Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey Marc where in Perth do you get the square floating planter rings? Thanks in advance.

BYAP have them in store.

what a fantastic system, and free feed with the tadpoles too... awesome!!

Thanks Iceman. But that is just half of it.
I've been real slack in updating this thread with what has been happening with the system.
Winding the clock back to January...

I had saved up enought to install 2 more beds. So off to BYAP to get the gear.


all the piping and Hydroton I need, as well as some extra to top off the existing beds.

work then began on the site and bases for the grow beds. It is amazing how far that blue paint goes.


The tank in the background is my soon to be (in January) sump tank

This time I have placed the grow beds outside of the greenhouse to see if there is any benefits. I intend to place a roof over the beds and if necessary walls. Any excuse to add to the rain water collection area because what we dont catch we have to cart

I have removed one wall of the green house for ventilation and to allow access for the beneficial insects and pollinators. I have also started to remove some of the twin skin walls to increase the amount of light in winter. The green house still works well with the capsicums and eggplants still flowering and fruiting despite the nights getting down to 4C or less (no frosts yet). Not bad for the end of June.

Then there was the hydroton washing.

and with a bit of final leveling off - the finished product.







Now to tidy up.

I ran 25mm pipe up to the beds off the 40mm main. Big mistake. Even though the pump can move 8000l at 0 head i was struggling to fill all the beds in 15 mins. Anyhow the problem has been fixed and I now have 40mm up to the taps. it still took a few days to balance out the flow to all beds so they filled evenly. Ahh the fun of working with water.
However when beds 6 and 7 go in I will need a second pump.

Applause

Very nice system marc. So you have 100 SP in the 4000 l tank and trout in your 1000 l tank with 4 by 500 l growbeds. So is the 1000 l tank connected to the main system as the sump or are they running as separate systems? How many many trout did you get?

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Way to go Marc!

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Thanks Guys.
I will upload more pics over the weekend to bring us up to date.

Thanks Bender - I have 4 BYAP beds with 600l of media in each and another bed with 250l so a total of about 2600l of media. the 1000l tank with trout (now 28) is the sump tank and the 4000l tank has the SP (100).

I started off with 30 trout but with 1 death and 1 sick (euthanased and eaten) I now have 28.

The picture of the trout that was euthanased had only been in the tank for about 6 weeks so the trout in there should weigh heaps more than that one.

Cheers
Marc

Marc, looks good but please keep us informed about how the beer (strongbow?) plants develop!

they grow great and have developed into a briliant stand of Rekorderlig.

I lost a few of the empties that I left on the bed when first running water through as they are less dense than the Hydroton (before it soaks up the water). I think you can see one slowly sinking in one of the photos.
the full ones dont last long enough to sink

Awesome looking system marc.

How big were your trout when you get them?

Also can we see a pic of your monster pleco you mentioned in the start of the thread?

Thanks rsevs3, the trout were about 150mm when I got them in mid april.
I was going to pull some of the trout out today to see how big they were but it is a fair bit of work taking the net off and taking the airlines out etc. So I dropped my white folding rule in and waited for them to swim past. There are trout well over 30cm so well on their way to a good feed.

I sold the big Pleco back to the fish shop as he was doing way too much damage to the tank. I now have another that is about 12in long. He/she is much better behaved and I may keep it a tad longer. I also have 8 pepermint bristlenoses (which I am trying to breed) in another tank, along with a pile of other fish.
how are the red cherry shrimps going?