Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,
So I recently stumbled upon what is fast becoming an addiction. Have spent countless very late nights for a few months, trawling through pages and pages of your extremely informative, inventive and funny forums. My education is in horticulture with a respect for all things permaculture: Better by design, so it was only a matter of time before I ended up here . I have set up a simple IBC system, and I'm cautiously considering my options for cycling. Peeponics or Charlie carp and seasol seem to be highly rated. I have two other ponds on my property with Tandanus, silver perch and a Tupong(fresh water flat head). Should I take some of the Larger rocks, or filter pads from ponds and introduce them to AP system?
Thanks for reading and I look forward to harvesting your wealth of AP knowledge
Bek

Hook, line and sinker. Welcome

What a great thread title. Can you post photos of what you are doing, because we lurve photos. Welcome to th forum.

Sent from my GT-I9100T using Tapatalk 2

Welcome and yes add stuff from you existing ponds to the AP system to help cycling

Welcome to the AP mothership

Although peeponics does well to seed a system with ammonia for cycling, adding plants from the very start and 20-40mL of Charlie Carp per 1000L of water will not only seed the ammonia but the other nutrients required for healthy plant growth, so they'll get a kick along too. Seasol doesn't have sufficient ammonia on its own, so has to be used in conjunction with an ammonia source (such as pee)

You may be able accelerate the cycling process by introducing bacteria from other healthy systems; filter gunk etc, but you also run the risk of spreading diseases, parasites and other contaminants. I don't think that it speeds the process by much more than peeponics/CC ammonia seeding? I also think that patience pays its own rewards in the end.


Scott

Thanks for the tip bunson, my next question was going to be about quantities so cheers. I have purchased some cc and have about 30 or so seedlings ready for transfer. I also hadn't considered the risks of adding to AP system from ponds, and agree the risks could out way the benefits. I'm trying to be patient but excitement sometimes makes that hard(:. I have 20 silver perch on hold for the moment, have been told that this is on the lower end of stocking but feel it's better to under stock while I'm learning.
Thanks to everyone for the welcome, I will post pics in the next few days along with plenty more questions.
Bek.

And thats what we like to hear

First test.... PASS!

Thanks Charlie(: I am going to set up a bath tub worm farm, compost, veggie scrap with hessian sac cover built up of ground for worm tea harvest. The info I have from a horticultural perspective tell me that to make this a truly closed loop system I will need to provide my plants with all trace elements required for optimum growth and maintaining plant carbohydrate levels. Anyone using worm tea? What have your results been vs without? Also leaning on your experiences what is the best food for silver perch, and any ideas about home produced feed?
Thanks.

Hey all,
So we've set up our first basic learning IBC. Made the mistake of setting up the whole system gb full of washed media, only to find a small leak from ft drain valve so out came all the media bit by bit into any spare container we had. Drained all the water into garden, such a waste! The connection to drain valve was perished so pulled it apart, put it bk together with some silicone n reset up the whole system. It's all good now have planted strawberries, carrots, broc and cauli, spinach beets and rhubarb. So glad we didn't end up seeding the system with pond water as a few days after we set up AP had problems with fungus infections in ponds. We put our little baby sp in hospital bucket for salting n they seem to have responded well. Have been testing every day or so ph is around 7.8 ammo is 0.50 ppm 0 ites 0 ates. Have dosed with cc once of 20 ml and had to add my kids "pet" trout as have released sp from hatchling cage into trouts pond didn't want to watch a feeding frenzy have a few pic to share. In the pics u might notice the shade cloth above the AP, were hoping to swap this over to greenhouse plastic, if we can find some cheap and then swap back to shade over summer. Also I've been looking into iron chelate to help plants along if ph is to stay high over an extended period. Thanks for reading and comments or advice most welcome

Ok so tried adding pics, following info from bullwinkle, and in full editor it's not allowing me to choose file?? Is this coz I'm on an iPad or other prob? Cheers

what size are your pics?

I'm not sure? But when I go into post reply the option to choose file is not available, there is also no browse option as suggested in other threads. I'm not fantastic with computer stuff(plants are more my thing) (:

ok go into the folder where you store your pictures
put mouse over pic that you want to post on here
normally a small box will apear and it will have the info about size in it
if not right click on the file
and then left click edit in the box that appears
this should open a program to edit your pic
at the top of the program will be the word edit
click that
the drop down box should have a resize pic
click that
then a new box will open
make sure that keep aspect ratio is ticked
and that it says pixels
change the first number to 800
the other number should automatically change to 600
once you have that save the file and close the program
then try and post pic again
on the full editor below where the button submit is
is a box which you use to upload attachments
click browse and goto where your pics are
click the pic you want
then click add the file then you acan do upto 2 more then click submit
hope this helps

Cheers for info, but I'm on an iPad so don't have mouse, file or folders. basically just a big iPhone without the ability to call in full editor I can see the choose file option but it just won't let me use it. Perhaps I can't upload photos from useless iPad?