Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi there everybody

I'v been reading the forum a little time now, as I have been looking into aquaponics again this spring. I first first ran into aquaponics in swizz more then a decade ago, with huge koi ponds and from what I was told and could find of info on the matter back then, the only way to run aquaponics where in huge koi pond scale.

So I lost interrest in it and specialiced in aeroponics instead, so been working with designing and setting up commercial aeroponic system in the past. It's a huge jump from chem nutes to only fish, but my huge passion is african cichlids and the thourt of maybe combineing that with my interests as a gardener is really cool if possible.

A whole other "problem" is my location here up north, it's freezing winters and short summers. But im looking into building a thermo greenhouse at home, as the old DIY greenhouse have seen better days. My ponds will need to be dug down minimum 3 ft, or they will freez solid in the winter. There will be estimated 6000 Liters pond and filter in the new green house, if the test system im working on now will work.

Along with the aquaponic test project im building a fishroom, where I estimate i will end up with 4-5000 liter total water volume. In the future I would like to run feeding lines from my sump in the fish room, into the greenhouse with 12" hydroton beds and draining back to the fishroom sump. Now the cichlids I keep (Tropheus mainly) is herbivores and mainly live on a veggie/shrimp fish food I make myself. (8 part veggies to 1 part shrimp) Most of there food I can grow myself, in the kitchen gardens soil beds. So I have no idea if they will support a aquaponic system or not, but to start with I plan on useing Rain bow trouth to get more familiar with aquaponics and it's a lot cheaper. Stocking my tanks with the new topheus groups will cost me in the range of 10,000 aus $

Im makeing a small pond from 1½ 1200 Liter pallet drums, I had a ½ pallet drum cut into 450 Liter pond I have used to raise cichlid fry in for years. The two drums will be welded together with epoxy and fibre glass, last a 200 liter external filter will be added, bringing the total volume up around 1800 Liters. One big hole to dig in whats mainly clay, to make everything more of a work out the ground water is pretty high. So 1½ft down the clay is wet, 2 ft down water started collecting, makeing a vacum when you pulled up the showel

I have a bunch of small "home size" hydroponic systems I have been donated for tests over the years, besides I freelance for a greenhouse supplie company so I have somewhat easy access to what ever I will be needing of grow beds and equiptment.


The project so far:




Still more digging to do

Welcome Pali
Will look forward to seeing how your system progresses
I'm sure your approach to AP will be a little different in comparison to Australia
I think the best way to learn about AP is to use this forum and play/experiment
All the Best

Thanx mate

I'll keep you and everyone else who's stoping by updated from time to time, gonna wait till im done with my build to make a thread in the members system forum. So i'll just toss in a few pictures here, dug the last big of the hole yesterday but as I was to level the 2nd pond part it started to rain hard. Today is nice and the sun is out, so I figure im gonna get out in the garden working after changeing water on some fish tanks.





As I have been reading around, I see there are alot of people who use tilapia cichlids for aquaponics and they are from what I know mainly herbivores too. So that is comforting for my idea about useing Tropheus's in the future, atm I only have a single colony of 34 fish (5M/29F) Wild caught imported from africa and some F1 fry of my own. But at 60 $ per fish it will take time before im able to affort enough colonies to feed a aquaponic garden, on the other hand I will get a good price for the fry and juvies compared to harvesting trout. Down side might be they are more fragile and easy to kill then most fish, so polution from something going wrong in the aquaponics could end up costing a fortune.

Welcome Pali... think you might be our first Danish member... tick another European country off the list...

Will be interesting to follow your AP journey... especially through your winter...

Welcome Pali,
This forum is easily the best source of information and advice you will find.

Good luck with your endeavour, we will all watch with interest, I have the opposite problem to you, keeping the temperatures down in the summer

Good luck.

Dui

Hi Rupert - thank you and nice of you to stop by, im looking forward to see how this will turn out too. I have been searching around and I have not been able to find anything or anyone in denmark who have done this before, the only thing I found where some dude who tryed to grow some hooch in a micro aquaponic rubbermaid setup. It could turn out in my favor if im the first here, given I have some kinda success

The winter here will be fun yeah, I don't know if I will be growing the winter of 2010. I will need to modifie my greenhouse and change the glass to polycarbonate thermo sheets, it will cost me around 3500 AUS $ and then I can add supliment HID light and bottom heat for the winter. No idea what bottom heat will cost me, but I figure im just gonna use the "hot" tank water. Supliment light I have already, it's not jet installed in the greenhouse as it's "illegal" to use HID lights for privat single glass houses here. (CO2, enviroment hype) Not that I think anything would actualy happen if I did, it would just be a waste of money and energy.






Hiya Dui

Yeah it seems like there is a lot of very good info here, I first found a different forum first that let me to this forum after a few weeks reading around.

Also funny to be all noob again, well more or less as im shure both my education and many years ekspiriance with growing hydroponic/aeroponic and keeping african cichlids. On the other hand there are some stuff that just seems really odd for me heheheh like the pH changes, where im used to run a 5.5 - 6.0 ph at 19/20 C degrees and messure my Ec and all I can read people run a pH around 7 or even higher and really hot water around 28 C. Im like "Whoot" how do they prevent root rot

Anyway how do you keep your water temps down in the dubai summers, dug down ponds and reserviors, do you use huge chillers or all of it ???

Cheers all

The pond is comeing along nicely, I hurt my shoulder somehow during the work tho so I got to relax a little the next few days.

Been working on several other projekts, getting the garden ready and keeping the stawberry soil beds free of weed ect. ect.

Been a long time with no updates, also it's been vacation time and a busy summer. Also this project have become a "when I have the time and stuff needed" project, trying not to spend a great deal of money on it and see how well I can make it work with reuseing other things.

Anyway I moved my yellow belly sliders from my SA cage out into the sun, they really enjoy there new outdoor home. I did'nt have any filter materials so I had not connected any filter at this time, only air supply to move the water around and get a small bio culture started.

Nice looking tortoise's.

Just be careful using such expensive fish in a new AP system too, I'd be doing something a lot cheaper for the first season or two, till you have it all sorted out.

The lag of filter have turned the water into a sump, well the turtles love that but I can't see my turtles and I added a few rutilus or "roaches" from a fishing trip. Did'nt catch any small trout for the pond, only got a single one and it was nicely sized for the BBQ and tasted lovely

So I got around to find a few cheap materials I could use for a bio/mechanical filter, a bit of filter matte medium(the blue filter sponge), small expanded clay pepples, 10 toilet bruches and a bag of EHEIM substrat pro I had laying around and my dicount version of Eheims EHFIFIX media (old strawberry nets)



Im only useing the bruch heads, about 10 $


The sponge and EHEIM substrat pro, as mentioned I had this laying around from my last tank build


Expanded clay pepples, also very cheap and something I had already. Works pretty well for denitrification, there are better alternatives but not nearly as cheap.



Finaly the strawberry nets are also reused, the strawberry season is over here and no more use for them. I don't reuse them for covering strawberrys as they rip pretty easy, so they kinda need to be changed every season. On the other hand, bundled up they are working great as mechanical filter, like Eheims EHFIFIX media.



Already after 24 hours a big change was visable to the pond water, it's possible to see the bottom in the low side, the turtles and fish and I added 8 small gold fish to the pond, the turtles will eat them one by one tho.



The male turtles are in the bottom left cornor under the mangrove root



So the pond is up and running more or less, still need more media in the filter but it's a good start. The plan is still to connect the two tubs, by cutting the sides and "weld" the tubs together with fibre glass. As of now a siphon connects the two tubs, a small pump moves the water from the deep tub into the filter, that overflows into the 2nd tub and siphon into to the deep side again.


@Outbackozzie Thanx for the nice comment on the turtles, about the fish im planing on useing trout for this project to start with. I don't know how much fingerlings are around here, but there are lot's of producers of them around Denmark, so I imagin it's not gonna cost me a fortune to get a bunch, if I can't catch them myself when I go fishing. I can buy a smoked trout for 4-5 $, so buying them young at the same place and the guy who smoke them do, they should be alot less.


I have a idea about my expiriance with both hydroponics and keeping fish in tanks for years, should be a great help. Compared to many of the posts I have read, where people a new to atleast one of them if not both parts. Anyway I have desided to wait with the Tropheus project, for several reasons. 1 Im starting a new education and won't be makeing much money, 2 if something would go wrong, it would be a fortune lost in dead cichlids.

Good luck with those little crunchy pies with legs, even though they do need a little tomato sauce!
Cheers ianK

Thanx Ian - I have never thourt about eating them, but I will remeber to buy some tomato sause if it should come to that.

How do you cook em, my recipe book don't say how to cook turtle! The closest thing is the kiddy menu' mention Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pizza, but there is something wrong with that recipe, it don't mention turtles, ninjas or even teenagers you need for it ..... stupid recipe!

My sides hurt!

Sorry about that



All right day 3 after I started the filter, im pretty surpriced how effective the filter have proven to bee. 4 days ago it was impossible to see the bottom of the low tub, now you can see the turtles and fish swim around and the water is all clear. It's still yellow from the leafs and what else fall into the pond from the trees around, but it's looking alot better and easyer to enjoy now you can see whats in the pond.

I have been out fishing the last 2 days with my GF's son, yesterday we got 3 all right sized rainbow trouts.

1 kg and 2 around 600 - 650 gram cleaned

Today I went out and got a submergeable net for keeping the trouts alive, thu it turns out it's not that easy to keep em alive as I hoped.

Anyway we got 5 trouts, 4 good once and a small one. One survived the trip home and 2 others did'nt, the rest we had to kill to get our lures/hooks removed.

Most we took with spinners, but a few we got the old fashion way with a hook and worm. We normaly have a extra pole with us that just sit there, waiting till some fish takes the hook and worm.

The one that survived the trip home, we released into the deep end of the pond hopeing it will survive there. Now that the water have cleared up and the filter is running, but I don't yet know if there is sufficient oxigen levels for keeping trout - I guess I will find out soon enough.






The rest was released into the freezer 950 grsam, 800 gram, 770 gram and 325 gram cleaned.






Not bad for a total of 6 - 7 hours of fishing, around 2 - 2.5 hour yesterday and 4.5 hours today