Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So, about a year ago when I was working away, a work colleague showed me half a dozen rainbow trout he'd grown in his aquaponics system.
"aquaponics system?" I said "aquaponics? WTF is that" he told me and I was hooked, I love gardening and hate weeding and I get fish as a bonus? I just had to have one.
He printed out a copy of IBC of aquaponics for me and my journey began.
I've just finished my system and it is cycling now, a year from first hearing about it (it should have been done months ago, but I'm fairly lazy lol). The last month has been a rush as I didn't want to miss the summer and have it set back another year.

Damn, was going to start loading pictures but they're too big. It's late, so I'll do that next post

ini.

We are quivering with anticip wait for it pation. Can't wait to see the pics.

I acquired a few freebies...
IBC's and pallets

I attacked them with jigsaw and grinder, then did a bit of welding.

I cut the tops out of the sump and fish tank for easy access, then cut 2 more containers in half for the grow beds.

What was in those IBC's? Looks like motor oil? Ugh! How did you clean them?

That horrible brown stuff was an inert chemical used to create an emulsion, it was a real pain in the butt to remove as it became very slimey when water was added.
Two containers had light oil in them.
All containers were washed, scrubbed twice with T-pol, scrubbed twice with dish washing detergent, steam cleaned, hot water pressure cleaned, rinsed with a vinegar solution, as well as having multiple tank-water washes; they were then left outside during winter and recieved numerous rainwater rinsings.

I had had quite a few months to jot down sketches of different set ups and how I was going to place my pipe work. So I set everything up to see how it would look.

When I was happy with the location, the position of the FT, sump and GB, and there was enough a space to allow easy access to all parts of the system, it was time to dig.....
And dig....
5 hours worth (was pretty damn hard).

With the hole dug the sump cage went in.

That thar be some good digging matey!

Five hours?! You're my hero! It took me days to bury my sump!

Cheers fella's, I almost succumbed to getting a little digger to do it, but the $250 price tag for something that I was capable of doing manually kind of put me off. Plus $250, there was my pump and plumbing right there!

Plus there is the money you save on the gym membership.

My camera man (me) seemed to have been rather lax in taking photos of the next steps :/ anyway.....
Because my system will be outside for quite some time before I erect some kind of environmental protection for it, I decided to sand and paint the outsides of the tanks. I had also heard that painting can help in reducing algal growth, so I bought the cheapest (trying to stick to budget) acrylic house paint I could get.
During this time I was also able to get my hands on some proper sized pallets, as the ones I had were the throw away sea container ones. While I had the tanks out getting painted, I decided to put down some proper support for the GB and FT now that I had some better pallets; as they had previously just been sitting on mulch and I was worried that once the media and water were in I would have trouble keeping things level when I started hooking up the plumbing.