Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Nice system mate good to see some things can be passed on second hand for others to enjoy.

Would love to get my hands on a secound hand system like this or a little bigger. Where did you come accross it ???

welcome to the world of AP the kids should sure enjoy it to and learn alot from it.

I think I would have just cleaned the roof or replaced it with new clear plastic to keep the rain out of the GB's and protect the plants during storms.

They come up from time to time on gumtree. Patience is key. There is currently a 4 bed for 3.8k which is not bad if that's the size you're after

The roofing material was quite opaque and not letting a lot of light through, so I didn't want to leave it up. I will think about a new one but the $ are the equation, and it seems to be working fine at the moment

hi cherrypicked. welcome to aquaponics.
this looks like caterpillar frass (poo). suggest looking for the culprit, which could be green and look like the leaf. it may also be a caterpillar that is hiding in the gravel so you may need to come out at night to find it when it feeds. i would also spray with dipel to kill any brothers and sisters it/they may have and any others that come along.

Thanks Marc, I'll take another look and get some dipel. I have already seen green caterpillars on the tomato plant ( and in a couple of the tomatoes), but will take a closer look on the rocket

almost certain it will be the cabbage white buttefly then. they are an eating machine. if it is, you should be able to pull off all the big ones and let the dipel deal with the small ones.

Um, can't believe I am that unobservant. Maybe just 'boy looks' as I am told.



And on the new ones. They obviously just found these today. Aha. But I found them too. Thanks Marc



Thanks to tapatalk too. I was getting sick of emailing photos to myself to resize.

Does anyone know what the black area is in the forks of my capsicum plants?

Mine have the same spots and still seem to be doing fine so I haven't messed with them.

A normal part of the plant I think, they have it in dirt gardens too.

Thanks Gunagulla and jrl91rs re black forks.

Trying to sort out feeding. While I've often had a veggie garden this keeping fish thing is new. Initially I was putting in 3mm pellets whole, but worked out they were too big for small sp. So started crushing the pellets, but now I've got no clue what's being eaten or what is being sediment on the bottom. They just hide, don't show their faces, let alone go to eat food sitting on the surface.....I don't really know if they're eating the food at all!

So more recently I found Ruperts sp feeding strategy (viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8673&p=258149&hilit=Silver+perch+fingerling+pellet+size#p258149) and coupled with this http://www.fergusonsprings.com/Fingerli ... rices.html, giving me fish size I can work out the following:
Fish count:12 (still! Or at least I haven't found any dead ones, they swim too fast to count)
Estimated fish size:5cm~2g
Total Fish mass: 24g
Water temp range:20-26 deg C
Feed rate range: 5-10%
Daily feed rate: 1.2-2.4g
No. of feeds per day: 3-5
Amount per feed: 0.4-0.5g per feed
At least this gives me some gauge of how much to put in

So I have a few questions, as the fish are telling me nothing (then again you can see how observant I was with the caterpillars):
Have I worked that out right?
Is there anything that can be done with small sp to establish if I'm over feeding?
Are they best fed at day time? Early/late?
Can I just split the amount of feed into two, and feed at each end of the day?

Some pics

Some pretty average looking tomato leaves there. The newer ones look better - got some Dipel!





Why does it take pictures at 640x480 landscape but not portrait?
Why does tapatalk size to h=640 when max h =600?

Looks as though insects are wreaking havoc on your tomato plants.

Yes that's where it all started with the green caterpillars. All sorted now with Dipel