyday explaining aquaponics to people, a few have some idea, most with none... I have no problem with people doing AP anyway they want to, but when it comes to accepted simple rules of thumb for beginners, they are best off low and simple.

Earthbound you are right on.

Cycling biofilters takes a minimum of six weeks, or longer, depending on many factors including temps and circulation.

Murphy is an ever present companion in AP endeavors, plan for the worst, and expect it and you will be much happier when Murphy stays away.

AP can be very simple, or very difficult, usually the difference is our choices. If we choose to overstock things can get real difficult in a hurry.

I agree EB!!!!! So for a Recommended starting stocking level, would you say 2 kg per 100 liters of grow bed then? I think when I convert to imperial measure I've automatically rounded down a bit since I've been using "max" levels of 1lb per 5 gallons. Hum so what numbers should I use for imperial measure for the recommended stocking? Trick being that one really needs to make the numbers simple to remember and easy to do the math with. 1 lb per 10 gallons would be really easy but might be a bit low (though 1 fish per 10 gallons would probably be good for first season systems or fish that grow real large.)

I do agree that we should probably spend more time throwing out recommended starting numbers and if people ask if that is really all the system will be able to grow, you could then share the max stocking that a mature system might support for next year.

And it is totally true that you can have great plant growth with extremely minimal fish amounts once a system matures or if you were to cycle up fishless. One can always supplement (the kitchen scrap feeder for the worms in a corner of a bed comes to mind) if the fish amounts are too low and one doesn't want to add more fish.

This is something I was concerned about to begin with. I was dosing my water to cycle the system with no fish, then I added 50 tiny (25mm) silvers, then 50 100mm trout and stopped dosing (2000L of GBs). It seemed logical there would be a drop off in nutrients and some sort of cocktailing would be required. I do put a 1/1000 LigIron and 1/500 Seasol foliar spray every now and then, but it really does seem that it makes little difference. Even though I know nothing about what I'm doing, I can't seem to put a foot wrong with the low stocking rates (see how I prod bravely at Murphy ). Well, not that low maybe, but the silvers are small and hardly feed and the trout didn't feed much for a week or so.

I've got a quarantine system that has regularly gone without fish for periods of time and I've not had the nitrates drop too much. There is enough stuff in the grow beds now to provide some fairly long term mineralization as they break down.

My nitrates also probably stay a bit higher because the high pH I think. The plants have to work harder to use up the nutrients when the pH is locking stuff out from them.

Ok so I'm now going with the recommended stocking levels of
2 kg per 100 liters of grow bed when speaking in metric
or for those people stuck in imperial measure
1 lb of fish per cubic foot of grow bed,
that should be fairly easy for many people to figure with and remember.

Ooops, so easy to miss some of these threads on occasion..

Sounds good to me, that's about inline with what we recommend here in our systems 20-25 dish per growbed. So 20 fish in 1 bed system with 500L of growbed, fish grow to 500g, so 10kg of fish with 500L of media, or 2kg per 100L.

1lb per cubic foot sounds like it works well as an easy figure to remember too...

Misinformation sucks.....!!!!!!!!

For the second time today someone has rung here with problems in their home made systems. They have stocked 100 fish in 1000L of water because they had heard that 1 fish per 10L was what they should have... No care or thought for amount of filtration in the system...... Grrrrr..... Bad information leading to fish deaths with new people who don't know any better.

And we have to spend our time trying to correct things and help them out.

You should skitch Faye onto them - that'll learn 'em

Thats why he's posted here CD, I have just got off the phone, half an hour conversation detailing what to be careful of. And I may have said who was the "idiot" that said that- 1 fish in 10 litres. I have heard it stated twice today. We are doing our best to show people how to have a safe introduction to aquaponics, rather than failing and killing fish.

i still dont get how people can grasp the concept that it is the filtration, not FT volume that defines how many fish you can have. its not rocket science.

did you atleast get a sale of a test kit or something out of it?