Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have collected an odd assortment of materials (several stock tanks, a couple of aquariums, a bunch of tilapia -- blues and Nile -- duckweed, some filter tanks, plastic liners, pumps, an above-ground pool heater -- on order, due to arrive this week -- and bunches of water hyacinth). I have been dreaming, scheming, and planning about my aquaponics system. I may be a little premature about getting fish (I have killed at least 200, but the ones I have now seem to be fairly stable and in good spirits -- they smile!), but I am excited about getting things going. I have read a couple thousand entries on the forum here and felt the need to start my own thread to document my struggles to get a meal out of my backyard. I have taken some photos and will post them when I sit down at my computer at home.

The first question I have is about some little worms I have growing on my media in my filter. They are about 10mm (forgive my estimates if they are way off, U.S. decided that the metric system was too hard to convert to!) long and 1mm thick. Are they potentially harmful? I will post pics along with the others later.

Steven!

Welcome to the forum and its good to see another system getting going.

As for your worm question some photos will be a great help.

I have attached a picture of my filter media with a worm or two visible on it. Again, the question is, do I need to worry about these at all? I will post some more pictures as I have time to take them and upload them. It's all bits and pieces at this point.

Red Blood Worms!
I pay $5 a packet for frozen Blood Worms to feed to my Sleepy Cod!
Your fish will love 'em!

Cheers IanK

Ian's right, from the look of that.

You've scored a win there SBTM !!

Yep, Ian's right... and the fish will love them....

Not uncommon at all to find them in filter media...

I know that I want to go with a CHIFT PIST system, but otherwise I am not set on how I want to set up my first system. Here's what I have been thinking. I have two large stock tanks, one 750 gallons (8' round x 2' deep) and one 425 gallons (6' round x 2' deep). I thought I would use both for fish, but after reading several thousand posts in the Member's Systems forum, I think it would require too many growbeds to make it work. So, do I use one of the aforementioned tanks as a growbed? I have a 100-gallon tank I was planning to use as a sump. I will raise tilapia (I have two species in the fingerling-and-growing-nicely stage). I may also create some deep water growbeds to raise red claw crayfish in under the plants.

I am just trying to make as few amateur mistakes as possible at the outset. Please weigh in as your experience directs.

Steven!

Worms good.

with a sump it should be easier to get to the recommended volume of 2:1 (GB to FT)
you'll want to size your sump based on your growbed volume (or planned volume).. so 100gal gb would hold about 40 gallons of water after media is added..
that 425 gal tank will hold about 170 gallons of water..
size the sump for the gb volume and add maybe 10% fudge factor..
good luck, and looking forward to your progress!