Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

We've had the farm the past 3 or 4 years. It's a total of around 3.3 hectares (around 8 acres) that was planted with around 110 mango trees and around 100 coconuts. Over the years we've planted some coffee and cacao and a few bananas here and there. It's mainly more of a hobby farm at the moment, but looking to take it a bit further to producing more vegetables.

A while back before I really knew much about aquaponics, I wanted to have a little fish pond. I bought a little backhoe for use around the farm digging up rocks and burying coconut husks and such so started digging. It took quite awhile but in the end we had a 47' x 36' x '5 deep pond.

Unfortunately it wouldn't hold water so tried to put some bentonite clay on the bottom and sides, but this didn't do to well. Bit the bullet and decided to concrete it and make a sort of rock wall (and help clear up the area around the trees of rocks.

The wife had some local guys do the work and also had them build a little fishing/picnic shack over the water.











And this is how it looks recently, though it's still a work in progress.

Wow thats amazing!! I want one!

Welcome to the forum.

I can only wish! Would love to see the finished result

Wow...Looks like a piece of paradise.

Thanks for the comments.

Currently I'm working in Africa on a rotation. As there was a bit of a slow period with work it's given me a bit of time to research the upcoming project. I have a general idea of how I want to start and have penciled a bit of it down, then promptly lost the paper when I changed locations.

The dimensions of the pond are 36 ft by 45 ft by around 5 ft deep. I calculate it's in the order of 63285 gallons or so. We had stocked it with around 300 tilapia fingerlings over a year ago. We have caught a few while fishing and they are quite tasty.



The missus likes them fried.



So the fish seem to be doing well, they are breeding like rabbits. Apparently when my wife originally bought the fish the guy selling them told her she needed many more for that size of a pond. Turns out it's not really needed as from starting out with only 300 fingerlings there's no telling how many are in there now. The water boils when you throw a little food in there.

Unfortunately last time I was at home I thought I would try to net some of the bigger ones out. Didn't get anything very big. Methinks my boys on the farm are subsidizing their income Will just have to keep a closer eye on it.

No doubt unfortunately.

You thinking of tapping in some garden beds?

I want one! Welcome to the forums.

So now that I have the fish pond sorted out, need to concentrate on the plant side of things.

I already have a water well there with good clean water, so no issues on that front. We actually own a water well drilling business so that was one of the first things we did when we got the property. My goal is to eventually get a windmill installed as I would like to get away from electricity as much as possible, but as they are quite expensive to purchase and at the moment I don't have the time to make up one of my own, I will just stay with electricity for now.

Solar is probably a better option as we definitely have more sun than wind, but there has always been something about windmills on a farm for me. As I'm originally from Saskatchewan I remember watching them in amazement as a kid on the farm.

As the pond is of sufficient size I don't expect any issues or concerns if the power goes out for awhile so a standard electrical pump will suffice unless the stocking levels gets too high, but I don't see that happening. Can just net the excess out and give away to neighbors/friends, etc.

With regards to the grow beds I want something solid and long lasting and waist high. I want to minimize the bending as much as possible. Since wood isn't really a good construction material in the Philippines due to the termites I'm looking at building a raised concrete hollow block bed. I have calculated I have a nice spot for a 15 m long x 1.5 m wide x 0.7 m high.(49'x5'x2.5')

I plan to make the beds about 0.3 m (~1 ft) and will line the beds with tile. I though about paint, but not sure I can really find a decent enough quality paint.

I plan to make about 5 compartments out of the 15 m and will make up a mix of media beds with river gravel, some DWC and a wicking bed. That way I can play around with all systems and see what works best.

For the pump I will probably get a 1 hp commercial residential water pump to use and plumbing will be done most with the HDPE black pipe.

Now my major questions are:

1. With this size of a pond, where and how best to place the intake for the pump?

2. How much and what type of filtering would I need?

3. For a flood and drain bed of ~ 5 m x 1.5 m x 0.3 m would a 2" siphon be big enough or would a 3" be better? Are slow cycles okay or is there a optimal target cycle. This is just for sizing the pump and pipes required.

4. How much aeration is need for something that size? I was thinking to maybe incorporate a venturi into the pump outlet into the DWC grow beds. I had a few for a large salt water aquarium I used to have in my old house. They worked very well for the protein skimmer I used on that setup.


Lots of other questions but will stop there for now. If anyone has any pointers for something like this I'm all ears.

wow, now thats a fish pond!

Welcome Woodrow look forward to seeing your system develope.

God bless, froggo.

Nice looking place you got there.. Seems you have enough room to expand and play as much as you want.





Currently I'm working with one of the renounced local eco enthousiast. And while venturing around his place (completely build on scrap materials and sustainable idea's) I asked him if he was only running Solar or a mix of solar and wind power.

What he said to me made a good sense, Although wind power is abundant in the Philippines. The moving parts are a hell on maintenance. He's currently running fully off-grid purely on solar. If I had the money I would do the same. Been looking before for omni-directional wind generators. But after his remarks I guess i'll stick to solar.


Regarding your designs..
In my opinion, Media based growbeds with autosiphon's are the best. You might even work these together with DWC and not have too much filtration. Watch your rocks though. Had a hard time here finding good media

Thanks,

There is definitely enough room to put a lot of beds down. I won't have a problem with the media bed material. As we drill water wells we already have a supply of gravel pack material which is basically pea sized gravel. We buy river gravel in bulk and have our own workers do the screening to get the right size.

So the construction of the grow beds has started. I went with hollow blocks as it's pretty much the cheapest and longest lasting material to use. Too many termites to even consider using wood. I checked some prices for the second hand IBC in Davao and they were selling for around 8500 Pesos each (almost 200 USD).

I plan on making 3 of the beds to start. They are approximately 1.2 m wide x 14 m long and about 0.7 m high. The beds will be about 30-35 cm deep. Still debating whether to try to find some cheap tiles to line it with or go with paint. Only issue I have with paint is it's difficult to find any proper paint locally that would be food/fish safe.





Every so often we buy few sacks of kangkong from a neighbor and throw it into the pond. The Tilapia pick it clean.



The mango trees are in full bloom. Hopefully the price of mangoes holds up and we have a good harvest

I plan on making 3 of the beds to start. They are approximately 1.2 m wide x 14 m long and about 0.7 m high. The beds will be about 30-35 cm deep. Still debating whether to try to find some cheap tiles to line it with or go with paint. Only issue I have with paint is it's difficult to find any proper paint locally that would be food/fish safe.

First of all my i say it just looks absolutely fantastic,quite envious of you,any way here in Thailand we have a Product called Crocodile Flexcoat,i don’t know if you will have it in the PHillipines but you may do,its made for the job,its a flexible top coating you can paint or roller on and its suitable for water tanks,on the front of the tub they have a small pic of a koi pond if remember correctly.When i did my sump i had it rendered to smooth the surface then gave it three coats with a brush,after curing filled it with water job done as they say.

Woodrow that is going too be one awesome system

I did find a product I believe is similar called Davco from http://www.parexdavco.com.ph

I will try it on the next beds. Most of the products I saw need a 3-6 week curing process before applying, so decided to bite the bullet and just go with tiles as it would have meant waiting until I got back from work overseas a month or so later. I found a bargain tile center that sells them for fairly cheap, plus we had a bunch of leftovers from previous projects, so I would reckon each bed will take about 100 USD to tile. Paint I think when you factor in the time, prep, primer, final coat, wouldn't really be much of a savings. But I will still try it out on the next set of beds.

Floors going into boxes



Tiles going in



Had to replace the workers cause they were just too slow. The new guys did as much in 1/2 a day as the others did in 3. Hopefully in 3 more days I will be able to start filling up the wicking beds at least. Still need to order in the soil for it.




Wicking box piping. Not sure if the 2" is big enough. Wondering if I should go with 4" or even 6". The depth of the beds will be in the order of 35 cm. (14" or so)



Plumbing will mainly be HDPE. I have a lot of it laying around as we use it a lot in the waterwell drilling business.



Started some seedlings to transplant once we get the system up and running.



Will go with a 1 1/2 hp pump to start with. Not sure if it will be enough, but can experiment with the flows later. It will pump around 160 Liters/hr. I wanted to hook it up and test the flow, but had some issues with adapters. Should have it all sorted when I head back in a couple of days.