Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

have a look from here There should also be links

F&F, my dad made it from scratch, it processes more tommies with less mess and quicker, is made from 100% stainless, and is "cut your finders off" proof spring loaded plates...... hard to explain, but if any one has seen the internals of a rotary compressor then its pretty close!

OH, and it makes a cool wakka-wakka-wakka noise when running.

I'll try and put a direct link to the vid

F&F, you're welcome to come over in feb / march for the day

OK guys and girls, i've been officially running at ZERO nitrates since early JAN.

Still happy with plant growth, but can definatly see growth spurts when i give a heavy feeding to the fish.

Basically i was "touchy" on feeding too much after my fungus episode.

Obviously the tommies are extracting every last nute from the system as soon as it is produced, but this goes to show that you don't need sky high nitrates to get good growth.

Tandanus update:

I'm more than happy with their growth rate so far, i'd say they are par if not a little quicker growing than the silver perch! There is a destict gradient in growth of the fish, but we have always seen that, the biggest gets all the food

They are still in the indoor aquarium.

The last water change i did on both my four foot aquariums i dumped straight into my AP system. I didn't measure the nitrates of either the tanks or the final value in the IBC, but from previous readings and feed rate i'd expect them to have been about 100ppm

so about 300 litres went into the AP system, and i calculate that would have geven me up to 20 ppm. measured it a few days later, zero.

figures, i only have 7 perch in there at the moment.

There is MUCH tommies on the plants, two i have picked, and it looks like the rest are all going to ripen at the same time and very soon.

I was a little bored with the system last night, so i took some clippers and prunes away some of the vegetave growth on the tommies, mostly only the yellowing leaves, but its given the fruit more access to daylight.

the strawberries are compleetely coverd by the tommies, but somehow one seems to ripen every week or so, and that goes straight into the gob. An ap'er needs sustinance! nothing like the supermarket variety. melt in your mouth with a slight "tang"

lemon grass is growing well, have cut that back once when i was making a stir fry, gives the rice a lovely lemon flavour.

basil i pick regularly, its beautiful chopped up with parsley on two fried eggs, and the combination also works well mixed with olive oil and black olives in a penne pasta dish.

yarrow is growing

lebanese water cress went nust, and o mowed it back very short, used it as a "bed" for some stirfried chillie chicken there was enough to cover 3 plates. A friend of mine said it tasted like shredded carrots, and since he mentioned it, i have to agree!

upland water cress has not done much at all, but that may be becasue its covered by a tommie bush!

sage is also showing a little growth, but not much.

chilie plant has 6 or so nice sized long green chillies on it.

I do not normally have luck with planting seed straight into the bed, mostly becasue i don't think my flood height is high enough to keep them wet, and if i dig them deeper then they are too deep to germinate and survive, but i have two clumps of seeds comming up, they are either dandelion or parsley, will know in a few weeks

so where are the pics?

well, i usually say "i'll post pics soon" but never do, so i thought i'd just not say it!

What, you don't believe me? am going out to dinner, camera has no batteries, am running late and have a wedding tomorrow! I don't like night shots, so will try and get up early tomorrow and take a few pics, as i know reets will have put the batteries in the camera for the wedding

Cool it would be good to see some more pics as it sounds like your doing really well

sure Steve, we believe you!
The growth in the grow beds sounds fantastic!
Have a good time at the wedding, get some more ideas for your own!

Steve - it sounds great - glad to see low nitrates is not a problem - especially with the veggies growing well.
Yes - I'd love to see some photos. My toms are very tall now - lots of green growth but not heaps of flowers. Hopefully they put out lateral branches with more blossom?

picture will probably be delays until tomotrrow now, reets pissed off with the camera!

J my tommies are'nt so tall as what they are a bush. Not wanting to depart from the laziness i had shown till now, i never staked them or tied them up. Don't look as nice, but sill lots of fruit

Steves back how did the system survive the holidays we know steve was farley RS on the last day

wow, missed this one!

System was rock solid on the holiday.

melb. had five 30C+ and i think two 35C+ days, and the chock-a-block grow bed including 3 tommies drank approx 200 lt in the week. Not bad!

Changes are afoot here............HSM of course, there's no other way to do it!

Helped out soon to be BIL set up his first AP system. When it was done he went for a drive to Kanga grounds and picked up 10 silvers for him, and 5 silvers + 4 murry cod for me!

Slight confusion with orders, i only wanted 1 murry cod, so i'm in a bit of a bind with what to do with them! (don't stress, soon to be BIL )

i dumped them in an existing 120L aquarium that housed 1 convict with no filter, just air stones. I had NO idea of the water chemistry, but had no choice.

1 day later they were still sitting on the bottom looking sorry for themselves. Tested water tonight and was surprised to find ph at 7.2 and ammonia at zero. Nitrites were at almost 5ppm though, that explains the sad fish!

Changed out about 50% of the water and added salt (to help with nitrite)

My plan now is to move all my baby silver perch (20 odd) and my cat fish (probably another 15 odd) out to my IBC

I can then move the 4 cod to the indoor aquarium after putting my yabbie in the tank that the cod are now in.

the convicts can stay in the cod tank..........FINNALY a way to ensure population control!

Its been a few hours since the water change and cod are already looking much happier, i'll have to leave dim light on though, as when i switch it off i think they try and hunt the lone convict and the tank rocks.

MAN are they a strong fish! and their "only" about 250g to 300g

Well, the baby silvers + kanga ground silvers + tandanus have all been moved to the outdoor system and are looking happy.

4 Murray cod have a new home in the computer room 4 foot aquarium and are getting alond reasonably well, two of them punch on every now and then.

i'll be putting into effect the "winter mode" soon as the weather seems to be getting erratic, low of 11C forcast for over night to a high of 27C tomorrow

I'll be digging up a bubbler (i seem to have a never ending supply of them) and putting an air stone or two into the tank so i can switch the pump off between sunset and sunrise to minimise on the heat loss through the growbed. The IBC actually hold the temp quite well i think its more the heat exchange though the metal bath tub that kills the temps on cold nights.

I've got far more tommies from the three plants that i can handle so i give them away when ever a friend comes over and the chooks enjoy ones that have over ripened!

As i'm running on an auto siphon the water level in the beds will sit where the AP gods decide on a nightly basis when the pump turns off.

What are peoples thoughts about this?
will the plants roots being submerged in water for 12 hours be ok? I think they will, surely they cant extract all the o2 in that time.

If it turns out that i'll be better off with them "dry" (moist, rather ) then i plan on drilling a single 3mm hole in the very bottom of the inner stand pipe which will allow the water left in the bed at pump turn off to slowly trickle out back to the tank.

basil is also more than i can give away. Made a great tommy juice the onther night, 7 very ripe tommies plus 20 odd basil leaves all blended up! Was a bit thick but tasted niiiiiiice.

Steve - I have been thinking about this for my own system. What I am going to try is having a smallish hole at the bottom of the inner pipe. I don't think this will interfere too much with the sipon - but if the pumps go off - water will slowly drain back to the sump in my case or tank in others cases.

ehehehehehe, now who's speed reading posts huh huh? LOL

did you do anything else for the tommie juice. I have spare capacity of both and hadn't thought about tom juice.