Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Deb and Mac have been growing fish in their pool since 2008 and have had some great harvests as you can follow in this thread viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4396&hilit=deb+and+mac
They also have an article in the BYAP magazine, edition 12, which covers some plants that will tolerate higher salt levels.

Thanks Faye

Omar stocked twice as many trout this year CC.... and is incorporating some grow beds...

Thanks I am interested in pool conversions a my mate in Darwin may be thinking about doing a natural pool for swimming and fish. Cheers

We can highly recommend it!! We swim in ours, as well as grow fish and have floating rafts of veg. It is a much better use of a pool!

Personally I'd swim in it without a problem, but I wonder, just out of curiosity, what the levels of human-unfriendly bacteria would be. I wonder if a few grow beds would take out all the nasties.

Or do you just run salt in the system to deal with that?

Yes, some salt, 2ppt at present with the silver perch, plus we have a UV clarifier which supposedly tackles the bacteria. We have swum in ours with fish for 4 years plus!

I snorkle in salt and fresh water, i am of the opinion that there is more nasties inside your home and walking down the road than there is in nature



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I was once stupid, i'm not so young now

My home?

I agree by the way @julia_bites

More found on any beach in Australia with direct sewerage outlets

We seem to be getting more and more paranoid about "germs" and "nasties"
We have supermarket shelves full of cleaning products all claiming to get rid of 99% of germs (that contain toxic chemicals like triclosan etc)

Maintaining our immune systems is far more important than making sure every bacteria in a 100m radius from us is dead.

Certainly swimming in our pool over the last few years hasn't harmed us-we are just sensible in not getting the water blasted up our noses (no bombies for us!!)

It is great to cool off on a hot day, as well as to snorkel and see how the fish are...pump is functioning etc.

im sure it is just like swimming in a nice creek. Do you get sediment on the bottom ?

Maybe a little bit, we haven't had an issue ourselves, though as I said we are careful, just in case. To be on the safe side we wouldn't let kids swim because in their playing they are more likely to get water up their nose, though we have had kids snorkel if we are there watching. There are some good examples of natural swimming pools on the internet, some of which have fish.