Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The link to my member's thread is in my signature, right under the link to my Facebook page where there are bunch more pictures.

And for what it's worth, my system is a scaled down version of a commercial system you can find here:
https://www.facebook.com/islandaquaponics

I'll measure the feed before I feed them this evening and let you know.

20-30 grams twice per day for 40-60 grams total per day. Zero if the water temp drops below 50 degrees F. They don't eat then anyway.

Thanks for the reply Jeff.

I wondered what the name of that media was as it looks similar to the media in the Bright Agrotech tower videos. In their post on biological surface area for media ( http://verticalfoodblog.com/biological- ... quaponics/ ) they rated that stuff as having more biological SA than sand, so if it is physically similar maybe that could help answer Stuart's question?

Anyway for our system though we're really just filtering to try to keep the water into the channels clean - but I imagine any extra BSA would generally be a good thing. We couldn't get a hold of any food grade plastic 44 gallon drums before we decided to start building (impatience, not any real constraint ) so at the moment we're just using 3 40L filters (RFF, Brush, Shade Cloth) before the channels. When we rebuild the filters I might replace the shade cloth one with some of that media instead as it looks significantly less likely to clog up.

Wouldn't mind playing around with DWC/Rafts as well but as some others pointed out already in the thread we're probably going to be pushing things as it is. If we can get this system producing maybe we'll just start another separate system, along the back of the house this time

At least you're not building Mars Rovers Stu.

You know one of them stopped working because the team in charge of landing and the team in charge of the flight were using different measuring systems. One was using metric and the other imperial. So when it went in to land it provided the distance in feet say 90 feet to the ground but the code that interpreted that distance was reading meters. So it thought it was still 90 meters (but actually around 30m) above the ground and thereby slammed the lander into the ground.

A few hundred million down the drain because people don't talk enough.

(Well this is what is thought happened.)

Which rover? The operational lifespan of them has far exceeded the intended operational lifespan.

I've got a memory of them losing one on landing a few years ago.

Could this be what you're speaking of?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Clima ... of_failure

Far out. Looks like a whole series of errors.

Orbiter, not rover.

Hmmm Gee sorry Ron. I should have got my PhD on the orbiter/rover definitions before writing my post.

Sorry, our space program went from our governments crown jewel, to a redheaded stepchild. I blame the space shuttle program. The Mars rover program has been important to restore public faith in NASA.

Yeah I read somewhere that the shuttle program put civilian access to space back by 35 years. I liked the idea of it but it wasn't very practical.

I love the Mars Rover program. It is a thing of beauty. Did you watch them assemble the one? There was a live feed on a website where you could literally watch them build it over a period of many months. It was very cool. I also put my name on one of them. There was a NASA website where you could enter your name and it would be carried in a memory chip on the rover. It was awesome. Did it for my son and wife too. I was glad they didn't ask for my address. Didn't really want a Martian pitching up at my house to collect me and my family.