Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Also forgot to mention that i actually removed the limestone rocks from my shrimp tank and replaced them with a ceramic pot with a bit chipped out of it. It actually broke up more than i ment it to, so i glued it back together with a bit of PVA. Hope it will be ok...

Just read through your thread. It looks good! what led light are you using? I really wanted to try led, but the initial costs and conflicting reviews kept me from it. Also, whats that tall red aquarium plant, I like it!

I feed the snails to my yabbies, they love them. When they sink.....

Just did a quick water test.

Ph 7.6 low range / 7.4 high range
Amm 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 80 - 160

I also added some driftwood that looks pretty awesome. I will take some photos once the tannins reduce a bit.

phivtoosyx, the lights are an ebay special. It has 160 red and 65 blue LED's. They have improved growth, but not significantly. I do wonder whether it is now a case of the amount of light i have or the food i am using that is causing the lack of growth. The red leafed plantes are plastic Would be awesome if they were real though!

Lyndon346, i dont mind having snail in my big system, but not my aquarium. I like the plants that are starting to grow

I had my first HSM moment last week with the aquarium. Went away for about 4 days. Got home and the RCD had tripped. Luckily a few weeks ago i took my pump off the UPS and put an air pump on it instead. I have about 60 hours with of air out of the UPS which was dead flat when i got home. So it had been off for a while. Luckily all the fish were alive.

I have also spotted a few shrimp in my main tank. That means they have survived going through the pump, through my grow bed and have gone down the overflow. Tough little buggers...

Quick update time.

My biggest problem to date has been growing plants indoors. I really dont want to use high wattage grow lights and so far i have found that the LED lights do little more than keep the plants alive. The only thing that seems to be growing well so far has been aloe vera. I can see the growth in that on a daily basis. I may well end up with a grow bed full of aloe vera I also put in a tiny chilli seedling that had barely more than its first leaves that seemed to be dying. I can see a bit of growth on it so there may be hope yet

On the fish front, my dwarf gourami died He was burning around seemingly happy. I went to the pub, got home and he was belly up on the bottom. Caused me a great deal of stress thinking all my fish were going to die but i havnt had another death since. He did have some fresh looking scraping marks on his belly but i didnt see him flashing or anything. I also have a few shrimp left that have been moved to the top tank since the gourami died. They seem to grow a lot better in there and i noticed today that i had a burried female. So i may still get them breeding yet if any of the males are old enough to do their part I have been a unsure on the likelihood of their survival seeing as they are prone to nitrate poisoning and nitrates being high due to lack of plant growth.

I have also been continuing my battle with snails. I kill at least a couple per day. I accept i will likely never get rid of them, but i will make their lives hard

When i was at BYAP i got some duckweed that i have put in the top tank. That seems to have made the fish a lot happier. They swim around in the open heaps more now. I think that the bigger tank has creeped them out since there is a lot more open space at the moment.

Will try and get some pics up in the next couple of days.

Some photos! Sorry about the crappy quality. The camera has a hard time with the very different light levels through the whole tank.

First up we have a snap of my neons, a ghost knife fish (I am planning on getting some more of these guys ) and my camera shy sucker fish. You can also see a part of the new drift wood i put in there. I tried a few times to get a good shot of it but no dice You can also see that it is leaching a bit.



One of my little shrimp munching away. These guys are in the top tank now and seem to be growing well. They are finicky little critters though and seem easy to kill. Just moving them took one out.



I tried to get a shot of the drift wood but my camera struggles with the amount of back light. If i close the windows there isnt enough light and the flash just reflects off the glass. Sometimes you just cant win I have some lighting in mind using some LED downlights my company imports, it is just a case of getting the materials and making it up. Should be well light then with 3 - 5 downlights on each tank



Here you can see the damage the snails have been doing. Blasted things! I kill a lot of them each day too. They must hide in the moss. It wont be such a problem when i work out how to grow water plants better. I am thinking lack of light is the biggest cause atm.



This is the aloe vera i was talking about. The two middle leaves are new and it has only been in there about 3 weeks. It has also greened up a huge amount. Hopefully it is a nitrate hungry plant



This is the chilli seedling i mentioned. It is definitely growing which is exciting. If it goes ok i will try and germinate a few more and put them into the AP at that size. Or maybe just try and germinate them in the AP.



Finally on overall shot of the plants. You can see that there is almost no growth. You can also see my rather excellently constructed bamboo grow light frame



Before anyone says anything, yes i know the glass needs to be cleaned. I started it already. It is hard to clean it when you are 500kms away on your days off

Have you tried lowering your lights? When my brother had his lights over his toms and lettuces, the lights were literally only a couple of inches above the plants and he raised the lights as the plants grew to keep them close to but not touching the plants. (His lights were flouros, so generated negligible heat)

I will give it a try and report back! It should be easy to adjust the height on my highly complex support structure

Thanks for the tip

Nice little system.
Well done.

OK so to start i think i should point out that i like to f@ck with sh!t as i call it. I cant just leave things alone. I always want to try and make it better. This time around i noticed that my cherry shrimp have been doing heaps better in the top tank. I think it has to do with more available food. I also noticed that the plants in the top tank are doing better because they can get sunlight instead of artificial light. I also suspect that the plants will prefer a sand substrate... and i like the sand... SO, it was decided in a very well thought out and thoroughly investigated whim to swap the substrates over between my two main tanks. Just to prove that it isnt all fun and beauty contests i took a photo of all the silt that was kicked up when i moved the sand.



I have finally been able to move pinchy (my pet yabbie) to a much better home which i am happy about. So this is the start of his homes remodelling. It looks heaps better i think than what it did before when it was just the shrimp. Removing the filter thing i had over the pump has helped too.



I took the light off pinchy's old tank and sat it on top of my main aquarium and was finally able to get a pic of the drift wood in there, complete with half a glass cleaner that fell in there. I didnt want to stress the fish any more than i had so i left it there over night. Its a crappy photo, but it shows the start of it all. Maybe next week i will go on a big plant buy up to help provide some more cover for the fishies. They seem to love the sand though. Especially the two sucker fish. You can see where they have dug out under the wood at the front there which is really cool. You can see him hiding under there.



So now i am down to two tanks that look something like this.



Hopefully i will be picking up the lights for the tank this weekend and will get it all together next week. I dont like the whole thing looking like i just threw it all together. Cos that isnt what happened...

I have a ghost knife too, very cool !! Its about 200mm long now

Don't they fight if you have more than one ?

200mm!!!!!!! SO COOL!!!!!

From what i have read they are a schooling fish and it is detrimental to them not to have them in groups. In the shop they are always schooling. But they wont sell out of that tank... Grrrrr.

If you want to see your ghost knife, put a glass in the tank.
They are slmost completely blind and use sensors to detect hidey holes, so if you put a glass is the tank it thinks it is a perfect cave and will live in it out in the open.
They are also very easy to teach to hand feed.
I had a 30cm one that I gave away when I stupidly tried marine tanks out, the guy I gave it to killed it in about a month.

yeah glass or clear pipe...

I just feed him as he gets older he is becomming less shy.
I love showing him off to guests
I also have a 6-7 year old koi Angel fish, I like fish that swim differently.