Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Oh... forgot to mention... There was an extremely high percentage of deformities in this batch of trout! I am sure they sold me fish from a tank where all the crappy fish where sorted to.

Next year, and this is probably a good idea for anyone buying trout fingerlings, I will inspect each and every fish for skew mouths, blind eyes, stumpy bodies and the like. One of the tiny fish that was the first to start floundering had such a skew mouth it could not open so it could not feed and thus remained small.

I am going to kick up a fuss with the supplier and see if I can get a nice discount on the next batch or something like that.

If You have large koi, can the cohabit with smaller trout?

Wow, who would have thought that they'd give you the seconds!

Either that or too much inbreeding going on at the hatchery.

Probably a combination of the two... they have a lot of rejects from inbreeding and fob them off on unsuspecting individuals like me.

Running this system fishless on seasol and the like is going to cost a small fortune! The stuff is insanely expensive. Can I run it on worm tea? I am generating quite a bit of that at the moment. Problem is how much to put in? Its pretty variable stuff it seems. I just dumped about 5 liters into the 8000 liters of water in my system so will see what happens. I should probably start peeing in it for the meantime until I can secure some koi or better still plain old carp...

Tilapia seem happy and are benifiting from having the aerator in the greenhouse which was running the outdoor system. No more deaths and they are eating nicely although weight gain is still slow... there are a few of them starting to look like bigger fish now but for the most part they are still little fish. It is quite frustrating.

All the chooks have been rehoused on the other side of the farm at the workers quarters so the system is recovering nicely. Now to do some serious seed planting.

Had a nice surprise while rooting around for ripe cape goosberries and found myself in very close proximity to a rather nasty looking snake. Not sure what it was but it was green and decidedly poisonous looking Will be using a stick to lift up the gooseberry bush from now on!

Seasol isn't a complete nutrient for the plants anyway, it is just a supplement for potassium and all the other trace elements. Pee ponics, worm castings and perhaps some hardwood ashes (to adjust pH up and provide potassium) would probably work too. Or even just pee ponics with an occasional splash of seasol or worm tea.

Have you seen the vortex tea brewers? They are and handy little set up for activating the worm tea...

Just had a lovely AP meal of cold trout and fresh tomato and basil with olive oil lemon juice salt and pepper. Delicious!

Much to my dismay small duiker buck are capable of entering my system through the fence (I followed some tracks that led right through the fence which is pig fenge and has a spacing of about 150mm square) and munching on the plants. Not only that but the frankolins (chicken like wild fowl) have also discovered the system is a great source of fresh spinach. There is only one thing to do and that is to box in the entire system with a finer fencing. I love having all the smaller birds hanging around there but I fear they also do damage to my productivity. I planted masses of seeds and almost all of the seedlings have been destroyed. The buck also eat the tomato plants and they completely destroyed my beautiful green pepper plants. Needless to say the system is looling a bit crap atm.

Did a bit of work on a ap flood and drain wicking bed idea. I am using a horozantally cut blue barrel. The first 120mm or so is gravel bed which will operate in a normal flood and drain fashion. The media guard is only slotted up to 120mm too. Then I will have a shade cloth barrier between the gravel and some compost/worm casting mix with a sort of seal around the media guard and the shade cloth, just a tight fitting hole in the shade cloth that the media guard passed through. So the bed will flood to just above the gravel height and then wick its way into the compost mix. Why you ask? Simple. Carrots and potatoes. I will post some pics of the experiment tomorrow.

In the greenhouse all is well. Water is sitting at 28 degrees and the tilapia are munching away. No more mysterious deaths for now.
Got the solids drain from the filter plumbed up to directly enter the worm bin. This has been a great inovation and the worms are doing very well now. they really seem to enjoy the poop rich water and have all congregated closer to the side where the water comes in. I built the worm bin from one of the troughs I was going to use for duckweed. I am not entirely happy with the design though but it is working for now.

Sorry to hear about the critters looting your AP system. That sucks. I'm battling the Squirrels and the darn critters keep eating Lettuce!!!!! Go figure.
Good to hear about he worm bin and the wicking bed, keep us posted on the progress

Ok... AP wicking be up and running but some teething issues needing attention. I have probably done this thing wrong because I now have the additional tank which now has 20 tiny koi fingerlings in it. The additional tank is fed off the main pump and has a slo installed. This slow is a 50mm and outputs to the now new wicking bed and then back to the sump. I have the wicking bed on the decking over the sump and it drains directly back to the sump.

The wicking bed is a half blue barrel cut horozantally. there is 120mm of gravel bellow and then a shade cloth barrier, a little bit more gravel to hold the shadecloth down and then pure compost from horse manure and straw and sawdust. The flood pipe goes down through the compost and ends where the shadecloth is. The bed floods to just above the gravel to aid with the wicking action. So far the wicking action is working great! Problem is on the flood side. I had the tap from the main pump cranked all the way open and it was fine but then I came back to find the slo had blocked up and water going all over the place. fortunately it all lands up back in the sump even if it does leak out. So I turned the flow right down to a small trickle and then the slo caught up again. I recon I needed to bring the flood pipe down to the gravel layer and then take a 90 bend and have a length of pipe with lots of holes in it for the flood.

I also think it would probably be really cool to have the wicking beds flood from the sump, drain to the fish tank and then from the fish tank to normal gravel filter beds and then back to the sump, but that is going to get a little difficult for me right now.

All in all I see great potential for some superb carrot and possibly potato growing environment here. Just a few tweaks and it's going to run like a dream. I need some more blue barrels now. Think I will start arranging the irrigation side for a whole bank of AP wicking beds on top of my sump tank.

On a side note.. found a snake swimming about in the sump tank. Small green little snake. It seemed happy to be rescued, or as happy as a snake can look that is. slithered off into the bushes...

Lucky it wasn't a mamba!

wicking bed has been going along fine. I had to change the supply line to dump directly into the standpipe media guard as it got blocked quite quickly dumping down onto the shade cloth barrier. the compost stays perfectly damp and carrot seedlings popping up nicely as well as lots of weed seeds. Guess the compost did not cook as well as it should have...

I now have 20 koi fingerlings about 5cm long loving life in the secondary tank. they are very cute. I have also constructed a decent cover for my greenhouse system sump. I also have a pipe plumbed into the sump ready for the toilet cistern fill valve for an auto fill. I find the system needs about 40 to 80 liters added each week.

Temps in the greenhouse have not been wonderful. Sometimes dropping below 20 degrees in the tilapia tank even though we are in high summer. I am considering building a solar panel heater for the system using a sliding door glass sheet and a coil of black pipe, or even just a coil of black pipe on its own.

Brian Seasol is not a source of ammonia/nitrogen at all.
It actually says on the the bottle that it contains zero nitrogen.
So you couldn't "run" a system on it for very long without the plants suffering, and you would not be building up much bacteria.

You can use anything that decomposes...I wonder if you could throw a dead animal in the fishtank for a month...

Hey Superveg. I have been doing a dash of worm tea and some pee and I have the small koi now. I should probably be peeing in there a whole lot more. There is a vague plan to try and trap some carp at some point but I need to find the time. The plants, what's left of them seem to be doing fine, but the gooseberries are producing masses of foliage and not much fruit. Some sort of deficiency? I seem to be having fruiting problems with the tomatoes as well. They do produce but very inconsistent sizes. Basil is doing great!

I wonder if not fruiting(or flowering) is a result of too much nitrates...
I have always been told that about dirt growing plants.
In AP (if that is the case) I guess the only way to reduce nitrate levels is put more plants in and reduce feeding....
I wonder if someone who actually knows what they are talking about can answer

Most AP system run with zero, or very low nitrates... but may still suffer Potassium related problems during those stages of growth....