Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ok, Where to start I found this site just before christmas and got hooked. The wife would only let me buy minimal so had to use what I had lying around.

System was built by Late January early February. Be fishless cycling since. Well as of Saturday just gone cyclying was completed.

which is just in time for my trout to arrive

Well every one loves pictures so here we go.

Looks like a good start.

looks great WN but can you explain the water route thru the pipe beds

Sure,

Water is pumped up from main fish tank to three different paths, First is the larger pipe bed, with a 1/3 of the top pipe as a filter. second one goes to the main grow bed and the two of them drain directly back to the main fish tank. the third goes to the smaller pipe bed with a filter in it too, this drains directly onto the small fish tank, that has gold fish and a water willy in it, but this tank also drains back into the main tank.

The little tank is used to help heat the larger tank a little as the below tank doesn't get alot of sun.

Curent tank temps are 16 degrees in the morning to a max of 18 degrees.


Hope that makes sense.

Wow, looking good! It's very easy on the eyes (wife's eyes ) with the wood framing and small footprint!

Do you have the system specs?

Gee whiz, you just never know what you are going to find here when you arrive in the morning. A brand new, complete system all ready and waiting for fish, well done Wallnut, nice surprise!

Well my wife told me it was to go on the dead side of the house. The actuall foot print is 3M X 1M, it is 1.9 m high in total.

She is happy with it so I won.

Now that is a well thought out system. It would be relatively easy to protect from possums and birds too.

Please keep us updated on its progress and productivity.

Well TM dropped my trout off friday and all going well, they are feeding and even with the temp spike, my water temp didn't get above 21 degrees.

All going well will post photos of plant growth if I remember on the weekend.

Also I haven't had any change in PH, Ammonia, Nitrates or Nitrites. since adding the fish so I definately know mt system was cycled.

Well TM dropped my trout off friday and all going well, they are feeding and even with the temp spike, my water temp didn't get above 21 degrees.

All going well will post photos of plant growth if I remember on the weekend.

Also I haven't had any change in PH, Ammonia, Nitrates or Nitrites. since adding the fish so I definately know mt system was cycled.

Quick Question,

I'm already planing the growbed expansion, when I do add a new growbed will it affect my fish much? or because the system is already cycled it will just plow through it and get this bed upto scratch quickly.

Cheers

Your second bed will come up quickly because you already have a large population of the bugs you want in the system. After saying that though, don't go adding an extra GB and fish at the same time, it will still take some time.

Good Morning everyone,

Got up this morning and went to the dawn service and came back to feed my fish to find a floater.

This is the first one that has died.

Just wan't to make sure this is of natural causes.

What it looks like to me it is from the rain that we have had yesterday because of the following test factors and the water temps.

Saturday afternoon I tested the water and everything was normal and the water temp was 18 degrees.

Then this morning the water temp had gone up to 20 degrees, and the following test results:
PH 7.2
Amm .25
Nit .25
Nat 5


Could this be from the rain? everything except PH has been 0 for weeks even with the introduction of fish.

And the fish that died:

12 Cm long
21 Grams.

Been in the tank around 10 days.

Do you think that the fish has died from natural causes or is there something that I have done that I could have fixed.

The remained of the fish are still feeding and jumping out of the water happily.

Here are some photos for those who like photos.

Cheers

If it is one fish that is dead, then it is hard to really know what's wrong, but
- check that you don't have any sinkers as well.
- check that you don't have any uneaten food at the bottom of the tank.
- make sure you have enough aeration. There is less dissolved oxygen in the water as the warmer the water temperature.
- I would add a bit of salt (sea salt, natural salt) to the tank. Say 1ppt (1 kg per 1000L of water) and I would advise on keeping it at that level all the time, as it helps to mitigate against nitrite spikes due to sudden undetected ammonia spikes.

Think I found the issue, a sinker that was stuck under the pump, looks like he had been there a couple of days, he took another casualty with him this afternoon.

Will keep testing and wait for everything to got back to normal.