Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Oh no, the urge to expand is rising!!!

A few more photos of the carrot progress. They are a bit bigger, probably a bit hard to tell from the photos though. They haven't turned orange yet though, I'm assuming that will happen at some point, I'm certain I didn't put the parsnip seedlings in!

Woohoo!! Looking good!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Growth of the other plants is going well, everything is nice and green now. I haven't added any EDDHA for a while but I'm assuming there is some still hanging around in the system. It might be time to finally thin out the brussel sprouts though, and I think I should pull the radishes too. It's not really salad weather though!

Water temp is at the lowest it's been, sitting around 9°C, but that's not surprising given we got down to -2°C last night and will be again tonight, and have been sitting at or just under 1 over night for the last few nights.

Water seems to be holding at around a pH of 7.4 if the test is accurate, the weird slight increase in Nitrites in Tank 1 has gone and the Ammonia, Nitrites and Nitrates are all sitting happily at zero for both tanks.





I think I've pretty much worked out how I'll set up some more GB's, one for each separate system, adding around 500l media to each. That should give me a bit more GB space to play with. I can't imagine I'll push the fish stocking much more than what I've already got, given we actually have to eat the fish we grow, lol.

looking good Azira

I've been mucking about in SketchUp today as I have changed my mind about where I was planning on putting the chicken coop. I thought I might be able to integrate the coop frame with the shadehouse frame I am going to put up over the AP system, having a fiddle in SketchUp makes me think it could work. If I did it this way the chickens would get a bit more space to run around in, and the chook house won't be as close to the house.

I figured I might as well do a mock-up of the expansion I was thinking of for the AP too, not much, basically two roughly 500lt GB's added to the side of each and clad to match the rest.

Colours aren't exact, shapes aren't accurate and nothing is really properly to scale or fit together as it's mostly assembled from parts found in the SketchUp Warehouse, but you get the idea all the same!

Really nice looking design, Azira.

Oooooh really pretty - why don't you run some poly pipe grow tubes down the whole fence line


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Azira you are the sketchup queen.

Are you allowed to have chicken coops along your fence-line?

in our council they must be at least 1m from boundary fence

Thanks for the feedback folks, I appreciate any comments, good or bad.


I was pondering doing that but I wasn't sure how to run the pipes back to the main system without having them stick out like a sore thumb. I'm being a bit anal but I'm trying to hide them as much as possible (not that you can't tell they are there with the noise the water falling into the tanks make).


Good question, I hadn't even thought of that. I just had a look through the local laws and from what I can see there is nothing that says I can't have it against the fence.

Once again thanks all for the feedback.

Woo, purple broccoli is starting to sprout!

Very early days but I'm excited to see them.

Carrot tube update.

There seems to be a noticeable difference between the carrot closest to the GB inlet pipe and the other two. There is a lot more sediment among the roots so that may have something to do with it. It doesn't get as much direct sunlight though so it may be affecting the growth also.

One of the carrots has legs now which I was hoping wouldn't happen, but it's still fairly straight and is getting quite fat now. I'm not sure at what point they are supposed to turn orange though, I'd have thought they would have by now?

Anyway, photo fun.

This is my favourite experiment so far *excited clapping*

Hmm, I was wandering around eBay and came across these things, which I might buy if the carrot tube experiment is successful. If for no other reason than to have neat foam circles instead of the hacked up bits of old chair foam I'm using at the moment, lol.

http://r.ebay.com/i1f5zu & http://r.ebay.com/BFz90t

They aren't particularly cheap but aren't overly expensive too, and it would save me messing about cutting foam. I noticed you can get neoprene inserts as well but they are more expensive still.


I've been thinking more about this since you mentioned it. I think I could run the pipes to the fence where the GB's meet in the middle as I've got the air pump and UPS box sitting there at the moment and won't really be moving them any time soon, so don't need to worry about getting over the pipes. And I could probably hide them somewhat.

I haven't really done any reading about the poly grow tubes though so I'd have to look into it. They are what people refer to as NFT or am I getting that mixed up?

Broccoliiiiiiii! Grow my pretties!