Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi All

After lurking in the background for a while, i have found some time to write an introduction.
We are living in the hills in Perth and have been into aquaponics for approximately three years.


Our system currently consist of:

Fish
~ 7kl in-ground fish pond with ~100 koi (this doubles as the sump)
1 IBC with 50 trout
1 IBC with 50 Silver Perch
Water is circulated between the three system (in an unconventional way!)

Growbeds
- 9 grow beds made from pine posts - 240cm X 60cm x 30cm(deep), these are lined with pond liner - with auto syphons.
- 2 growbeds are used for deep raft system
- 10 halfbarrels - with auto syphons
- 5 halfbarrels with fruit trees (dwarf peach) on cycle timer 60 on/15 of

Pumps
- A 20kl/h jebao pump (~200W) - have been running for 3 years - very pleased with this pump.
- 3 X 2.5 kl/h 24V DC brushless pumps - from solar - to oxygenate the water in the IBC's and run the fruit tree system


Solar system
This system is a recent addition and is three months old, it consist of
- 2 X250W + 1 X 200W solar panels
- 2 X 200 ah deep cycle batteries
This system runs the 3 DC pumps. (day and night).

Note - the Jebao pump is on mains power. The plan is to change fully to DC - running from solar - once i have figured a way to do this cheaply!


What we grow
Successfully - Corn, cabbage, Beetroot, cantaloupes, cauliflower, strawberries, tomatoes, salads, chinese cabbage, chilies, bell peppers, beans, garlic, cucumber, silver beet, radish

Unsuccessfully - onion, leeks, pumpkin & squash

Others
- I modified an old cat feeder to feed the trout
- Have rigged cheap lights and buzzer as an alarm (to monitor mains & battery power)
- Use an old fish pond filter as prefilter for the deep raft beds
- I use the effluent from the prefilter in the orchard - it makes avocado trees tap-dance!
- I check pH approximately once a week (if i remember). If pH below 6, i add a handful of woodash to one of the growbeds which brings it up to around pH 6.2
- I add iron when we see leaves yellowing
- At the end (or start of the season) when i remove fish, i sometimes add calcium nitrate (or a handful of chicken poop) as a booster.
- I spray all my veggies with Dipel at least once a week - else the caterpillars leaves me nothing
- We had a bumper peach crop for two years in a row but the fruit fly leaves me nothing. I have unsuccessfully tried poisoned lures. Next spring i plan to cover the individual fruit with net . If anyone knows of an aquaponics friendly fruit-fly spray I would love to hear.
- Had no success with power inverters. Three failed within a week. Am now sticking to DC pumps for the solar system. Also - use brushless DC pumps - bilge pumps will fail
- The system provides nearly all our "in season" veggies. We freeze, dry or bottle if we have excess crop




Photos
a) The koi pond and growbeds





b) Blue barrel grow beds to left and pine beds to the right



c) Dwarf peach trees

Extensive! And looking good. Welcome aboard Gabe!

Awesome setup you have there Gabe.

Holly dooly!!!!

You just never know whats going to pop up. Well done, great system and design you have there.

That makes my lurking seem pretty lame...
Very impressive indeed!

Choice place and awesome system!

Gabe, we grow organic cherries and various other fruit and have sewn up large bags from 50% shade cloth to protect the fruit from Qld Fruit Fly. Mostly the bags are big enough to cover a branch or 2, but now I sew up bags to cover whole trees. The largest of them for the apricot tree is 4.5m across and 3.6m high. A few different birds chew holes through them to get to the fruit, so I also use Cera Traps to catch the Fly. These are vastly better than Dak Pots and other commercial and home brew fry traps lures, by a factor of hundreds, as proven by tests we have done here.

Hi Gabe, welcome to the forum . Great looking and impressive setup you have.
Them hills look mighty familiar If it is where I think it is it is a great place to live
Cheers
Marc

Welcome Gabe, nice tidy setup there. here seems to be a few APers in the hills, I know of at least two others within a km of me whose setups I can see from the road butt I have no idea if they are on here.

Thanks Marc

I was speaking to Troutman a while ago when he came to deliver some trout and and he says that these hills are one of his best clients

Gabe

Thanks Gunagulla. I am using Cera Traps and will definitely give the shade cloth covers a go next spring.

Ps - your hydronics heating system is very impressive. It give me ideas


Gabe

Welcome Gabe - that is one kick ass system. Good to here the peaches go well - have you ever tried any other types of fruit trees such as papaya?

Would like to know a bi more about the DC pumps you run - I'm in the process of setting up a solar system and plan on using 12v brushless DC pumps.

Hi mattyoga


I have grown banana successfully but the frost got to it before i could get a harvest
The roots were very invasive though.


I also planted a small pip grown avocado but it died soon afterwards


I have been running the following ebay special pumps successfully for approximately 3 months.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/24V-DC-Brush ... cb5&_uhb=1



Note - My solar system is set up as 24V (i.e. two batteries in series) to reduce the thickness of wire required.

I found them quite sensitive to dirt so have diy'ed a sponge prefilter for each of them.

Have been happy with their performance but three months is still relatively short period.

They are available in 12v and smaller volumes.

Stay away from bilge pumps, they are made for intermittent use. I learned that the expensive way


Regards

Gabe

What voltage are you running them on? In the FAQ is this:

>2.Can i connect it on my solar panel?

Yes, you can, but you should make sure the output voltage of your solar panel stable and less than DC24V, or it will damage the pump.
------------------------

That makes it completely useless for a 24 volt PV system, which typically operates in the 24.5-30V range, unless you are using some sort of additional voltage regulation.

Gday Gabe

nice size system you got there, nice view too



i had mixed results using pillow cases over bunches of fruit on my apricot tree last year (they are very cheap at the sammies) Heard one of the gardening blokes on the radio saying once that he does everything pesticide free in his veggie patch and though he has tried and tried he resorts to spraying his fruit trees .... not exactly what you want to hear i know.

Cheers
pete