Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looks awesome mate.
That jar of water shows one potential issue.... Your floor or whatever it is sitting on is not level

na, i have a busted knee! could have been me on the lean!

I think I will be referring often to the video I downloaded - the construction is complex enough that I want to be sure to get it right - early on there was a thread (on here I think) about someone who took their teim building a kit GH and got winds overnight that destroyed it. Don't want that happening to mine.

It works!!!

After a day of sorting out some little flooding issues, and a dodgy aquabridge, we turned it over and its running beautifully.

Both fish tanks are balancing every time, and the water flow is better than i had anticipated. So, we can say it’s officially a two fish tank/one pump system!!

And it is near silent running! Very Happy indeed.

Now……what to put in the second tank!! Trout?…Murray Cod?…Tandus Cat’s?…all of the above?

I will give the whole thing a good clean up and post up some new photos on Monday next week!

This weekend it's the new Grow Beds!!

Good stuff mate!!

got any vids of it working?

Yep for sure, Will Do!

Wow, what a day.
Took off for Glenwaters Native Fish Farm today to fill the second tank,
When i pulled up it was a very very hot and gusty 35DegC and a lot of nervous people out there I can tell you that. It may be the 4th anniversary of King Lake fires, but the memories of such a tragedy still linger.
I meet some very nice people who have been in the business a very long time who were kind enough to take the time out from loading a car with 25 (!!!) boxes of live fish (!!!) for a customer!!! Huge! Hundreds and Hundreds! :-)
But as for me, I came away with twenty nice dark coloured Tandus cats and 10 Murray Cod Fingerlings! I am a little apprehensive at my first time with these fish, however i came away well assured that if i kept them well fed and housed that i (and they) would be fine....!
It was a HOT trip back home, 37DegC and blowing a gale when i pulled up, and although the car is climate controlled, very anxious for my new charges.
But, all present and accounted for.
With only a cursory acclimatising in the tanks, because the bags were already imploding from the heat, in went the fish.
15 Tandus should be a match for the 15 Perch and 5 'sacrificial' Tandus went into the cod tank, the second tank. An experimentation in co-species tanks.
SO! all's well that ends well......
.........You would think that to be a well enough day, but ooooh no, not by a long shot!!!
When i got home and put the Cod bag into the other tank, i saw a fish.
huh!?!?
Yes...a Perch was in tank 2.
So, i looked in Tank 1....nothing. empty. not one fish.
It appears that every one of them made it UP the water return en mass, and into the sump, and that is where i found them swimming merrily in very small circles.
So, out goes the perch back to where they were meant to be, mesh over the pipes and in went the cat fish.
And what of the lone ranger that made it to the other side.....he remains there.
To darn small to catch!!!!

I had to cap the end of my 90mm SLO and rely on the 5mm perimeter holes (Single row) to stop Jade fingerlings swimming up my pipe and getting spat out on the growbed. Now they are bigger and off comes the cap and the SLO is back to normal.

Little buggers!

I always leave my fry/fingerlings in a floating basket for a month or so till they put a bit of wieght on. Tiny 4-5mm fish can easily get sucked up pipes, into pumps or eaten by yabbies etc

Glad to hear they are all ok.

sounds like a fun day then. i was wondering how long it would take for your fish to use the water bridge... not long by the sounds of it!!

Ok, nearly finished.

Almost there, we got the centre frame in this weekend with four more Grow beds.

Now to wash the scoria and seed the beds with established bacteria from a sacrificial bed.

We began fitting a trellis over the new beds in preparation for the eventual tomatoes and grapes,

Came up really well and i am eager to get it operational!

The Tandus/Murray Cod experiment has yielded no obvious casualties with both species appearing to have found their own territories, just have to wait to see hoe they go as the individuals get bigger

The Tandus/Silver Perch is muuuch better this time around! All present and accounted for.

The Mussels had to be moved and now live happily in the sump basket.

The Yabbies however remain in the pond!

Soooo very close to being finished, just a couple of small jobs to do now and it will be time to crack open a pint.....!

Beautiful as always Porter.

Hi Charlie! Thanks Mate,

Another late night last night, and another step closer to the finish line,
The scoria is washed and in, seeded with the sacrificial established GB, and tomorrow night i will add it to the system and let it run, the filters will take care of the rest.

Tonight however, the restrictors for the siphons are to be made and silicon the leaking bits,
finish the trellis and that should be that!

Nice neat looking system Porter.

Sometimes the answer lays right before your eyes, and sometimes fate gives you time to work it out for yourself before it prods you in the tush. In my case, it took a little time.
It has been my stoic belief that there was more performance available in the greenhouse, more to be extracted from it, however I could not see how, I knew all the pieces were there and I knew it was capable, but not how to do it.

I can tell you now, there were fair few sheets of A4 flung firmly and vigorously over the left shoulder with failed ideas scribbled about on it with my trusty HB pencil, and it was one of those moments of desperation that I accidently threw my HB firmly and vigorously over my left shoulder.
As I looked up hoping that an airborne HB would appear to be a normal everyday occurrence, there in front of me was the answer, an email on my laptop, a notification that a blog that I follow had added a new post.

Queues prod in the tush!

The business is called Earthan Group http://www.earthangroup.com.au/ and Paul Van der Werf is the man behind the new design to our greenhouse.
I had been following Paul's website for quite a while along with his YouTube videos and Facebook updates and loved his work.
Clearly articulated, well written and professionally presented.
So, after sending an initial email to Paul outlining the system, what I was trying to achieve and if would he take a moment to have look, I had the opportunity to spend an hour on the phone with him. And true to the confidence I had in him, he came up with the basis for the current set up.
With Paul’s advice, we were then able to take us from a one producing tank with an equal sized sump, into the new two fish tank and sump/solids filter system and tripling our safe fish keeping ability.
Balancing both tanks using our aquabridges was the stickler, and after three weeks of testing and adjusting the design, today we integrated the four new growbeds into the two fish tank/one water pump system seamlessly. The system coped beautifully with the extra water flow both into and out of the grow beds, both filters and all aquabridges held wonderfully and all siphons tripped without incident. The event took place without a single issue.

The integration of the aquaculture principals in mechanical filtration working alongside the organic filtration of the growbeds can only enhance the quality of the water that is returned to my fish, and in turn the quality of the water that is used to feed what we will ultimately eat.

I highly recommend taking the time to have a look at the Earthan Group website and subscribe to the updates, they are so very much worth it for produce growers and fish farmers alike.

Our gratitude goes out to Paul for all his assistance in bringing the Heretical Green House to the next level of professionalism and production.