Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm thinking of like a broke down rusted out truck with a tarp in the bed to act as liner for a fish tank. Think redneck hot tub but with fish instead of drunk guys.

Heck, if you put the grow beds in the cab of the truck and rolled the windows up it would be like a mini green house

Great stuff.

Ingenious construction on the automatic feeder. Does it ever get clogged at the bottleneck?

Do you have any aerators in your tank or does your bidirectional spray do good?

Unfortunately, it does get bottle necked every once in a while, pretty rare and you can shake it and it frees it up. My local feed store is trying to find me a smaller pellet food than the standard floating fish food you chunk in a pond.

As of right now the bidirectional is working fine, in the upcoming summer months, I am probably going to have to add some aeration.

east,

Is your feed store a purina dealer? They have a lot of options in the aquamax line of products. I havent seen a dealer yet that carries aquamax in the store but if you ask them they will order it for you.. Usually takes a week or two to come on the truck.


http://aquamax.purinamills.com/AquaMaxF ... lSheet.pdf

catfish are omnivorous but since i have so many carnivorous fish i just buy the 400-600..

for your situation, small diameter feed is probably ok.. when the catfish get big they will just hoover the surface pellets like a vacuum cleaner... but for most fish you want to move up in pellet size as the fish gets bigger.

Thank you Cotton that info was great. I dont remember directly if he does sell Purina, cause I feed all my dogs Diamond.

But I will check into it. If anything him or TSC can get it, just wonder how much they will inflate the price.

If I had to assume they are getting the 4.9 mm right now. They eat them fine, just have to pick at them for a while.

On another note, the strawberries look horrible after a night without water (fixing the leak), they all looked dead but now that the water is back before bed 50% were coming back to life. I opened some windows in the GH to give them some natural air and wind.

All other plants look great

Here is the reading for tonight, please chime in if you think I need to add or adjust anything: still a newbie



Plus can anyone add in what kind of bean this is? We found it cleaning through the gravel, and it is thriving, but I dont want to be over run.

I have grown green beans and peas in the past and I dont remember them every looking like this at first, unless I over looked it





The water has cleared so much recently, I am routing for the albino one!!!!

My friend said I was going to wake up one day and this would be the seed, dont know if y'all have ever seen this, but it was funny

Those test readings look pretty good to me.. pH is high but that is normal for newer systems and will eventually come down by itself. Mine was around 7.5-8 for a few months and then slid down over a year where now I have to add potassium hydroxide and lime to keep it from dipping below six which it wants to do all the time.
Your ammonia is zero or close from what I can tell from the photo which is probably the most important thing as your fish will tolerate nitrates and nitrite much more than they will high ammonia.

Just a tip about strawberries.. they do not tolerate salt very well apparently.. I have heard anything over 1ppt can cause problems so that is something to keep in mind if you ever need to salt your water because of fish illness (fish are more important but if you have 60-70 strawberry plants like I did you don't want to add salt unless you really have to especially since you usually need to dose to at least 3ppt for fish illnesses)

Well, guys I think I made up my mind

I think I am going to get another tote and move the fish tank to the inside of the shop to keep it out of direct heat all summer. I cut the current fish tank and convert it to another grow bed in the same spot.

For the mean time do you think the way I have it setup now, with pump in bottom of fish tank pumping to beds is acceptable, or should I consider redesigning that system?

Any advice would be appreciated

Your design is acceptable.

I would do it a little differently but that's just personal preference.

I dont like having the pump in the fish tank because if plumbing breaks it can empty your fish tank. Also i have damaged/killed fish with my pump when it's really cold outside because they were lethargic.Of course i had taken the guard off the pump because it kept getting clogged so maybe that's more my own poor decision than bad design

also, i choose not to do the strawberry tower's or nft because of the heat... trickling small amounts of water through 4" pipes in july/august texas heat is like running your fish tank water through a radiator. Ideally you would keep the water temps below 80.. but realistically in texas you are trying to keep it below 90.

Good point on the towers. Didn't even think about that, maybe I will start them and when the August heat hits I can just transfer them to out door raised beds I have and eliminate the tower till cooler weather arrives.

Hopefully with a pipe failure or pump failure the floating shut off switches I have to install will help.

I would say in the middle of the summer the inside of the shop stays roughly 10-15 degrees cooler than the outside, and wont get to the extreme inside temps of the green house

What kind of food are you using? I'm using Tractor supply Sportsman Choice Trophy but might make the switch to Aquamax.

Yes they certainly can heat up, but thats is why I have flooded pipes (about 30mm water) that the water continually trickles through.. the larger mass of water does not heat up as easily and the lettuce I grow shades the pipe to different degrees depending on size.

Using water as a thermal mass to resist temperature change is a great practice but do you have 60-90 days every year with an average temperature of above 100 degrees (38C), your 30 mm (1 inch) pipe isnt enough thermal mass to resist this temperature change.

Not 60-90 at 38 but probably at 30-40 (varies)... and I have a shade cloth that I can extend inside my greenhouse to give extra shading when needed... but none of it is necessary as I can just increase the flow through the pipes... it is all about how long the water remains in the pipe combined with its mass, and I have quite a bit of flow through them. Also depending how the pipes are layed out in a system they don't always get full sun all day and in my case 2 of the 3 pipes are directly below the top pipe which shades them during the midday sun.. also I rotate my plants from the bottom pipe and to the top as they grow bigger... this way the largest strongest plants on top shades the smaller plants bellow at the hottest part of the day along with the pipes.