Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all from a newbie

A few questions, probably will be answeered somewhere on this web site, but, just in case: here we go,
1. filling up a 1000 lt tank with "town water", usual clorinted stuff, how long is it left idle and open to air before it's safe to put fish in it?
2. Once I put trout in in it (how many 10-50 fingerlings?), how will the ammonia convert to nitrites to nitrates? Is there a magic wand to wave or some chemicals I need to add or will it happen all by itself?
3. 1000 lt tank, how many vegies should I be able to grow?

Best regards to all.
Frank

Umm, have you got any growbeds on the fish tank, and if so how much in Litres. Some pics of your system would help a lot with answering questions, as all systems are different.

if your water has chrorine, then running it through the system for a day will offgas most of it..
if it's chloramines, in can take much longer, vitamin c has been used by some but i do not know the efficacy of that..
read up on "fishless cycling" - this is how you get the bacteria growing that do all the good stuff, before you put your fish in (some folks use "feeder" fish to cycle the first time)
base the bioload on the amound of filtration.. for 100gallons of growbed, you shouldn't go more than 25lbs of grown out fish - and that is probably pushing it on a new system - lot of info on the boards for ratios

Thanks for the replies, fellas. Will check up more on "fishless cycling". Richard, you're not that far away from me (Horseham), I am in Lake Bolac, so we probably use the same water supplied by GMW. Drop in anytime you're that way, fishing is great, 3 kg trout is quite normal.

I'll probably have two grow beds about 8 meteres long, .75 m wide and .3 meters deep, probably using a flood/drain system as I also want to put yabbies into the grow beds. If I get it to work properly, I'd like to make it into feature of my caravan park, besides growing most of my vegies.
I have not yet build my system, only got a a 1000 lt. tank which needs to be converted into fish tank. I'll probably will need 2 of those for the size of the growing beds.

For a starters I sort of need to know, how long chlorinted water has to sit to dispurse the chlorine to make the water save for fishes. Bad enough to have to drink it, even worse if you you have to live in it :-). From what I gleaned: build my system, fill it with water, run it fishless for at least 24 hours, but better much longer. (1 week). Put the fish in, plant some seedlings and just keep an eye on it. The good bacteria should start naturally all by itself, hopefully.

Regards to all...
Frank

Oxygenated chloronated water.. exposed to UV, sunlight... will off gas in about 24 hours...

Thanks you RupertofOz,

Just what I needed to know.
Also, I know that many of you use trout in your tanks. I can get about 10-12 inch trout from the lake, using non-barbed hooks or get fingerlings. But what about redfin? Are there any reasons not to use redfin, which I think are a premium eating fish.
My tank is in a shady spot, so the water should stay coolish, even on very warm or hot days, which apparently are a rare occurance in Lake Bolac, so for me it's either trout or redfin. Any thoughts on the fish species?

Best regards
Frank

Redfin, indeed a lot of wild caught fish... can be really hard to get onto a pellet feed.... redfin especially so...

I reckon if you can get redfin babies , as we can around here at times in the lake outlets, you would be able to wean them onto pellets , but the fisheries boys would not be happy if they found out. You are not allowed to translocate redfin at all

Although many folk around here did when the reddies went mad in a certain lake overflo, so the other lakes should have some nice fish next summer

You can put yabbies inFD growbeds??

Thats a new one on me
Oh well i suppose you can but they wont stay there

From the web site of http://www.friendlyaquaponics.com/

Malaysian Giant River Prawn; these grow in the hydroponics troughs under the vegetables and don't eat the roots. If they grow Malasian river prawns, why not Australian yabbies?

Yabbies, as far as I know eat rotting vegetable matter (not decaying meat or so I have been told), so they should keep the root system healthy, but that's only what I think. It would take a bit of experimentation to proof the point.

I wasn't aware of restrictions on transferring redfin, pitty. They are a fish I like to have on my dinner plate, along with smoked eels. Yummy. But then, there is nothing wrong with trout, very tasty baked or smoked.

Regards
Frank

I think the "friendlies" abandoned the "Malaysian Prawn".... pretty quickly.. they now use "grammarus" in their raft beds... (not the same thing as a media grow bed)...

The Malaysian Prawn requires a constant temperature of 25+ C.... and it's a prawn rather than a "yabbie"....

The biggest difference being.... a yabbie will climb, and crawl out of there in minutes.. a prawn wont...