Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,
This Aquaponics is certainly all consuming and all learning. I've never been on such a steep learning curve!
I have been reading a lot of threads on this very interesting forum.
Threads about systems, problems, info and the jokes are great.
And finding out about the different people who contribute is very interesting too, and it got me thinking!

What was your interest/expertise when you first heard about AP?
What sort of backgrounds do APers generally come from?
Are we mostly those who have kept fish; gone fishing; in to hydroponics; market gardeners; backyard gardeners; seeking self sufficiency with no knowledge of keeping fish or plants?
Do those who have fish losses come purely from the fish side of the spectrum and neglect the plant side and that causes the system to go belly up or is it the other way round?

What was it for you that attracted you to it and want to learn more?

For my side, I admit I am such a novice when it comes to the fish component.
A few goldfish to keep the mossies down and thoroughly neglected but still alive in a pond down the back garden is my experience.
My background is plants, I have grown vegies since my mid 20s. And flowers since I was a little girl.
Managed and indigenous plant nursery for 10 years.
Self sustainability drives me and the prospect of fresh organic vegies and now fish too!
With world wild fish stocks dwindling and the media telling us we have to eat more fish to keep healthy, what are we to do but grow our own.

So please, I would love to know how it began for you and where you are now?
Is it what you expected and is it still exciting?

And for those of you who love photos, here is a shot of some of my tomatoes I grew in the ground earlier this year and made sauce with.
Garlic, oregano, thyme and basil, olive oil drizzled over and roasted on slow for 2 hours, then sieved to remove skins and pips.
Put into my fowlers vacola jars and water bathed to preserve. I have 4 jars left out of 20 or so and it is wonderful stuff.
But I haven't made enough!



Dale

My background is I guess partly that I am/was a chef. I grew up as a kid with veggie gardens and I wanted my 2 daughters to have the experience that comes with learning to grow things. I am a keen gardener but very much on the "design" it properly for low maintenance.

We built our current house about 4 yrs ago and both the front and back yards are very low maintenance with native plants. We never water them or feed them. They just do their thing and are growing wonderfully. When I discovered AP I realised I could do the same thing with the veggies and it makes it much more enjoyable plus we get fish.

The Fish someone had to say it

Excellent Embi,
thanks for that, I love your blog.
Dale

I come from a Background of Growing up on a Small Hobby Farmlet (only 3 Acres) in Huntly Bendigo we had Large Gardens Mum was a Awesome Gardener, We had a large veggie garden that Kept The neighbors in veg and we had a few cows, sheep and chickens.

I guess Living in the city for 10 years and bringing up my kids down there i wanted something different, so i moved the family back home to bendigo (was an experience for my wife who had lived in melb her whole life) to Strathfieldsaye, In a newish estate but or block is in a court, and we have Bush Behind and Beside us, Walking tracks etc and i can Let the kids out the front without worrying too much as the neighbors all have kids etc it a good community.
We are renting a house privately, and i get along well with the landlord, we may just buy it when were ready, its a very Exectuive yard with no Landscaping Bar Bark chips and white stones, no chance of grass or growing gardens as its clay.

The older kids had a project at school to grow some veggie plants and we decided to get some pots and potting mix and grow some things from seed they loved it so much i remember there faces when they went out one morning and seen their seeds had germinated. But nothing more happened as we all know potting mix is useless and there was no room for beds without making raised beds and filling them with some decent soil.

When i seen Costa On SBS i was thinking about making a few beds, getting chooks etc but then he had this awesome Aquaponics setup so i decided to find out more, i brought murrys DVD the next day and got into it some more, then i came across this place and now im running my own system on a minimal budget and loving it.

i really want my kids to understand the fundamentals of life, the sustainable cycle, the need for less waste and more recycling, they wont let me cook the rabbit tho ahhahaahahah

they are excited to grow some veggies and eat some fish as we all are hope that it all works out nicely!!!

Thanks Dale... its a bit slow going at the moment but should pick up in the next few months

Aaah! Where do I start? Short answer must be "The package that aquaponics brings". I guess I have been on a path for many years with different interests combining gardening, cooking, family life, the down to earth stuff. My name is Faye and I am and addictive gardener who has been supported along the way to achieve the things I set off to do. My dreams have changed and evolved regularly. When you make up your mind to do something, just get on with it I reckon. I wanted a botanic garden with something for everyone, we found 4 acres, the planets aligned we sold our house and moved not long after, too easy some might say, others just looked and said "how do you know where to start."
I kind of realised, my friends didn't view things the same way that I did. We created ponds and encouraged local wildlife, "build it and they will come" frogs arrived and dragonflies bred,no aeration or pump,just plants. It is a healthy thriving eco system- Nature.
When I saw Joel on Gardening Australia, I said to my husband, "that has to be the way to go." I needed to learn more, and it looked like Joel needed another pair of hands. I wanted a system and he needed somewhere to display one, we had plenty of room and were planning an open garden. Around the same time I entered the Gardener of the Year competition and became the 2007 winner. That year over 2000 vistors came to the garden and we raised thousands of dollars for charity as well as raising more awarenss about aquaponics. I was teaching at TAFE and students were working in may garden as part of their course, they learnt revegetation, vegetable gardening, maintenance, I got paid and they had an opportunity to learn a variety of different gardening styles, including aqauponics- no one escaped that lesson. Some were international students and we were able to share information and learn from each other. I believe teaching is about sharing information and inspiring and educating people, there are so many lessons.
I know what you mean about the learning curve, I have had some doosies of questions asked- that just sent me off to find the answers. I know more now that I did 4 years ago. I have discovered new interests like photography, and a side of bug life that I never knew existed. It is awesome, the world of macro photography. My quest for knowledge continues and if you can stand back and observe an aquaponic system it will teach you, rather than you control it.
Keeping fish can be relaxing and there is always something new to learn. It is the heart feeling, it takes over and you just have to do it. The head part says, well it uses much less water, no ongoing soil improvement, no bending and digging, no chemical fertilisers and pesticides, healthy, fresh food production with no food miles and saves costs on food shopping and refigerator storage, not to mention time and energy.
Funny thing is that the more you learn, the more there is that you find, you don't know.
Meeting people that have the same values is a bonus and hearing their stories of success are great too.

I used to have the same oven and kettle that you have, not the exact same one (that would be weird ) but the same models.

I got into aquaponics because it is waterwise and I am on tank water.

I first heard about aquaponics in a thread on aussiehomebrewer.com LOL. The thread is called "Would you like some fish with your hops".
I lot of the brewers grow their own hops as I do, and make cheese, sausages etc etc so it was only a matter of time till one of the 14500 members chimed in with an aquaponics thread.
One guy up at Mildura posted some pics of his system and that was it for me, I just had to grow some fish.
Google search led me here and to the practical aquaponics forum
Earth works have begun for the next system

haven't got the same kettle anymore, my son boiled it dry.
The stove is wonderful, I thought it too big when we moved in 3 years ago but my son is an apprentice chef and it is getting a lot of use these days.

My brother used to live in Bullsbrook, my nephew still does. Cameron Seery age 15?

What a wonderful lot of responces so far, I have tears in my eyes.

I grew up on a mixed agricultural and extraction industry property. My father was a quarryman, turfgrower, market gardener, timbermill operator etc, jack of all trades, master of none I spent all my summers as a kid chasing yabbies and bass in the dams and creeks and eating all the carrots and peas before dad got a chance to pick them and sell them

We live on a typical suburban block now and my 4 year son will never have the experiences that I had growing up. I built my system as a way to give him just a taste of what I had. He loves coming down to the greenhouse and checking out the fish and yabbies and eating cherry tomatoes straight off the vine.

Healthy food and lots of fun and learning

Yeah, dont we all!!

I grew up on a 1/4 acre block in southern Tassie, and a good 1/3rd of that block was vegies that Dad would mulch and rotary hoe around for hours, then vegies eventually came He has a 50 acre block now, but only about a 1/4 acre of it is used

Once set up AP requires so much less ongoing work, and is way more reliable than soil gardening...for the vegies anyways..., still sorting out the keeping fish alive side!

Mainly got into AP because growing vegies in dirt out here is very nearly impossible, especially on a large scale. It was either hydro or AP, and AP has fishies, so its way cooler.

Well here goes...

I grew up in Singapore and since Singapore is pretty much a city with limited farmland, vegs pretty much comes out from the fridge and/or freezer. Never grew much of plants or veges until I migrated to Perth about some 10 years ago now... Engineer by education, so pretty much lousy at the tools as well... Have kept fishes and goldfishes in the past but they did not survive well... I wonder why???

So in short, nothing in my history or life would have pushed me towards this thing called Aquaponics.

It was lunch conversation with a friend who told me that his dad was growing veges with water from the fish pond. Then I thought, I had intentions of putting a pond in my backyard and my vege patch is always overtaken by weeds since I am pretty lazy and a bit of plant and forget person... Why not combine them both and it would be ideal?? But at that time, I thought I was alone, a bit like a pioneer. When I started looking, the closest I could think of was adapt the hydroponics equipment to the fish pond. But after running the idea passed a hydroponics shopowner, it pointed me to Backyard Aquaponics. And the rest was history...

It is slightly more than a year ago now. Some of my colleagues (engineers) are still amazed or have not warmed up to the idea of me harvesting fish as well as veges from my own backyard...

Anyways, plans are on the way to convert the backyard to mostly AP...

Ain't that the the truth!

For me, I was looking up something on the internet. I cannot remember exactly what it was, but at the time I was looking up things like DIY smokers and DIY pizza ovens and sustainable gardening. At some point I ran accross a youtube video about aquaponics. So with new term in hand and a few more searches, a wealth of info presented itself. And then after seeing greenecorevolution - I knew I had to do one. At one point I thought I had gathered up all the info I could, but then late last year I found these forums. I lurked for a couple days reading all I could - and then after introducing myself, it almost felt like a commitment to start a system. The forums are still a major part of my daily reading.

Anyway - I have always been a city boy with little interest in landscapes or gardens etc. Personally I would have been content to have all my yard pored concrete. My wife has always wanted nice landscapes, but never bothered to maintain them, so I usually end up ripping them out and letting the grass grow back. A few years ago I started to get really worried where the economy was going and realized that if hyperinflation set in, I would not be able to take care of the family the way I currently do. So I started getting serious about gardening and such. It was searches on gardening that got me going on the pizza oven and smokers etc and the end result has been almost a year down in this rabbit hole. If you had asked me a few year ago if I would raise meat rabbits in the backyard and grow fish in tanks, I would say absolutly not. In fact, when my daughter was in highschool, she joined FFA and wanted to grow a rabbit. The answer was no! I feel a bit shameful about that now and I know she arbors some ill feelings for the rabbits I have now. But times change and people change - sometimes time changes people.

Growing Marron was what got me started, I was looking for Aquaculture sites and ended up finding the other forum on AP, after a short time of being ignored their I found BYAP and expecting much the same treatment as a Newbie I joined anyhow, I have progressed from a 2000lt tank and whacky grow beds and floating devices, but I still like to try different things, a couple I am happy with, Mussels, Pygmy Perch, Blue Marron and Western Minnows, a couple weren't so good like Yabbies and Red Fin, but hopefully someone learns from my mistakes, the forum is just great for that really, if someone stuffs up it is mostly posted and you feel like a dick, but is great information.
As with almost everyone once started , things expand and my next expansions are on Paper, just have to wait for her to disappear for a week or so
Warning: Aquaponics is Addictive and can be an obsession but is great for your health