Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Just show him how much to feed and make sure to tell not to get excited and feed too much

Well, all went well. Came back to happy fish. Only wish i had the time to visit some of the fish farms out of mildura....Wife officially happy with the system after all vegies for dinner came from the AQP - Snow peas, Spinach and broccolli Trout starting to look too big not to eat. My Ammonia and Nitrate have come back at .5 and .25 but seem to be holding.

Had an interesting weekend last weekend. Had the first two fish from the system so pretty happy with that. They we some of the smaller ones - both between 250 and 300. Had sushi with trout from the barbie. Yummo. That led to a small success - my 12 y.o niece was over and is usually pretty fussy with food - wont try new things but also suss on mass produced cow and chicken etc. I got her to try some trout - promised it was super fresh and pretty much organic. Great to see kids try new food Sushi and trout!

Going to get a few more going tomorrow night in the webber to smoke. Only a month or less before it will get to warm (maybe) so may as well get into it!

Sat to Sunday we had heaps of rain and the ph dropped and one fish floated. Thought it was a HSM but levels were all fine bar a dropped ph by a few points. All seems back to normal...

Planted some new seedlings and have been suffering severe munched seedlings. Have not been able to find any bugs and no snail trails. I think its earwigs coming in at night from the garden - they are allpver the place - and scuttling off befroe day light. Have boiled up some chilli and garlic spray to try to deter them - fingers crossed - after 3 weeks not much to show for 3 punnets of spinach, capsicum and eggplant...

Nice looking fish!

They look real tasty!

And another successful fish harvest...

Happy Festivus!

Ok well its been a while and the weather has been so cool I couls have go another 6 weeks out of the trout. Not to worry they have been super yummy - best yet was the trout pizza, cooked on the bbq then on the pizza made with home made base. Took a pic but failed so just use you imagination - awesome.

Finally go onto some silver perch which are really nice fish and apart from low temps where they only feed a few times a week, they are happy and growing. The tank is clear with all the rain and they are easy to see at the bottom of the tank. The size differentiation is huge with some looking 50% bigger than the rest or more. I have 100 so by my calc can support all of them up to about 300gms. With the size differentiation i think this should be ok. But i'll worry about that later when they grow up a bit. Might need to thin them out a bit. Got them from glenburn, really nice setup in a farm shed. Great people.

Plants are looking great but my eggplant and chillis are mini. They have shot up once there is some warm temp, but i need some more sun for the tomotoes to go red I think. Have another tomato I put in with the same in the dirt garden for a comparro. Currently saving dried bok chow and corriander for when the seed bank starts
Have been working on my smoking technique - putting gum leaves in the BBQ - simple and works great!

more pics

Looking Great!!!!

i wish the tomatoes would start ripening!!!!!! hope this heat brings them on!!!

Nice work Bonsaibelly

I just love little blue barrel systems... simple and consistently productive...

Cheers everyone
Got around to putting up a shade cloth a few days ago. Might be my imagination but the celery and basil and zuccini and others are immidiately growing much faster. I think the heat of the stones was stressing them...Made it from stuff lying around so cost about $3 for bolts (into the neighbors garage wall on our north boundary) and some poly rope. Good result

Yep , shade is a good idea. Looking great

I planted 2 zuccini plants in the aqp and 2 in the dirt garden from the same punnet. I think the hot gravel was stunting the plant - as the outer leaves died, but since I put the shade cloth on they look ok- or maybe they just struggle. Perhaps its the stress of washing the dirt of the roots and adapting to watery gravel life. It seems to take a few weeks before new seedlings settle in. Will be interesting to see what happens in the next few weeks. Strangely they both have the same number of flowers - still very small cant see them in the pic...

Always enjoy the video updates posted so had a crack myself: heres a short system tour:

tank temp is now 26-8 - silvers are keen. Interesting fish - hide when not hungry and rush the open lid if they are. I have uped the feed of course this week as they are hungry. Still not sure I'm feeding enough as I'm only putting in 4 soft drink bottle caps per feed 3 times a day if im around. Readiing Rupes post on feeding plan this week i may not be giving them enough based on the weight of 100 fingerlings at 25-30grms aday. I'll try to work out some weights of the feed and see where im at. Either way my numbers at this point from this morning:
Ammo .25 (has been for months)
Nitrate 0 (good)
Nitrate 40ish - up from 10 last week. The plants have some catching up to do!
PH 7.4 - i would like to see this coming down. I am adding 1/4 chelated iron per week and only getting significant yellow on the zuccini (photo posted recently).

Found one dead Silver last week but it looked like it may have been there for a while. Had no fins and looked pretty small. I suspect it was dead for a few weeks and never made the transition to the tank. Other than the fins looked fine no marks et. should have taken a photo but no more deaths or sickies so no worries but keeping an eye on it.

The Celery is really growing visible per day and I have planted in some new lettuces and basil and parsley which are already growing well so all is good. When the peas kick in I hope they will soak up some nitrates...
All in all plants starting to kick with the zuccs not great and the older lettuce yellow on the old leaves but otherwise great in salad.

I have the 2 connected barrels sitting in the shed so if i can clean out the side i can get some duck weed goin in those for some natural protein...maybe some yabbies as well
Will take some more pics today lots of interesting flies bugs and spiders around too...