Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi,
I have been a hydroponic gardener for 8 years (veges only) on Molloy Island, Augusta WA. I am now considering converting my system to aquaponics. I have a 6m x 4m steel framed, plastic house and I use NFT systems for lettuce, herbs etc, Bato pots for tomatoes, black (Bunnings) tubs for all the other veges, 100mm vertical cylinders for strawberries.

I have been using Ag-Grow nutrient (bloom only), I do not spray with any other chemicals, use water for pest control (mainly whitefly) and use Seasol or Charlie Carp foliar spray for added supplements.

Can any one give advice re how to remove the chemicals (Ag-Grow) from the medium (hydrocorns and perlite). As yet, i havent tried to contact the manufacturers as to whether it is user friendly to fish or not (i presume not).

Has anyone else gone from hydroponics to aquaponics - what are the other pitfalls?

Regards, Avrielle

Yep...I'll get back to you...





Rule number #1 ...

You must pre-filter the aquaponics water for nft... to remove solid wastes...

Hopefully Rupe will get back to you on the other question (as to how to render what you have fish safe) but if it were me (and I don't have experience crossing over like you are planning to do) I would simply rinse everything with water and then re-fill the hole system with fresh water and let it pump around for a few days. Then I would probably do some fishless cycling to get the bio-filter cycled up a bit before adding some sacrificial fish to make sure there are not problems cropping up for the first few months.


As rupe says, filter the water before sending it to NFT pipes.

The most important part of the Aquaponics Triangle is the Filtration. An Aquaponics system can function without fish or plants for a while but without the filtration (bio filter and solids filter) the system won't really function at all.

Indeed, as TCL suggests, all I did was remove and dump the nutrient reservoirs on both the Bato pot and NFT systems (seperate)... removed the clay balls from the Bato pots and steralised them in a Hydrogen Peroxide solution... refilled the NFT reservoir with a similar Hydrogen Peroxide solution (standard practice between hydro crops).... rinsed everything twice... refilled the Bato pots with the clay balls... refilled the reservoirs with clean water and pumped both systems for two days... dumped the water...

And then connected them to the AP systems....

Very good setup there. You need to have another independent setup of the aquaponics system and then after that combining both the system will give the better results.