Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Here's my system, couldn't be bothered tracking down fish at this point in time, more interested in the plants and this is a good experiment. So you couldn't call it aquaponics, maybe organic hydro?

Running the system on about 100ml of aged urine + 50ml fish emulsion and 20ml of seasol a day. I just pour the stuff in and don't really measure anymore. Every month or so I put a scoop of chelated iron, a tablespoon of epsom salts and a pinch of garden lime. Haven't had any obvious deficiencies show up except when I was cycling the system. The ph stays around 6.2 - 6.4 and it's a flood and drain setup. 15 minutes on 45 minutes off.

The system has been very productive and I haven't stopped harvesting produce since the fourth week.

Sorry folks here are the pictures.



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looks good to me.

Peeponics
or if you want to avoid grossing people out...
Fishlessponics?

A few newer photos, tomatoes are going crazy! I also ate that broccoli last night was sweet and tasty!



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Yep peeponics!!! It works really well! Why flush that awesome nutrient down the toilet with clean drinking water when you can use it to grow stuff! It's crazy that people waste urine, really works awesome diluted on the dirt gardens too!

TCLynx, I was reading about your system and peeponics and I must say you inspired me, thanks for that!

That is impressive.....but......gee I'd be tempted to chuck a couple of fish in there, hehe

sometimes it can be difficult to get your hands on a couple of fish.

Hum, I wonder if BIO-Ponics would be a better term for the non-aquaponics but not sterile/chemical hydroponics. I don't think organic hydroponics is really a functional term.

Bioponics, I like that. To be honest I couldn't really be bothered with fish, the attraction to this growing method is less bother, if I lose power or whatever there are no fatalities. It's also the best way to grow heaps in a small area with the positives of aquaponics minus the fish of course.

Now I pee about 3 litres a day, what do I do with the rest of the stuff? Maybe it's time to upgrade! With this system I have a tomato plant in the "fish tank" just sitting in the water, under it is a large airstone. This plants growth has been crazy! Easily surpassing the growth of the tomato plants in the gravel beds. I guess DWC is the best way to grow tomatoes? I'll get a photo of the plant when I get time.

At this point I'm thinking of growing a tomato plant in a 60l bin with an under gravel filter type arrangement (gravel in bottom of bin and air drawing water threw the gravel). This way I can sustain a bacterial colony to pump out the nitrates for the plant all in a relativity small area. Might use a superior medium to gravel though, something with heaps more surface area. It'll be a little DWC peeponic growing pot!

I'll update you on my endeavors, should work I think.



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Just gotta make sure there is heaps of air

Seems like your taking the piss proteinman....

oh and for all the extra pee that is above and beyond what the BIO-ponics system needs. Here are a few other great uses.

Diluted down like 10-1 (10 parts water to one part pee) liquid gold makes a great garden fertilizer.

Compost activator, there is not much better than pee to get a large pile of carbon material to turn into premo compost. If you pee into a bucket of unteated sawdust then when the bucket gets too full of wet sawdust then dump it into the middle of a compost pile and cover over with leaves or whatever, you will get some nice hot compost. Or just pee and leaves mixed together won't take long to build up to a very hot compost pile.

By the way, if you do humanure composting you need about 1/2 of your pee to go into the compost to help heat up the compost properly. Just turds and sawdust (or whatever else cover material might be used) don't have the moisture or nitrogen to get a good hot compost going.

I see a recipe book on the horizon - 101 uses for human waste

DWC is a fast growing system. I've got strawberries growing in one at the moment, runs on seasol, and AP water. A couple pellets or Urea when I think of it.

A hydro system can work well along side of AP for plants you want more control over eg ph and amount of feed etc.

How do you support the tomato in the DWC?