Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello, decided to stop lurking and register after a few months pondering Aquaponics and taking a look at the forum. Am very interested in any specific examples/advice on setting up in the UK. I'm a web designer/developer by trade but want to grow food for the family and friends when I'm not stuck in front of a PC!

Have spent the last 6 months building a veg garden at our new home on a bit of land that was 10ft high with brambles, that has rubbish (full of building rubble) heavy un-diggable clay soil (raised beds only option) etc, putting up greenhouses/fruit cages and building a chicken coop and walk in run from in the main, recycled material. Near ready for the chickens so thought I would torture myself with the next project (Aquaponics) before my back and nails have had time to recover and I come to my senses:)

Hello All!
Thanks for reading,
Dee

Haha sound like you have the bug. Looks like we might be seeing you around here a bit more now. Welcome, look forward to watching your progress.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk

Hi Dee,
Welcome to BYAP - you will find a wealth of knowledge on this site that you wont find anywhere else in the world.
Having suffered the rigours of heavy clay soils when we lived down south - we sympathise with you and as you say raised beds are probably the best option.
We are lucky here with 18" of lovely top soil plus chickens,ducks,guinea fowl,turkey,geese,pigs and of course FISH to provide heaps of manure and plenty of food.
We love pictures here -so show us what you are doing please.
WD and OH

Hello,
Yes - I have the bug
Yes - soil, no option but raised beds which we have sources a number of tractor tires for.
Between cameras at the mo but really must grab a new one (then will post)
Used to live in Wales on Shropshire borders some time ago. (lots of rain) lol
Read both your threads with interest - have to say.
WelshDragon - you have a very large fine set up and in the UK which is awesome, my own will not be as grand I am planning to use a small brick building we have that is not in use - polycarb the roof insulate walls etc. and am on the look out for recycled materials for tanks to keep costs down. Talapia is what appeals the most to raise right now despite the issues of warmth etc. A white flesh 'not too fishy tasting' and ease of breeding is kind of swinging it. So more to investigated on cost feasibility etc. Your raising Rainbow Trout if I remember rightly - how they tasting and are you finding you need to heat in winter and that it's cost effective to do so?
Loads of info on here but still hard to find specific UK info which is the most helpful for us with lack of warm weather and harsh winters from time to time

Thanks All

Hi Dee,
Our rainbow trout taste wonderful and we have plenty of customers here for fresh trout. We keep them alll year round with no heating required.
For us Tilapia is a non starter as there is not the market for them here and also heating the water would be too expensive.
We also keep carp ( common and mirror) and these are very easy to keep.
Last winter was the coldest in 26 years but plants and fish under cover all survived.
Have a look on ebay for tanks and growbeds - they can sometimes be found - in factsome of our growbeds are dogwashing baths!!These even come in your choice of colours!
Good luck and keep us posted.
WD`s OH

Haha I had to laugh at your comment of not needing to heat the trout tanks.... Man that must be cold!

Thank you for the wonderful tips here! No heating would save a lot of energy and equipment!
The bony Carp put me off but perhaps the Rainbow trout would be an idea. Are they under natural light or...? Can I ask are yours breeding or do you have to keep buying in fingerlings, what your feeding them and how fast they are growing ready to harvest? I'm off to ebay to look for dog wash bath's for growbeds. Have tried looking for tanks but unless I'm searching the wrong keywords - can't find anything. lol To find Talapia in the UK is proving a bit of a non starter anyhow...so perhaps the trout are the way to go.
Thanks again, your a star!

Hi and welcome to the forum from sunny funny Cornwall

Hello in Cornwall!
What set up and fish do you have?
Thanks

Alas I do not have any set up at the moment as I have been banned from starting any more projects until I have finished restoring our 1969 Airstream Globe Trotter. airstream.blog.co.uk

I have been wombling bits and bobs along the way though so i can start my aquaponics experiments over the winter.

The plan is

1: build a geodesic dome (mini eden project) to house the AP systems.

2: Build a barrelponics system as I have the barrels ready to go and I find them quite fascinating.

I also have an IBC that I wombled the other day so that might become a system or it may become an emergency water storage tank.

I'm wondering after much reading if I should set up a very small (50 gal) indoor fish tank and try the aquaponics on a small scale first before diving in to a big system (that may be very sensible and cautious, very unlike me)lol

What type of fish are you planning on rearing when you set up? I'm off the idea of Talapia (cost of heating and lack of supply in UK to get started) am looking at practicalities of rainbow trout at the mo. Suffering info overload and finding it hard to get specific UK info that I'm looking for but I'll keep digging

Hi There Tiameg,

I reckon you are best off starting with something with a little size, an aquarium doesn't really give you great experience with AP. An IBC, or some large plastic containers give you a great way to start... Yeah, I'm not sure why anyone, anywhere in Europe would want to grow Tilapia, Trout are brilliant. Trout won;t breed in your tank, so you do have to keep buying them, but generally they aren't that expensive.

Thanks for that advice earthbound
I like the idea of something bigger thank a fish tank.
I thought as much about trout not breeding will just have to source the fingerlings.
How many trout do you feel can be raised comfortably in an IBC?
Thanks

Depends on how many growbeds you have... Or rather growbed volume and growing area planted out with plants..

tiameg, may i ask where in surrey you are, i live in farnham, and although i don't yet have a system up and running i believe i have sourced all the components and am just waiting on a delivery tomorrow. The rough setup is a 600l fish tank, feeding to a 200l swirl filter, to a 200l combined bio filter/sump. By grow beds (only part not arriving tomorrow) will be constant flow, hence i can get away with a smaller sump, and the plan is to add a second tank and a DWC growbed in the spring, again all parts have been sourced.