Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

AAah! That is so precious, system looks good Mike.

Ahhh - always good to meet a fellow corrugated tank user.

You and I, my friend, will be grinning proudly as our tanks outlast those of HDPE users!

Yep... Corrugated tanks are good, and look nice in a small yard so they get all the ticks for us. The larger one is 1600L and cost $660 to get made; comparable to BYAP tanks so not too bad.

Picked up 40 SP from Carey Nagle in Gidge this morning. He's running low on fingerlings but still has some if anyone is looking. I has to wait a few days for him to net a new batch out.

We got 30 fingerlings and 10 of mixed size; the largest is prolly already 30cm, fingerlings are 6-8cm.

Happily swimming around in their new home. Glad we got them in today as we have guests joining us tomorrow morning for an early Xmas brunch and the empty tank would have been a bit sad looking.

Hannah came running yesterday to tell me that all of our fish were missing from the tank.

It turns out that they can do a great job of hiding in plain sight in the tank under the water return pipe... Crisis averted!

And in a completely unrelated topic saw U2 last night. Amazing.

I saw U2 at Rod Laver arena for their Rattle & Hum tour, probably 20 years ago. Amazing then also

Update: plants in grow beds going really well. Went away for a few days before Xmas and growth was really noticeable. Some plants including tomatoes were seemingly struggling before we went away, 3 days later all was good. Need to get some shade over the beds, but don't know if it'll happen this summer.






Strawberry leaves doing this:
Any guesses? Sun or nutrient levels. Have not yet tested water, too busy with gastro. (gastro! At Christmas! Go figure!)

Out old system is still neglected but I love the sunflowers. We grabbed seeds from wild sunflowers in geraldton last time we were there, I chucked a few in the bed to see how they would go.



(That celery is a bit past it.)

Floating rafts in the new tank not going so well, I guess fish poo levels are not high enough yet. Water cress in new ft dead, but old tank going well. Moved chocolate mint from new to old ft in hope it come back.

Just noticed that one of our bigger SP is blotchy. Hard to get a pic. can't see it on other fish so hoping it's just the one. Need to salt tank I guess but no idea how much to add. 3ppt seems to be the concentration mentioned most.
Dumb question: What does this mean in plain English? I have a 1500l ft.
I would guess 3 parts in 1000, but does this mean 3 kg of salt per 1000l? And is salt salt? Table salt from supermarket?

3kg to 1000 l. Salt ain't salt, I use flossy salt from a aq shop, it's pure salt

Most "pool" salts are OK... I recommend "sunray" pool salt ... because I know it's pure sea salt...

And it's available from Bunnings, IGA, Coles etc...

Bunnings was running a special last week... 20kg bag for about $7...

Don't use table or iodised salts...


And 3ppt in 1500L... would be 4.5kg of salt....

Cool, off to buy some salt.

Meanwhile just did first water test. Trying to avoid spending too much time with testing as I know it will become even more of an obsession!



pH 8.2
Ammonia .25
Nitrite 5.0
Nitrate 40

I know the pH is high and ammonia looks pretty good, but what do no2 and no3 mean? I figure system must be pretty much cycled with ammonia at .25.

Water testing the first month you test every day after that gradually decline to once a week then once a month then after you system gets established you only test when you think something is wrong maybee once a year

Heh. First day I break out the brand new testing kit our 5 year old daughter knocks it off the bench.

Anyone know where I can buy replacement test tubes?