Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Might be an idea to do some water tests, if you haven't already.
Always good to know before the fish go in.

I'm doing testing daily, is conductivity testing worth doing, the only one I don't do but have a digital pen that dies thus and pH?

Not really.

The most important ones (in an early system) are:
Ammonia
Nitrite
Nitrate
pH.

Despite many years of hydroponics experience... I've never been able to relate EC values in aquaponics to anything that made any sense... or correlation....

Love the neat setup. The only other thing that would be a good idea before you add your fish is to salt to 2-3 ppt. The fish will thank you for it.

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+1 for salt

Its been a while since I updated, but have been reading through the posts each week.

So its been over 6 months now and we have had a cracker of a time with this project. The successes we have seen have made it really worthwhile.

I would like to especially thank everyone for their advice from the BYAP forum as we were able to sort out some of the issues early, but at the same time some of the other aspects of our design really did make a difference on the final outcome. Our design initially had problems after a month of cycling with the return flow being slower than the inflow (causing bed flooding) but was easily fixed with additional adjustments and never saw the problem again. I was actually surprised that even 6 months later the flow has not changed at all with a 1 litre and hour difference, and was expecting it to be a significant amount slower as it established itself. I am guessing the bed depth and gravel have kept the inlet clear and because it is pumping from the bottom so roots are not attracted to the water outflow like our top to bottom version.

Two weeks later of stocking, we replicated our system with a flood and drain and a top to bottom flow version as mentioned above and had them running concurrently to see the difference. I have to say that pumping from the bottom up wasn't such a bad idea and the significant difference in result in terms of produce was actually quiet significant (I have my thoughts on why). There was a couple of varieties of plants that did get root rot from the constant flood methods but they showed signs very early and we swapped them out with the other varieties that were already planted and didn't see the problem later (Anyone considering constant flood need to be aware trialling different varieties and once sorted wont have a problem). I also think that the deep gravel beds helped with fish stock levels.

Some mentioned oxygen would be a problem from pumping bottom up due to the plants stealing all the oxygen or not getting enough and on this scale it made absolutely no difference IMO, in fact like I said the results on our initial design far exceeded the other two methods we trialled. In saying this I am not saying everyone else is doing it wrong, in my attempts the constant flood bottom to top flow method worked better. While I have turned the air pumps off, I will switch them back on if I see signs of problems in the summer months, as I can't say definitely that as the fish grow out that it won't ever be a problem. At this stage I do not have the air pumps running.

One thing that will change is the height of the outlet valves as they were about an inch too high, but was easily fixed by adding a inch more of clay pebbles.

We have had such a good time and success, to the point that we have decided to expand our project to a more than hobby scale. We have plans for almost 100 green housed beds and we now have 15 acres of land to play with just for this project, so very excited. What's the worst that can happen if it fails? I'll learn something!

Thanks all again that have helped or posted on BYAP forums!

Great to hear from you threequote, dare I ask, do you have any photos to share?

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Haha

I'm off to the apple store on thursday to see if one of the geniuses and the Genius bar can download the photos off my phone since it died a horrible death from falling from the roof of my car. Doesn't turn on but I reckon they might as they have helped me in the past. I'll be gutted if i lose our baby photos I think I have a photo of one of the yabbies, all 10 females hatched 2 sets of babies each. I put one in our fish tank to take some photos so I will post that at the least.

As I mentioned I had the other two systems running concurrently, and dumped them two weeks back as a colleague bought the set-ups etc off me for his kids as we will be moving back to Qld at the end of the year and I have to admit his kids were pretty chuffed about growing there own veggies. The main system was stripped back on the weekend other than a silverbeet that just wont quit (I have perfected cream of silverbeet soup tho and it tastes better than it sounds). I have some planting taking place on the weekend if I get around to it. Worst case I'll take a photo of the silverbeet as its 5.5 months old and still looks great considering the age and weather. I guess and take some more photos as the new ones grow, they wont take too long. The setup itself is the same as the first images, just a inch of clay more really.

The black and yellow tomatoes, capsicum (just one variety not sure of the name) and rockmelon got the root rot and i took some photos for reference. But all the other varieties of tomato and other species did really well. The strawberry leaves went a little brown from the salting but recovered ok after a week or two back in january. They aren't worth it though as you need a heap of bushes to really make it worth it and the kids went to them first so never saw the fruits of my work (pardon the punt).

Female Yabbie

Very good