Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I will upload some pictures when I figure out how to do it. I started a thread about my my system but I think thats in the pipeline waiting for approval.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqCnelde ... er&list=UL

If one of you gurus can help an old man with uploading pictures I'll put a lot more info on here.

Thanks

I use a constant flood system because of my love for the fish, this system will hold 600 lbs of fish and so feeding a few lbs of food daily generates a mountain of poop. If I used flood and drain the maintenance would be just to much work so I have no grow medium in my circulating system I just open a drain and flush it out with the garden hose. I will grow Taro in the second stream that I will tie into the system, I flush the fish waste into the grow beds which are stand alone beds.

The system is run by an air pump which uses $2.33 of electricity per month, not bad for a 3,000 gallon(11,356.2 l) system. I developed this system 25 years ago on my Koi Farm which had 70 ponds with 21 above ground pools. I filtered the high density pools using stream filters using plants. It took a couple years to perfect this system using air but being an engineer it wasn't that bad.

OK I figured out a way to get pictures on here.

I keep as much piping underground as I can, this is the main trunk from the FT to the Manure Chamber. The floor is filled in 6" so gravity will drain it. All the lumber is treated so the bugs won't bite, I built these before and had them last 10 years without any problem.






This is the stream filter frame where I cut a piece of treated 3/4 plywood lengthwise to make the 16' bed. I return the water from the far end to the FT.

The water in this system is turned over every 3 hours which is what I've found to be a good turnover. When I get the second stream running it will have another 400 gallons. I can then push the amount of fish another 200-300 lbs and I can add more grow beds. This is way more food than the wife and I can eat but I've already got neighbors lusting over the fish. When I feed the FT erupts and its quite a site.

Nice system, watching with interest

hay Larry,
I don't think a flood and drain system would be any more maintenance (actually I expect it would be less) but it would require lots more space and would cost more to set up initially, and with that many fish, you would probably have to start selling the produce to keep up.

I'm watching with interest to see what your stream filters are like. I've just changed over my "raft bed" that was totally under utilized to now grow water chestnuts for me and come winter that bed will probably have mostly watercress growing since the chestnuts go dormant in the cold.

Hay TCL,

The stream filters are just what you saw, a 16' raceway in slow motion. The water comes in one end from the manure chamber and flows out the other end back to the FT, the small suspended particulates of manure that aren't caught by the manure basket settle out onto the bottom or are caught in the roots of the plants. In a couple more months the stream will be solid with Iris roots at that point I won't need any other plants in there. The Iris consume most of the urine and when I flush the stream the manure goes into the grow beds. On my Koi farm I had 40' streams full of Iris connected to FT's with as many 2,000 fish in them.

Before I started building the stream filters I had bio chambers filled with 'bio bail' which I manufactured myself from 3" PVC shaved down making 250 sq ft of surface area for the good guy bacteria. The streams take 15 minutes to drain and flush and I'm done for a week. I used this many years.

I start the Iris in a small basket of river rock, it isn't long before the roots are coming out everywhere. I just let it over grow and then when its to big for the stream I lift it up and cut the basket out and chop the Iris clump in half.

I know you buy from Aquatic Eco Systems, Bob the founder of AES was a friend back in the 80's and 90's I wrote some of their technical sections for their sales catalog and he carried a couple filters that I made for Koi ponds.

how do you anchor the bare root iris?

OK I decided to put my foot where my mouth is so I walked out to my system and gathered a net of duckweed. I've read that the livestock and people of South America and Asia eat duckweed so why don't I? I washed it off just as I do lettuce and into my mouth it went, I can't say it was good but it was a little better than raw lettuce. I put some Italian dressing on the next byte and presto it was good. I also read that Moringa tree leaves are more nutritious than any vegetable in the garden so a couple months ago I planted some seed and now I have 9 trees about 3' tall. I pulled some leaves and did the same test as the duckweed. The result was the same, with a little spicing up it was also good.

I working my way up to Taro, as most of you know its toxic if you don't cook it well and even then some varieties will still hurt you. I think I'll wait until my stream is so full I'll have to eat it or toss it.

I just went out to check on the grow beds and the plants are really growing. These beds are open bottoms right on top of the ground so when I dump fish manure water on them they get soaked and then the water goes into the ground.



This bed is just over a month old by a couple days, I planted it with veggies from the hardware store that were about 8" tall. The tomatoes are over my head and I'm 6' tall of course the grow bed is elevated by about 10".



This is a leaf from the okra bush and its almost 14" across, I was never able to grow stuff so fast and so big hydroponically. I never tried flood and drain however so maybe some of you do better.



There is fruit everywhere.

Nice looking system there Larry...

Your a brave man going for the duck weed....

I've tried it before, then again I've been known to eat a fresh water chestnut out of the system without extra washing or pealing either, though I haven't done the drink the AP coolaid for demonstration yet.

Don't try that demo with a CHOP2 system LOL

why do you say that Dave?
My tower system where I just harvested a bunch of water chestnuts is a CHOP 2 essentially. The water chestnuts growing in the sump tank with some gravel in it to anchor them.

Unusually cold for the past two nights in the low 50's this is December/January temps. Temp in my big FT was 60 F yesterday morning and the tilapia didn't eat, because it only warmed up to 72 F yesterday the FT is 56 F this morning. The tilapia are ok but just sitting on the bottom. On my Koi farm I raised tilapia and channel cats together in a 12' above ground swimming pool outside and unheated without any looses, however I got the brood stock from a nearby lake so Mother Nature had already culled the weakest. The tilapia I have now are from a indoor hatchery so I expect to loose most of them, I'll breed from the survivors - if none then a local fisherman knows a canal just a few miles from me that has plenty - he says. My bullhead cats are moving slow but are still active - slow motion. Last winter we had 3 below freezing nights in a row and the local news station showed thousands of dead tilapia floating in the local lakes, I know that some survived and so this years fish should be better able to make it. My veggies are looking fine, they don't seem to care so far anyway.

Correction - I just put on my glasses and read the temp, they just didn't seem right. Sure enough add 10 degrees to the temps in the FT. Getting old just isn't what its supposed to be.

Yea, even my 300 gallon system which is flood and drain didn't get blow the low 60's F.