Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all I'll start off by saying a little bit about myself, my name is Josh, I'm 23 years old from Bundaberg. My girlfriend and I just finished landscaping the back yard and we have a little veggie patch area. We thought it would be great if we had our own aquaponics set-up. What we have so far is as follows:
*Pond: 2400L (we're thinking jade perch and/or catfish?)
*Grow bed: 2 beds at 2.4m x .7m x .3m and a third at 1m x 2m x .3m made out of treated pine and ply-board (maybe painted and seal yellow tongue?) with a pond liner (they're not built yet).

We are still in early stage of planning so I dare say it might change, but we are looking for some input! The pond does not have very much shade, it is black, and only 200 mm of it is underground. We are building a water feature so that the bottom of the pond will get enough oxygen for the fish as well as the water syphoning out of the grow beds. Will the pond get too hot? Is there anything else anyone of you could suggest? Cheers!

Welcome Josh... look forward to seeing the system come together...

You'll probably need to shade the pond... to stop algael growth... which will keep the pond a little cooler...

But most of our native fish like warm water.. up to about 30 degrees... so don't stress....

Hi and welcome to the forum, i like to system plan.

You will probably encounter algae issues with the FT open like that so maybe consider a shadehouse over it or even just a mesh cover with shadecloth on it. Even a nice jarrah cover would look good depending on how much you are willing to spend.

good luck and keep us posted.

WOW, your growbed layout is very similar to what I am currently in the process of building myself:



I have built the growbeds inside a greenhouse in nearly the same dimensions as yours:

sides of 2.3 x 0.8 x 0.3 m each
rear of 2.3 x 1.2 x 0.3 m

But I have my fish tanks under the growbeds in the ground to save on space and to hopefully help smooth out water temperature fluctuations. Each fish tank has 1,400 L (2,800L for both) connected plus the sump of 600L.

You can check out my progress on my public facebook photo album: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3810315629036.150342.1611849786&type=1&l=992e73400e

I will eventually get around to a proper thread of my own - but I wanted to share this as it is so similar to your setup.

I hope anything that I have done that you can see helps in your build - I'm adding photos every few days.

Thanks for the feedback I might try to put some shade cloth over it or some water lilies. Unitary, great minds think alike! Your progress so far is very impressive. Have you had any troubles with the treated pines bowing in the middle due to the weight? I'm still unsure about what type of wood to use. Thanks for the advice everyone! It's much appreciated

No problems with warping or bowing, I did however run supports under the raised growbeds just in case - everything is still nice and snug. I was using pine sleepers, 200x40mm - I was worried about the guts falling out into the ponds, but so far so good - touch wood.

looking good mate!!