Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Greetings!

Visiting the inlaws over this Christmas break - btw, hope u all enjoyed / enjoying yours - and Father-in-law has 2 questions.

a) System established in the open, overflows with rain, right? So, what problems don't we solve by just incorporating an overflow pipe in the fish tank? Of course wired to keep fish in, etc.

b) Father has a bio-cycle system thing processing household wastes. It's treated to safe to put on the garden. They tell me it just needs one more filter to be drinkable ... Knowing the magic filtering / cleaning the bacteria do, what's the chance that this water would be safe in the, as yet, theoretical aquaponics system?

Thanks!

Someone else would probably be able to answer better than me,but being something that I wish to digest later down the line(fish/vegies) I don`t think that I would do it personally.I`m not saying that it wouldn`t work mind you,just That I think it has potential to be bad for health reasons.
Good luck sorting it out.

Yeah, although the bacteria turns the ammonia into nitrites into nitrates, there would still be heaps of other shit in there that I wouldn't want to drink IMHO best left for the plants and fish

sorry to answer Q1, no real problems if you have dealt with overflow other than heaps of rain will dilute your nute levels, but you would need heaps of rain to be a problem. Systems in the open will need lots of shade for the fish tank to stop algal blooms and will also suffer from larger amounts of evaporation

what about a "mat" thing for hte fish tank, eg, a few layers of shade cloth knitted together to cover it?

You could hang it from the middle to form a tent/dome like cover,as well as providing shade it will stop the fish from jumping out.