Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Tested water this week-end. PH 8.0. No ammonia. No nitrite. No nitrate. Now that the heater is broken, the fish are back sleeping. The worse of the winter is nearly over though, so activity should pick up.

Yesterday I purchased seeds for the dirth garden. There is one foot of snow on the garden now; but eventually that will disappear

Winters end is just around the corner.

Built my wheelie bin entry. Made a mess when moved some rocks from existing system to wheelie bin.

Water is dark brown. No floater spotted yet.

Leaving the system alone in the hope that it will settle without damage.

On the positive side, when I moved the rocks I detected an unmistakable smell. Something is brewing in my filter. I think that the bacteries have finally showed up.

Transfered fish in wheelie bin.

Water is much clearer now.

I can see fish at bottom when aiming a strong light at the water.

Water specs

PH 7.5
Amonia 0
Nitrite 0.1
Nitrate 5

I am getting some action at last.

Got what might be last snow fall of the season yesterday.

Fish look content. One of them is a one inch monster. I strongly suspect it of wrongdoing. While I do feed my fish regularly, I have not fed him enough to get that big and two fish are unaccounted for.

It will get a taste of its own medecine when I get my comestible fish. Right now I am split between Tilapias and Trouts. Both would love the taste a one inch Goldie.

I like Tilapias but I don't want to go bankrupt emulating a tropical paradise for them. Trouts are local and will take cold water but they are carnivorous and they have a reputation of being difficult to raise. Channel Catfish are also local (barely) but I find that they have less appeal than trouts - for no good reason.

Tomato seedlings are growing - about one inch so far. They will probably grow in satellite system a la Gary.

In fact I have decided that all my system is going to be open - but I like to think of it as being closed at Earth level

My plan is to collect the rain water. Feed a given amount daily to the wheelie bin in the garage through a hose. Have the overflow go to the satellite bed outside through another hose.

This system will limit power consumption to the air pump used to aerate and circulate the water through the underwater filter of the wheelie bin. Canada being fresh water heaven, there will be plenty of rain to feed the system.

Whether it is going to be true AP or not is sementics that I don't care much about (that coming from somebody who actually studied linguistics). I only care about getting healthy food at minimal cost when the whole cost is taken into consideration - that and independence.

That being said I recognise the need to agree on common definitions so that we can understand each other.

I will probably be using peat moss in the growth media. Why? Because I have 20 + acres of it! Has anybody used it? What else did you use with it?

Interesting Julien, post pictures when you can! What about carp?

Pictures of current system

Notice air pump suspended on wheelie bin to reduce vibration noise.

Edit: Picture size has been corrected.

Thanks for the pics, always good to see whats brewing

One little note, if you could keep picture resolution to 800x600 max it makes for easier page viewing

Steve

How do I do that?

Edit: I think that I have found how to do it. That's a setup on my camera.

Julien, most image-editting software wiil have an option to re-size pictures. Or perhaps your camera can be set to lower resolution.

IMHO 640 x 480 is even easier to view.

I use Macromedia Fireworks, Paint Shop Pro or even MS Office picture manager. Fireworks allows you do a batch process to resize multiple photos at once...

julien, I will be lurking about. You mentioned catfish/trout decision, I went thru that. The trout needed too much O2 and lacked tolerance to warm water and requires higher water quality in general. So I went the channel catfish and hybrid blue gill and yellowperch route. Do not have them, they are coming in a couple of weeks. I am cycling the 1500 gallons now and that is going slow due to 58F water temp. Anyway channel catfish are tolerant to water freezing over their heads and also love 80F water. They have lo O2 requirements and handle a range of water quality. I thought that was the safe route. Tilapia would be first choice except for energy requirements in winter...no way I think.

Photoshop Eelements (the low cost version of Photoshop) has photo resizing. I take photos with a resolution that requires a 2.5 meg JPG file. Then when I post here I use the 'save for web' option in the file menu. That lets me set the resolution for best posting. I have Photoshop Elements 4.0 which is not the latest and therefore can be purchased for less than $40.

Up until MSOffice 2000 (included) MS bundled a little photo editor called "Photo Editor"... that allows resizing

Quick, simple easy to use and small foot print and Free

Have posted a link before but here it is again maybe the mods could put it in the download area???

Download it here...

Photo Editor

Unzip to folder you want to install in ie "C:\PhotoEd" or whatever...

is a standalone "full" version.

Picasa works well also and it is free from Google. you can resize in batches.