Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thats one wild cherry tomato plant Very neat system

I have my second system up and running now with two of the four growbeds connected.







I have gone with a similar design to system 1 with separate pumps supplying each growbed, but will be using standard flood and drain for each growbed instead of bell siphones as in system 1.
I have been testing different pumps and will be using 20watt pumps in this system which will have staggered operating times to maximise system efficiency.

The goldfish in system 1 spawned on some shade cloth I had in there, so I put this in the system 2 fish tank which was full of water at the time. The fish have grown and will serve as the starter fish for system 2.



I have removed the Koi in system 1 and are waiting on some Trout for this system, with just a few golfish left in it to keep it going.

Love the colour match and great looking system.

That's a very professional looking setup that you have there!

With how much you've been expanding that system, are you planning to just use that for commercial production, or at least to recoup some of the investment?

Way too small for commercial use, just aiming to be self sufficient with veggies and fish, don't know if I will ever get my money back, I haven't added up all the costs yet, could be scary?

Second system now complete running 4-growbeds from 1100L fish tank. I am running the four growbeds on 15min flood and 45min drain in sequence, so only 1 pump is going at any given time. I have found using this technique that I can top the fish tank up once the sequence is operating as the water level only varies about 25mm.







The next and final stage will be to enclose both systems in a green house.

Need to add this to "Are all aquaponics systems ugly" Very much NOT!

Dam nice system Aquastud!

Thought I should up-date since its been a while, in this time Trout have come and gone in system 1 and now are waiting on some silver perch for system.

All working well then , nice harvest

Had some slug problems in system 1, and I now believe that the slugs live and breed in the growbeds, as I found lots of tiny ones when I continuously flooded the bed for a while.

Hey aquastud, 2 questions please

1. Why did you decide to run a seperate pump for each bed?

2. Is the net in your FT used for pulling up and catching the fish or is it to seperate species?

I have had some problems with system 2 with the goldfish dying, some of the fish were from system 1 which were removed for the introduction of trout. I had similar problems in system 1 previously, which I attribute to fish I got from a gold fish farm (fish were flashing in holding tanks on farm). The fish stopped dying in system 1 after time and salt treatments and were fine during the cooler months, but when the water started to warm up again (6-months later), they started dying again.

I think I have transfered the problem to system 2, as the same thing has happened, fish were transfered in April last year and were fine until October and then started dying again. I removed all the fish and gave them a 10ppt salt bath for an hour and then put them in an aquarium inside and they all recovered well. I left system 2 without fish for 16 days (dosed system with powerfeed and ammonia during this time) and then re-introduced fish, which were fine for 2-weeks, but since then have become lethargic, flashing occasionally and now starting to die again. I looked at some scum I got out of the salt bath that the fish expelled under a micro scope and identified a parasite that I think was a gill fluke. I have currently got the system salted to 6ppt, so will see how this goes, but might have to disinfect the system and start again, as I have read that gill flukes are resistant to salt and hard to eradicate. Any suggestions welcome.

Man! You have some nice green veggies. I wish mine grew that well.