Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I think im headed down that road myself. Is Ph the only value i should be concerned with for now? I will be using rain collected water that's been stored in the cisternfor a while but i think it should be neutral. I will test it for peace of mind.

Looks good. Goldfish or whatever is cheap for cycling. It's going to be difficult top get your fish out when it's time to harvest. I have a hard time with mine, and have more room then your set up. Good luck, and keep the pics coming.

looks good mate, 400L of media so 20 fish should be handled easily.

Awesome work! Have you had the tank at full fill yet? I like the possibilities associated with the dry stack and surface bonding cement construction methods for inexpensive large capacity tanks. Do you plan on bonding the outside?

Thanks bro.

Well I wanted to put the latex on the outside but ran out and got lazy. I think i will eventually though. The tank only cost me about $100-$150 in material. Then the hard part was carrying the material up the hill and mixing cement by hand with a shovel. It will be worth it once the veggies start coming in. Ive heard its best to start with leafy greens, so i plant on lettuce, cabbage, kale, and maybe some herbs.

Do I add a few seedlings first or add the fish first? Or same time.....

Some progress, made my swirl filter and got my gravel. Pumps and aerator on deck. Im going to try and make a funnel to guide solids towards my swirl filter drain tomorrow. Also rinse the gravel off again is on the to do list.

Hiya e_d, nice work. +1 on accessibility of ft. Clear pipes aren't recommended due to algae issues.
Looking forward to seeing it up and running.

Thanks. Whats really holding me back now is trying to put a shade screen over the whole thing to protect from the birds and keeping leaves out the pond. I was thinking to make a frame from pvc pipe and zip tie shade screen...

Barrels are now full of gravel and the shade is just about done. Going to be flushing out the tank with some clean rain water and adding fish tomorrow. I noticed that after adding the gravel the siphon was much slower and wouldnt actually break until i slowed the pump down a bit.







There is a piece of screen at the end but you can see straight through in this picture....

Progress so far: Ive changed the clear hose to a black garden hose and added the aerator and fish. They have been there for about 24 hours and all 8 have survived. Ive been feeding them dog food pellets broken into small pieces. They are pretty greedy and will spit out a whole mouthful of food just to grab one more, lol. I will have to go by the petstore for some fish feed since i dont know if the dog food is bad for them. Also i planted about one and a half of the barrels today just to get some things started, nothing major, just lettuce, spinach, and cabbage. Will post some pics when they break the surface.

Such a nice looking system - love the colour of the tank.
How did you attach your barrels to the wood?

They are so stiff all they need is screws along the edge of the barrel going into the 2x4, have not noticed any tearing at all.

Its been two days since i planted some seeds and ive already noticed some lettuce and broccoli sprouting! I even added some more seeds today, which I should have waited on but was very anxious. My water was in the cistern for a long time so I know there was bacteria present, will have to hurry up and get some more tilapia soon. I also bought some food from the pet store today that says high in protein and the sticks are pretty small and easy for the tilapia to eat. And lastly I noticed my swirl filter is working very well, even catching some dirt that i missed from the gravel. The a/c filter pads are also helping a lot. The fish look happy and are much bolder now to greet me as I always come bearing food.















I am thinking about adding an ibc grow bed in the near future.

... And let the expansions begin!

Awesome looking system! Still really like the block tank.