Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

awesome, i was worried when i heard they pulled you over, glad they were ok with it.

Wow! Nearly 6 square metre!
Dan, do you know what this container was used for? Seems too big for animal feeding. Also, how soft or hard?

Sejin

Hi Sejin. it used to be an abalone aquaculture grow tank. and yes its MASSIVE.

its made from 2 layers of thin but tough plastic with a softer filling in between. the inside looks like a tough foam but not actually sure what it is. its quite light for its size, i can lift and move it on my own but the walls being about 1cm thick it is quite tough/solid.

Great purchase Dan.

A new bath for the dogs?

haha Dunder.

hmm i guess need to make this new grow bed high enough so certain dogs dont choose to make it into a nice cool water bed when the weather heats up........

i can so see them all kickin back, relaxing, laying about on the lovely soft plants.... cooling water gently trickling underneath them... with them lookin up at me funny as i race out from the kitchen, arms waving around in the air like mad, screaming at them stuff they dont understand ........ them looking at each other laughing and saying "what the hell is this nut carrying on about?"

oh boy!!

That's right mate, Ive had dogs myself. They wont be on top of the gravel keeping cool, they'll just dig right in and get down in there

Dunder luckily rottys are generally to lazy to actually do much digging.... i hope. lol. tho i have brought mine up to eat raw fruit and vegies (sorta following the B.A.R.F "Bones And Raw Food" ideology, if you dont know it a quick google should bring it up) they love nothing more than a raw carrot or some pumpkin skins, or pretty much anything veg and some fruit. so im a little worried about them helping themselves to what ever comes up and is at mouth height. only time will tell i guess.

found yet another awesome site with what to plant when. it will even email you if you like to remind dumb asses like me that i should be planting stuff.

http://www.gardenate.com/

now i need to spend some more time trying to understand moon phase planting...... anyone following along have any good sites to tell you what to plant going by moon cycles? apparently it makes quite a difference. then again it sounds a little superstitious to me. think ill have to do some research on this for myself.

hey nice work Dan .
hey where did you get that ?? did u buy it online ?>>>
o, i made a thingy today. i wanted the oxygen depleted water that would be at the bottom of the tank pushed back up to the surface where it can get more oxygen again. i have one of these very low power power heads (around 4 watts) and wanted to have a way of sitting it on the bottom of the tank and blowing water upwards. this is what i came up with.
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a couple of bits of stainless steel welding wire bent up to make legs. this is the result
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hard to see with my crappy fonetography, but it was shooting the water up about 10cm higher than the water level there. you can also just make out my 3 little goldfish i have at the bottom of the pic.

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you mean my little pump? yup got it from ebay via china. took about a month to be delivered. around $10 delivered. i have 3 of them. the best thing about them versus some of the other ones ive bought off ebay is the cord length is about 2M long. one of the other ones i have from another seller the cords only 60cm long, fairly useless.

heres a link http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/300634049081

So you'd think that huh? My grandmother grew up on a farm in germany, and always used to do her planting by the moon phases. My mum and aunty always thought she was a bit funny. a few years ago my Aunty started trying to grow some veggies, with no thought about moon phases at all, and wasn't having much luck. So she had a look on the internet, and guess what? she was planting in the wrong moon phases apparently. So she tried it, and voila! veggies!

Having said that, what the moon actually affects, is the level of the water table and the moisture in the ground, in the same way it affects tides, and some veggies prefering wetter or dryer soil are better off planted at the full or the new moon respectivly.... So i think it doesn't really apply to aquaponics

P.S. Your dogs are beautiful

ahhhh that makes a lot of sense. im not superstitious generally and to me this whole moon thing sounded very much like something like that but i couldnt discount the pull of the moons gravity. now it all makes a lot more sense after your reply. thanks for that i can finally stop trying to work it out

thanks, i agree i do love them to death.

I've done the same thing with one of my dogs (see avatar). Unfortunately she likes the same fruits as we do, but is happy to eat them unripe. As a result, we have had ONE nashi pear so far. The others "disappeared" off the tree. She also loves tomatoes, lemongrass and pretty well everything else we grow. I'm hoping she never finds out what fish taste like, because she is an excellent swimmer. I've swum her regularly for nearly seven years to keep her body in good shape, because she has lumbar arthritis and hip dysplasia.

your going to give me nightmares now. i can see a greenhouse in my not to distant future.

ordered my trout today from Tooperang trout farm picking them up wednesday. apparently there 4 to 5 inches already. $80 per 100 fish. pretty happy about all of that. i was hoping to have picked them up today but they dont seem to answer the fone and you have to leave a message for them, so something to remember if anyones thinking about using them for there trout.

also theres only a couple more days you can get trout from them before they take a month long break over may so anyone else planning on trout better jump on it.