Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Best thing to do with your chives... is to cut them in half... regularly... the love it and thicken right up...

So now it's mid June.

Have been weening the fish onto just floating food but at the same time the temps have dropped so total feed take-up has slowed quite a lot from the warm months before. The fish have learnt they need to come to the surface now and I have slowly increased how much I throw in. I was worried about leaving too much un-eaten food on the water surface but a quick check a half to an hour later shows that something is eating the stuff. Transition complete.

Consequently plants have not done as well as the previous couple of months. We have been picking the chives and lettuce quite regularly which has been very satisfying. The tomatoes are actually out of season so they refuse to ripen. The plants themselves keep powering on despite the infection spreading and persistent bugs. Remarkable.

Two annoying things... infection and bugs!
Anyone know what the infection is?
Anyone know what bugs these are?

Well, every 6 weeks or more I pull down the filter and rinse off all the components in a bucket of the pond water. I do NOT use tap water as the chlorine can kill all the bacteria. It's a dirty job but someone's gotta do it. Ha

So for those that haven't seen the inside of a pond filter here are a few snaps.

Before and after.

I also clean my homemade venturi every now and again which is on the outflow from the pond filter. It makes quite a few bubbles and is much quieter than just letting it fall back into the pond. That pump is going 24/7.

The pond has an overflow hole which means that when it rains it never gets so full as to interfere with the venturi by covering up the holes in the outer piece of tubing.

Looks like an Oase filter Pete.... do you backwash it??

It's a PondMax filter and I tried to backwash it once Rupe but the pump is not powerful enough. In fact I look at that design and wonder exactly how much a backwash will accomplish. I was told when I bought it that you only need to backwash when the flow starts to slow down, about every 6 months or so. But as it drives the aeration via the venturi I'm too impatient and can't help thinking how much bad stuff is in in there.

It's all still a bit of trial and error at the moment. Running on theory and observing the practical.

The feed tubes do get a little scum growth over them every now and again but a quick wipe with the finger or poke with a stick and they flow just fine again. At the end of the tube is a release tap which I use to flush the main tube every now and again. The pump has very thin slits at its intake. I'm more worried that the algae growth on the pump will cover the slits and stress the pump. Like any machine... regular maintenance, regular maintenance.

Just did a pH test and it is still at 6 which, as you pointed out, is the lower limit of the test kit. Will investigate another method of reading pH. Fish behaviour is still good.