Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi All,

My name's Aiden and I'm based in Perth, WA.

Im in the process of designing the landscaping for the rear of my house and will be installing a decent sized fish pond, about 2300L with atrificial stream coming down the side of the house to the pond.

Research into doing this combined with a desire to reduce the cost of feeding the family led me to stumble upon aquaponics and now i am sold.

I've run various styles of aquariums most of my life but never been good at growing things so i'm sure there will be lots of posts from in regards to the GB side of things.

Anyways, just wanted to say hi and thanks for this most valuable source of information! Cheers

Hi Aiden.

I find the growing in AP to be extrememly easy. I could never get it to work in soil. Stuff would grow, but it'd take masses of water, and even then if I let it go too long without watering, the plants would be wilting when I got home. Then disease took them.

I sucked at soil gardening.

Aquaponics is awesome. Plant plants, let them grow, harvest when ready. Maybe a bit of trimming tomatoes, spray the odd catapillar, and the rest works by itself.

If you can look after the fish, the hardest part is done.

How big of a space do you have to play with?

not much at all unfortunately there's about a 1m wide down the side of the house for 20m then into an area about 5x3m which will also contain inground pond.

when i get back to the west coast next weekend i will do a sketch of the area i have and post for ideas on space saving GBs.

the biggest drama i think i will have is making them look attractive enough to get the seal of approvement from the ball and chain, lol

You could have 8 beds, each 2m x 1m. Plenty of growing space there!

Depends on how much light the side of your house gets though.

Are you handy at building stuff? Beds just have a to be a stong box, line it with some pond liner, and can be clad with anything to make them pretty. Or make them out of wood, and oil it up. Or go the IBC route, but my wife said eww when she saw an IBC.

unfortunately there is bugger all light down that side....it's been pegged for ferns etc. due to lack of light.

I'm thinking maybe more like hydroponic style pipes against the back fence behind the FT.

A decent diagram will give a clearer picture but i'm 4500km away so can't take measurements