Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looks good. Are you going to paint the fish tank covers? Looks like galvanised (possible toxic to fish) fence panels.

Cheers

The panels sit above the water line so should not be an issue... I am going to paint them black as they will be almost invisable from the balcony above the black pond liner.

Dont forget that anything above the pond will drip water into it when it rains. You are already painting it, so it doesnt matter, but that gal would eventually lead you too heartache.

Looks great though. I very nice view from the balcony

Build is coming along very nicely FF, good work mate!

Thanks Myst.

Have planted some seeds directly into the GB's. snake beans, parsely, pumpkin, chinese cabage,

Goldsih seems very happy as do the tadpols that have recently been changing into frogs... The kids love it

lol, careful with your generosity mate, we rescued a few hundred tadpoles last year that turned into frogs. Well, those frogs have found loving homes in every down pipe, bucket, shed, air conditioner, and nook in the yard... its really quite deafening in the rain now!

Well things have certainly progressed.
I now have my fish and they appear to all be doing well… all 50 of them! The barramundi are fun to feed and they have given me a new lift in the build.

I have 4 IBC grow beds all with a flood and drain bell siphon set up and working. They were deceptively finicky to setup but I got there in the end. My grow beds are some 5-10 meters away from the pond (so you don't see them from the house,) and this made the return water hard. Not enough head to get the water back quickly. I got around that last weekend when I installed an IBC sump. Photos to come.

There have been a considerable amount of rain over the last month. more than 600mm and the PH has stayed quite stable at 7.5. all the other readings are rock solid too.

I have set up a skim finger and bio filter that uses air stones to draw water from the bottom of the pond though with the four gbs i don't think I need to bio filter.

Since the fish have arrived the seedlings have started to kick which is exciting. so I have planted the rest out though only with seeds.

I will post some new pictures this weekend. for those interested.

cheers

Hi All,

today was a real test here in Darwin. We had a blackout that lasted more than 11 hours at our place….. I did not have a back up power for my system and although I was lucky enough not to loose fish i know friends who did. My barra got a white stress line through their forehead and were all at the top of the pond. The only thing that saved me was that I graded my fish over the weekend. I moved the smaller fish (180mm-210mm into one pond and the larger fish 210-270) into the lower of my two ponds. Without the water circulating and if all the fish were in one tank they would surely have run out of oxygen.

What I found interesting is that they all started the same 12cm and now there are some significantly different sizes.
Anyway during the grading process I was having trouble catching the fish. I had my eco-friendly landing net and had caught 10 out of the 50 but could not catch any more. I then resorted to the cast net I have for catching bait fish. The first cast I threw was deliberately small and only caught 10 fish. They came out no fuss and I thought as a result that this was going to be a safe way to catch them…. this was wrong!! and now I know not to use it in the pond. The second cast I covered a lot more of the pond catching at least 20 fish. They got distressed and developed the stress lines and spent alot of energy ramming the het to get out. Sadley, and much to my own distress I lost 4 fish. They were all above 22cm and as i had some friends coming for tea I cooked them up and there was an o.k outcome but I got a reality check in this process. The rest I caught with my wife and a fruit tree net that we used to coral them into a corner before I scooped them with my landing net.

I now have a couple of missions….How do I go about setting up a backup power supply for the air? I have a 240V 80L air pump ( I think it is over the top)
I have approx 7500-10000L( a bit hard to calculate the actual pond dimensions.)

How do people catch big fish from their systems? I anticipate these will get to 40-50cm and the pond is one 2m by 3m…



I guess I am at the stage where I am o.k if people want to check it out. i will post some picks… but if in the darwin Area please feel free to drop me a line and then come on over.

Currently eating,
snake beans,
spring onions
amaranth
mint
kankong


flowering
Cucumbers,
tomates
beans

growing
Coral lettuce
Chinese cabbage (just eaten by grubs but may make it back)
rocket

Cheers Members

Look up Chainsaws 12 v backup system and you can check back through my thread as well. I followed chainsaw and used a relay. 12 v air pump and battery. When power goes off the relay opens and the 12 v pump starts. Was getting near 10 hours out of the battery during the night.

All so had a cheap $50 750w generator. Would run the generator for 3 hours during the day, this would run my main pump, air pump and smart battery charger. In other words the system run normal time. Turn it of for 1 hour to cool down before refilling and the 12 volt system kicked in. Start the generator for another 3 hours then repeat.

This went from 6 am to about 7 pm then let the 12 volt pump run all night. Take in mind that our power was out for nearly six days in a row last year. Did not lose one of my 100 fish, very happy even with cold washing and meals. Cheers

Hey thanks for that ccbear. I will now have to get serious about bakc up power... It is amazing taking on a project like this what skills you find you need to develop..

Hello Henry

How are things? Do you have any updates on your system?

Cheers

Oliver

I love your ponds. Wish I knew how to build like that. Good luck!