Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all.

I am just about to start setting up my first almost "real" aquaponic system (I have garden ponds with fish, and have grown herbs in the stream, in submerged pots, and chillies wicking water from the ponds).

The system will consist initially of 8 metres of (greenhouse covered) growbeds evenly split between a floating raft system, and a media based system. The interconnected ponds (which currently only have a fish biomass of about 50kg and increasing (trout and ornamentals) have a volume of 18,000 litres, a vortex pre-filter with a static floating bed filter, which goes into to polygeyser biological filter, and finally through a UV filter (which was only used when the system was first setup to deal with green water). It was my intention to use the polished return water to flow constantly through the growbeds. Now I know that most people do not filter prior to the growbeds, but I figured with adequate fish bio-mass and feeding that the nutrient levels would still be fine. Has anyone out there tried using bio-filtered water in growbeds?

Also, I have read that water supplementation with calcium, iron, potassium (and boron(?) for tomatoes and chillies) is required. I historically have used calcium carbonate to harden the rainwater (I capture all my water) and have a test kit to test for calcium hardness. What forms should a person be using for these minerals, and what is a good source for them? Also, what types of testing can a person use to test the concentration of these in the water so as not to over/under dose?

I am sure I will be having lots of questions going forward, so beg people's patience with me, and look forward to your input.

Thanks

Photos or it didn't happen!!

Welcome aboard...

What part of wheelers hill are you in?

I have a silly question. How do I convert a standard photo to be compatible for posting? It indicates a max of 800X600 pixels.

What operating system are you using?

I use a powertoy from microsoft.
The image resizer works beautifully and it's free.

look here.: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... windows-xp

Once installed, just right click on the photo or file and a resize option appears in the drop menu

Yep... but they discontinued the image resizer tool in Vista and Win7.... you need to download from a third party supplier....

I'll find the link in a minute... still works the same...

here you go .... http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/releases/view/30247

Ok. I have now resized some photos of the ponds. Obviously not current, as the trees all have leaves.

This gives some idea of the layout of the ponds. I will document the setup once the growbeds go in shortly.

Nice looking ponds there Furnaceboy.....

Indeed.. very nice looking ponds...

Yep looking good! How do you catch the trout?

My 4 year old kids like to fish for the trout, which is some fun for them as they are easy to catch. I also have a large scoop net and nets for partioning as desired too. The murray cod (I am down to 4 of them) are the tough ones to catch though (in the other pond), as they hide, and are tough to hook, although we are always having a go for fun. I typcially reduce the water level to very shallow by pumping to a temporary pool and catch them by net. They were easier to catch when there were lots of them (more competition for the food)

Wow! They are gorgeous looking ponds furnaceboy!

I might have to make sure hubby see's your pics... he loves natural looking pools and ponds as much as me, and we are looking at putting something in ourselves ATM... although it may end up being a bit more Duck orientated