Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

TC...the water lilies don't like moving water. Looks like an interesting project. Are you eating the ducks? Or just the eggs? getting cold tonight...already in the mid 30's. Thinking upper 20's by sunrise. Hope the fish do OK in the GH.

My new farm seems to be in a protected spot (in the notch just south of lake Harris. So I've not experienced any frost or freeze yet this winter.
And I'm growing catfish and bluegill instead of tilapia so I just stop feeding if I expect the water to get below 55 F before they can finish digesting.

As to the compost, 6 months composting is considered a good time period to protect from pathogens for the soil garden. And you are right that the commend about goat poo being safe for the garden was to do with it not causing fertilizer burn on the plants the way most fresh manure would (fyi same holds true for dear berries and bunny berries) but says nothing to the safety from pathogens like e. coli or salmonella. I personally follow very simple composting guidelines found in the Humanure Handbook. Build the pile for a year and then let it age for a year before use so everything in the pile is at least 1 year old before use in a food garden. No hard work involved because we don't turn the pile just build and keep adding to the hot top center and cover with plenty of good cover material. If compost ever stinks or is unsightly, add more cover material or keep it from getting too wet. The hot top center where we dig a hole to add new material to the pile is usually Over 150 F except when we add new materials it might take a couple days to heat back up. Once a pile has stopped being added to and is resting for a year it will cool off and let the worms and other soil creatures in to work on it and make sure it is well aged so that it can be used on any garden plants without risk. (Some garden plants like peas won't thrive if you use un-cured or not aged compost. Tomatoes could probably grow even in fresh steer manure, but that says nothing to the pathogen safety of such things.)

So since ponics constantly re-circulates whatever gets into the water and there really is no time separation between when the water is touching fresh duck contamination and then flowing into the plant growing space and if you are not doing some sort of heating or decontamination that could kill things like e. coli or salmonella, I would be very cautious about what is grown in such systems for human consumption. Through cooking and treating the food handling of anything that comes out of such systems as if it were chicken would render such things safe. Every other call is going to have to be at your own risk.

How deep does your gravel/sump bed need to be to grow banana? I am thinking of incorporating this with greywater filtration from the laundry system, using a worm bin filter for biosolids first

it will depend on the type of banana plant and if you are really expecting them to produce and if clogging/overflowing is an issue.

between 1-2 feet deep should do it.

Banana roots grow very shallow. I had some in the dirt, and I always had to prop them up once the fruit set. Would always topple over.

yea the root mass tends to be shallow, just need some extra space in the bed to allow water to still flow because the banana root mass is very dense and can clog the bed.