Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

fish are cold and vegies are sad

will try and get some photos tomorrow

fish are cold and vegies are sad

will try and get some photos tomorrow

Some happy snaps for you folks with nothing better to do

It has been a bit hectic at work and i have barely had a chance to touch the system. As you can see in the plant conditions. The silvers are still healthy although their growth has slowed down due to the cold weather really coming in.

There really isn’t a huge amount to report, other than a few new herbs going in the side grow bed. You can see in the basil and english spinach that the iron levels are a little low. I have dosed it with a bit of seasol and iron chelate to try and help boost those levels.

Looks very healthy Ry-man. Nice!

Thanks mate. Goes to show how stable an established AP system is. I have not touched it in the last 6 weeks, other than a bit of food and a water top up. Any other garden and i would have been starting again.

Had my first go at making a youtube video today.

Critiques welcome

Also, i know its shit.

Critiques other than "its shit" welcome

You have bigger kahoona's than me Ry-man. I cant bring myself to do a narrated vid so high fives for that.

Ill give you a cool 3 out of 5 overall. 2 point for the nurries, 1 point for vid quality, 2 points for system awesomeness but minus 2 points for making me feel like I dropped acid when the fish swimming bit came on. So yea, 3 outta 5. Nice work.






p.s. how the crap do you grow carrots and beetroot! AAaaaaahhhhhhrgrrrgrggrg

Where are the shit bits??

P.S... nice water quality...

Haha thanks mate. That fish shot is about 3.5gb of photos and took nearly an hour to make. Got the old laptop chugging

How do you not grow them? Maybe because i only have clay on the top, but i have no probs with beets, onions etc. I am curious to see how the carrot is going to turn out...



Thanks Rup If you could see what i tried to get it to look like. I have a lot more to learn with the editing software and i think i should be able to produce some good quality vids For now you are all stuck with crappy slap togethers

Finally I got a chance to give some TLC to a rather neglected IBC system today. For the last few months it was getting nothing but fish food and water top ups. No new plants were added and nothing was really harvested. The time had come to try and get it back to its former glory.

Last week I took the time to plant a few seedlings into some coir peat pellets as a trial for growing my own seedlings in a controlled fashion. Often people will either sow their seeds directly into the grow media and hope for the best, or they start their seedlings in dirt and transplant them. I am hoping that using the coir peat pellets I will get greater control of plant location and remove the transplant stresses that can set a seedling back a week or more. Now that the seedlings are ready to put into the aquaponics system, it has forced me to tidy up the existing plants.

Some of the vegies like the beetroot and carrots just seemed to keep on growing, so rather than let them go for another 12 months, I decided it was time to harvest them and make the most of them. The largest of the two beetroot in the system was a monster, easily weighing in at 2 kg. The other beetroot was not far behind it. I also harvest all the garlic that was starting to show signs of being close to harvest time. Unfortunately one of the cloves had started to decompose but the rest were all harvested successfully. Finally the three carrots i put in there as a test were harvested. it looks like two of the carrots had grown so fat that they split up the sides and had started to get eaten by the worms. Straight into the worm farm they went. The third, which was the smallest appears to be OK.

I also had to wrangle the brahmi back under control after it tried to take over the grow bed again. The parsley was trimmed back a bit now it isn't getting choked out by the monster beetroot and a few bits of dead wood were removed. This left the grow bed nice and empty and ready for the seedlings. The seedlings are as follows; 4 x English spinach, a mixed colour chilli, 3 x dwarf beans, a gold zucchini and a green zucchini. Unfortunately the chilli and green zucchini didnt germinate, so I will have to reseed those two at a later date. Now it is time to play the waiting game and see how these seedlings go in the coir peat.

Hi Ryan great to have you back on the forum.
my god the beetroot gets a 10 out of 10 for awesomeness
luv the carrots but it looks like the worms were trying to cut out the middleman
how da fishies going?
your garlic looks great. when did you plant the cloves? i gotta give them a go next year. although i wouldn't mind giving elephant garlic a go as well.

Yea that beet is crazy.

Good to have a clean up and start fresh.

is that flat leafed plant in the last photo garlic chives

That single beet filled up two x 1 liter jars. I pickled that beast. No way I could eat it before it went bad

Yeah that is garlic chives Marc. It has been seeding like mad and there are chives springing up over the floor. Time for a split down the middle I think...

When I get home I will try and get another video of the fish. I really have to pull my finger out and get a handle on video editing...