Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Cool. Thanks Murray - not quite sure what a skin fitting is, but I'm sure I'll find out tomorrow.

Because I put 8 goldies into my original pond yesterday, I thought that I should do a bit of a clean out of the system. I tried to vacuum the pond as well as I could - for some reason there was piles of crud on the bottom, probably should have just emptied the thing before putting the fish in. I reckon a lot of the crud it the result of decaying duck weed. I have a very thick mat of duckweed on the top of the pond (though much of this has now transferred to Murray's ownership) and I am sure that the lifecycle of this stuff includes some dying and dropping to the bottom. THe other reason for the crud is I had put some water from the bottom of my worm farm in there a while ago to feed the duckweed. That stuff is always full of dirt. Didn't do that good a job of cleaning, but it is better than it was.

I also cleaned out the little grow bed, because I wanted to relay the poly pipe trickle lines. I made the holes in these a little bigger and also fitted screw off caps to the ends to make it easier to clear the lines. I dig the poly in, so these end caps are good - they are the types that are on an elbow, so can be screwed of withour disturbing the pipe cause the caps are above the surface. Because this bed is small and the holes in the pipe are pretty small, until now I have been having a lot of problems with duckweed roots coming through the pump and clogging the holes.

I also rinsed out the gravel - probably killed any bacteria. but it really needed a wash. It was very dirty - I hope due to the worm castings (something I won't repeat. Eventhough I have had no fish into the system until now, the plants had very healthy root systems. They have got nutrient from the off bit of seasol that I have put in the water. Root system probably bigger than normal because of lack of nutrient. A little corriander plant had about 15cm diameter root ball.

Anyway my system should be cycling now to get some bacteria going. Haven't been able to spot the 8 goldies in the pond, hopefully they are not dead (yet).

VB, if you rinsed in noraml tap water then you probably did kill the bac.

you can always use system water to rinse, and then chuck the water on some garden plants / trees

You are correct about the duckweed life cycle. each individual plant can produce something like 4 or 8 daughters and will then die. Don't quote me on the number

Cleaning gravel is a sod of a job VB, both cleaning old growbed gravel, and new gravel. It took me and the G/F about 6 hours to clean a trailer load. We started to get a good system going towards the end, but we found a colander was very handy to get a quality clean....

Gotta be keeping pipe access in mind, how do you clean them out, take the cap off and blast them with a hose?

Could earthworms be put in the growing beds to eat any dead organic matter...Wont work with a flood and drain system (drowned earthworms ) should be ok for a continuous sytem thou..any thoughts??

Earthworms are great, I have them in both the flood and drain, and continuous flow.... No idea how they got there, but I find them while diggin and planting new plants.

LB, Its a common misconception that worms "drown" in water.

They actually breate via oxygen exchange through their wet skin, so water should pose no problem as long it is highly oxygenated. The reason you will find dead worms in puddles is becasue of the low O2.

I was cleaning out the gravel in my aquarium once and found a few compost worms that i had put in as food a month before.

Actually a flood and drain system would be ideal, as the lower gravel will always be mosit and humid, and there are no anoxic areas like there are in fishtank gravel.

Compost worms would be the go, as they activlely eat dead and decomposing plant matter so they should be able to help with old root build up in the beds
Steve

Here's where I am at (a fair way off something substantial - but getting there slowly:

- Have had the 2 ponds joined together for a week or so now.
- Put 10 goldfish and then another 10 golfish in during the past few weeks.
- Still have my six silver perch in my aquarium. Just too cold to put them in the ponds at this stage. The water is below 10 every morning.
- The little grow-bed I have had on there since the beginning (couple of months), is still not showing any real sign of getting nutrient from the fish, but that is hardly suprising at this stage. One of my ponds is thick with duck-weed so this probably stips the little nutrient there is from the goldfish.
- Bought grow-bed from Muray 2 weeks ago (or maybe it was 3).
- Today I welded up the part of the stand that the grow-bed will sit in. Now I just have to add extra support for the middle of the grow-bed (I will put 3 side to side supports evenly spaced), add legs (will use 40 x 40 x3mm RHS) and some bracing at the bottom (either angle or RHS). I will also have to do something to stop it from sinking. May just put the legs on some cheap 400 x 400mm pavers.

I learnt a bit doing this part of the welding adn it will be much simpler for me next time. Lesson included:

- best way to mitre the corners (used a method that Warren suggested - thanks Warren).
- That using my angle grinder rather than my cuttoff wheel is the go when going the 45% angle cuts. Learnt this when I broke my second cutting wheel and couldn't be botherred going to the hardware for replacements. The angle grider enables me to follow my intend cut with precision. My cutoff wheel is a cheap GMC one and the 45 degree doesn't appear to be 45 degrees at all . The non-precise cuts made the welding job much more difficult as I had to fill some gaps that ideally would not have been there.

Still way off masterring welding, but I reckon my welds are good enough to hold.

I have posted pictures to my album that show various things relevant to my journey so far. Take a look at VB's Album.

VB
I used my Dad's GMC el cheapo cut off saw to cut the mitres for my stand and they are dfinately not 45 degs. I learnt that after wasting half a dozen cuts- looked at them and went what the ???

VB, are you ging to use angle iron for the 3 internal supports rather than just flat bar, I'm just thinking that if it was just flatbar they would bend a bit when under weight?

Will be using the same 50 x 50 x 5mm angle for the 3 supports EB.

As planned (see Veggie Boy's Album thread) I headed out to SEQ Fish today to get some fish. The plan was to make sure I got some now, ready for Spring, as it seems that many of the suppliers are running out and will not have new fingerlings until Summer/Autumn. The idea was to put them in my aquarium and nurse them through winter, then chuck them in the pond when the temperature increases.

Well laid plans often fail. Went fine with the Jades - picked up 15. They measure from 7.5 to 10cm each I would estimate (some may be bigger).

Problem was with the silver perch. There just weren't any small ones left. I was not keen to leave without any, so I ended up coming home with 1 samll one (about 10cm) and 11 larger ones (up to 22cm).

Now there is just no way I can stick 11 big silvers in my 200litre aquarium, so they went into the black pond. This means the pond is stocked with silver perch some 2 or so months earlier than I had planned.

On the way home my mind was racing as to what I would do to temporarilly retrofit my outdoor system to keep the temperature high enough for the fish. I decided I would knock up a low lying pine frame and cover the whole lot with clear plastic (a temporary greenhouse). I simply did not have time to do this in the end and instead have partially coverred the tops of the ponds to try and keep the heat in as much as possible and have chucked a 200 and 150 watt heater in the ponde that the pump is in. I also did a 20 or 30% water change as the PH was a bit high (strangelly enough) at about 8.5. The existing goldfish (about 20) seem to be living in harmony with their new housemates (at this stage anyway).

Temperature was about 17 degrees in the ponds at 5pm, will check what it is in morning. It has been pretty overcast here so the ponds have not been heating up as much during the day.

The fish are a bit knocked about, a couple of them have visible signs of fungus (both the Jades and Silvers). I just hope that their new conditions are good enough to let them fight off the disease, as there is not a lot I can do to medicate them (as we have previously discussed).

Anyway - will keep you all posted re: progress, deaths etc.

BTW - another thing I leart today was that my 5 existing silvers are not silvers at all, they are Jades .

Thrown yourself in the deep end VB!!! Hope it all works out well!!

Funny you should say that Stu. Was going to put the post in a new thread titled 'Thrown myself in the deep end' .

Was your day productive. I'd better get that grow-bed stand finished. I'm now in need of a decent sized functionning grow-bed to service my ponds.

VB, just cam online to post a warning about the 02 in your aquarium. Completely forgot to mention it when we were posting about the extra load with the new fish you were going to pick up. No matter you have put them outside anyway.

What temp was the water at before you put heaters in and did water change?

if you can maintain it at 17C then you should be right. Probably wouldn't want to go much lower than 15C with the jades.

I'm am itching to make up some grow beds / towers from PVC but i just can't do it with this damned weather. Will do an experiment with just running the pump during the day.......

The days are getting much warmer esp. in the sun, but the nights.............brrrrr, was 1.9C here a few nights ago. Can't remember if i already posted this, but i have an old bath tub outside half filled with water and clay balls. It was FROZEN SOLID to a depth of 30mm the other morning. and the tap at the front wouldn't turn on