Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Tomato grub pic was taken with a Nikon D200 with 105mm Micro Nikkor lens, at close to 1:1. I took it hand held, which makes it hard to get the focus just right... I really should get the tripod out

As long as you are careful to make sure not to add so much B&B that it causes an ammonia spike it probably is kinda similar to a heavy feeding of the fish. I'm sure like fish feed the B&B is a somewhat slow release fertilizer.

A couple of hail storms (hail stones up to 35mm) this arvo with strong wind shreded some of the chard and snapped some more stems of various plants including the rampant tomatoes... the chooks had a good feed!

I've got an array of various mouse and rat traps set around the greenhouse, which have caught 2 mice in the past 3 nights, before they had a chance to eat any more of my wheat. More food for the chooks!

I've picked a few strawberries in recent weeks, and to be frank, they are rather disappointing. A few early ones tasted nice, but recently they've been rather watery and tasteless. The plants that I've picked them from have been receiving less sun in recent weeks as the greenhouse roof provides more shade with the sun climbing higher in the sky, and also, other plants have grown up around them, reducing the direct sun hours.
I suspect most of the flavour/texture problem is due to lack of direct sun, so I'll be moving some to more favourable locations soon, after I remove some of the chard plants.

Update on the portable AC I was trying to have modified to cool the AP system water ... cancelled. The AC shop still has not done anything with it, and every time I ask how much they reckon it will cost it gets higher, initially I told them I didn't want to spend any more than $500 and they thought that would be ok, 2 weeks ago they said it might be $600, and yesterday when I called again to see if any progress had been made, they told me it might be $800 or more, so I told them to forget it, as a brand new commercial water chiller might only cost me about $1200... which I dont have, so for now I'll just keep making ice to use on hot days and keep it going for as long as I can.

Interestingly, I was looking through my copy of What Fish Is That by Lance Wedlick, published 1969, yesterday, and he states that "Rainbows prefer fast turbulent water in the range of 59 to 80F (15 - 27C), with a max of 83F (28C) if the water has enough dissolved Oxygen", so I might revisit electrolysis to produce some O2, although I wont be able to do it in the tank directly as I have been unable to locate any fish-safe electrode material.

I think I read somewhere that the core material in disposable batteries makes for a good electrode for oxygen and hydrogen generation. I always thought it might be interesting to use hydrogen's lightness to overcome head height issues in vertically integrated farming. At the very bottom have an electrolysis setup, then from the hydrogen side, have a tube that takes it up to the top where an energy cell recombines it with oxygen to make fresh pure water, and recover some of the energy used in the initial separation. If course that water would be a tad too pure, so it would have to be introduces in amounts that would not be detrimental to the fish. Perhaps there would also be an air pump to pump the oxygen from the electrolysis into the fish tank too. Who knows, it might be a bit too Rube Goldberg, then again, it might work. If the energy input ends up being less than a traditional pump, than it might be a good thing. That however is the big if, because we all know that electrolysis is lossy.

Yes electrolysis is very inefficient, (not a concern for my situation as I have some spare PV panels), but I'd say a show stopper for the idea of using it to shift H2 for recombination, is the hideously expensive cost of fuel cells.

It hasn't been too hot this past week, so I have not had to add any ice until today, 27kg up to 11am, and the air temp reached 31C shortly afterwards, on its way to 33 or 34C I suspect, depending on how much more cloud builds up.
The trout ate 2340g of 7mm pellets this week(av 334g/day), and it took 75g Ca(OH)2 and 300g KOH to keep the pH around 6.7.
I added 100ml of Seasol on 27/10, and harvested some celery and brocolli, and a couple of reasonably large beetroots, plus heaps of chard for the chooks. Mice ate some of my wheat, so I'll harvest it today, although some heads are not quite ripe.
I was a bit slack in adding water to counter evaporation and the spike to 1.24ppt salinity shows when the sump was so low that the pump was sucking a fair bit of air when I checked in the morning. The rather useless float switch didnt stop it, despite being on the floor of the sump, although just a little bit higher than the pump base, as I'd dug a slight cone shape into the clay under the sump when installing it to maximise available water for the pump.



Trout not very hungry today, so I just added another 14kg ice.

I took a short video of the trout feeding at second breakfast this morning, posted on http://gunagulla.com just under the most recent greenhouse pic at the top, or more directly, here:
http://gunagulla.com/organic/images/Vid ... 31107a.wmv (20.3MB)
Apologies for the slightly crap image quality of the phone camera, but the rainbow colours of the trout show up quite nicely here and there... watching several times and pausing often is the best way to see everything.

After detecting an attack from the sky, Plant Armageddon was averted by installation of large nets over each end of the greenhouse today, plus another net installed over the outside GB#8 yesterday. Fortunately I was outside very early yesterday morning and noticed when about 10 King Parrots discovered the chard and brocolli and corn, before they did too much damage, and I had to interrupt net sewing and keep chasing them off when they returned throughout the day. They have finished off the cherries I didn't bother to cover up due to being so sparse and small - thanks to the very warm and dry weather since June, and are starting to chew through the shade cloth nets to get to the protected fruit on the trees with a reasonable amount of fruit, but the AP system was an easy, and new for them, target.

A warmer week meant I needed some ice additions -41kG on 3/11, 66kg 8/11, 45kg 9/11
The trout ate 1960g (av 280g/day) of 7mm pellets during the week, down on last week, no doubt due to the higher temperatures.

55g Ca(OH)2 and 155g KOH were added to maintain about pH 6.7, alkali additions being down quite a bit on the previous week due to less feeding.




As previously mentioned, I had to protect everything from marauding King Parrots, but unfortunately that prevents all the small insect eating birdsm such as Superb Fairy Wrens and various finches and Honeyeaters, from getting to the plants as well, as well as pollinating insects, so some hand pollination may be required, and extra bug patrols, and the application of some Dipel today.

I planted a banana passionfruit and a black passionfruit on 4/11, and might put in a couple of the blueberries that are really struggling in the dirt as well soon, after I make some space by pulling some more chard.
In a few days there will be plenty of brocolli ready to harvest

Blueberries and passionfruit? I will be following that very closely

I noticed at our old place that chicken wire is likely to keep large birds in/out but small birds seem to go right through it. Not sure if your beneficial small birds are small enough for entry/exit through that kind of netting. Definitely beneficial and not so beneficial bugs can go through the chicken wire or even smaller bird netting.

Yes, some of the smaller insect eating birds can fit through netting, as can all the moths and various other pests I want to keep out... so I think I'll just leave it enclosed for now, although some inquisitive birds may be able to find their way in through a couple of non-obvious gaps, but I doubt they will.

It sounds like you need some guinea fowl.

Apart from eating snakes what else do those guinea fowl do?