Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This weekend we planted the GB's with seedlings from the local hardware shop and also constructed a shade house over the beds. The shade house appears to have had a major influence on water temp, which is excellent news.

I have dosed the tanks with Seasol to help the plants thrive. Water quality is OK but a little high on the pH side... what is the best way to lower pH?

On the fish front we may have found two suppliers and are waiting to hear back.

Wal, the pH will lower itself as the system matures. I know it's a pain in the quoit as some things just don't grow and it seems to take forever, but it will happen. The waiting drove me up the wall.

Putting something in to lower the pH artifically just delays the proper maturation process.

Neat looking shade house that :

Well we have finally found some Barramundi through Fremantle TAFE and if all goes well they should be swimming in our FT's by next weekend. The guy we have been dealing with there is very helpful and their prices are quite reasonable. They sell Barra 100mm fingerlings at $1.50 each and 50mm 60 cents. I will post more details when they arrive via air freight.

Our seed order also arrived this week. We placed our order with Eden Seeds who have a great range of varieties on their web site http://www.edenseeds.com.au

Looking really good Wal. Eden seeds are great eh, and their range is betting bigger all the time.
Good to see you planted the beds out straight away

Today I made up a quick venturi, all made from reticulation parts. I have added this to the 12v battery back up supply and it seems to work OK. the pictures below detail the parts and how I installed it... pictures are much better than words.

I took a series of temperature readings the other day. Taking them from the FT, GB and Shed every hour. Its quite interesting to see the relationship of the various components to the system.

I have now made some tank covers and will take temps again and see what affect this will have on the system.

I would also be interested to see if anyone else has done anything similar.

interesting to see the ft maintaing its temp as the ambient falls. what does your red line represent? the maximum temp achieved or the max temp you want in the ft?

The red line is the Max Desired Temp. As I am going to grow some Barra I have used 32C as the max.

oh ok looks like you should just be ok for barra now, 20deg is the minimum for them i believe. anyidea what it drops to overnight, so about 6am temp?

We now have fish... 100 beautiful Barramundi fingerlings from Fremantle TAFE. Does that make them Dockers supporters?

I have put 50 fish in each tank and they appear to be quite timid, they are hiding around our pumps with the odd one venturing out into the open. I suppose this is understandable after their 1,600Km journey and a trip in an aeroplane.

Now I just have to work out how much food I should be feeding them each day...

Special thanks to my Perth courier

100 Barra might be a test for the 650L grobeds and ~ 1200L water?
What do others think?

Yes, I myself agree and plan to add GB,s over the next few weeks. Am looking at some vertical beds

Cool, I thought I must be screwing up numbers and calcs

nice work wal just remember that the max reccomended stocking rate is 3kg of fullsize fish per 100L of gb, or about 20 fish per 500L of GB