Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Definitely start getting more grow beds online fast as you can. You don't want your fish getting ahead of you!!!!!

I would definitely not wait to try to do the whole project all at one time, anytime you have the ability, get another bed online. I've seen so many people get carried away with having too much fish tank space that they tend to fill it up with small fish thinking, "oh I have time, they are only little fish" and then as they get big and the new grow beds are not online yet the water quality can suddenly take a nose dive and in some cases I've seen whole batches of fish lost.

Heck, I've personally learn the lesson about not over stocking the hard way, too many fish and not enough filtration is a bad combo. Now I don't have experience with the same kind of fish you guys have down under but so far in my time here on the forum, many of the lessons seem to be the same.

Good Luck, I like the expansion and I love to see backyards taken over by food production!

the three beds that are ready will be online and cycling off the first GB/Small SP by next monday, if what I remember is correct i can stock about 10 plate size fish per GB of that size so am well under stocking limits,

Good, so only add more fish as you have growbeds online for them!

I always worry for people who stock the fish before the grow beds are online, or people who stock to the fish tank size regardless of filtration.

It's good to hear you are a sane person!

i only have 26 Silvers by accident i ordered 20 to split with a mate then his tank went south so i ended up with all of them and they gave us extra, lucky they where only 3-4cm when i got them.

Well handy you now have more growbeds going online!

i wasn't really to worried about the 26 as they where so small and it was going into winter, heaps of time to upgrade or offload if need be. now to be ready for warm weather and Barra.

How often do people clean out the roots in Grow Beds and what is the best way to do it?

I do it when I move... which is every couple of years...

I'll often do it after long term and/or large root ball crops...

Fill the bed with water... and just keep turning the media over... removing the bulk of the roots...

Dump the water... and repeat...

Just make sure you isolate the bed so that the water isn't returned to the fish tank/sump...

Thanks Rupert

Thats what I did when i moved the bed thought, the parcly had a huge root mass that would have gone unoticed if I didnt move it, once I removed the plants I kept finding roots, really couldnt bileve how many where in there.

If you are running an average backyard system and you have twice as much grow bed volume as you have fish tank volume and you don't over stock...........

You may not really need to "clean out" grow beds. Some plants may over do the action with the roots though as there are some beasts of plants. For beds I've had completely root bound when the plant was finally removed I simply added some extra worms and pulled out as much of the root ball as would come with the main stem and then left the bed fallow till the roots broke down enough that I could dig in the gravel again to plant.

But as Rupe Noted about himself. I also MOVED so I never had any grow beds that were undisturbed for more than 5 years. But when I moved, I didn't re-wash the gravel and I didn't put any great effort into removing roots.

The real trick is to have enough gravel bed to accommodate the amount of solids from the fish as well as the slow root break down of the plants. When I pull things out I will pull out the main root ball but I'm not going to spend time digging through the whole bed looking for the fine roots that break off. If a bed seems to be getting too root clogged, it may be time to leave it be with some worms for a bit or plant something that will be a bit less aggressive with the roots for a bit. Ya know, change things up, sort of rotational planting for aquaponics?

Beware the root beast plants though. Things that are more perennial or invasive, or huge. Mint, Banana, bamboo, and Lufa are ones I've personally experienced issues with roots clogging or even breaking grow beds.

Yep, leaving a bed fallow for awhile is certainly beneficial IMO...

Cheers guys,

Sounds like planting my beds in a rotation might be a good idea, pulling the parsley and things with invasive roots out every 6-9 months as thats all it had been in this bed for and it had such a large root mass that i removed about 3/4 of the root before i put it back in the bed.

Found one SP floating in the sump tank this morning, that means it went through three bottom drains to get there, just over 8cm but skinny so not the largest or smallest, didn't have time to check water quality before work but i havnt feed them since they got moved on sunday arvo so doubt its Amm, they have a constant air flow and pump is running on 15/45, is it unusual for trauma from a move to take a few days?

The dead silver perch might cause an ammonia spike however... Have you salted up?

Yep water is at 2ppt, checked all peramaters when i got home and everything is normal except PH up about 0.5 to be expected after Quadrupling the water quantity, did bring the tanks on one day apart each by moving the pump to try and reduce the shock, i have this feeling that the water will be a redish sort of colour for for a few weeks after i start bringing the new beds online tonight as this scoria rock is really hard to clean.