Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all,
Here is a run down of what my partner, J, and I are attempting to set up with our thoroughly inexperienced but enthusiastic selves.

1 x 300 Gallon IBC cut up a la "IBC's of Aquaponics" which gives us our fish tank, which will be buried part way up the sides and our primary grow bed on top. These will both be lightly sanded, primed and painted with a dark blue rustoleum for plastics.

1 x [2.5 x 2.5/1 x 4 ft] duckweed tank consisting of a wooden frame, decorative wood exterior, a stepped bottom. This will also be buried with about eight inches above ground level, lower than the fish tank. It will also have a dome of that neato wire square fencing stuff (larger holes than regular chicken wire) over the back portion camouflaging the pump and providing a trellis and light space to my climbing plants.

The pump [Hydrofarm AAPW1000 1000-GPH Active Aqua Submersible Pump] is bought from Amazon so that I may return it hassle free if I have bought the wrong one...which is very possible. This will sit at the back of the duckweed tank and will pump up into the primary grow bed which will drain with a bell siphon into the fish tank and then back into the duckweed tank.

I would like to use pvc plumping without cutting holes in anything, trying to keep it just overhanging the edge of the various components or what-have-you. I figure, more holes, more labour and more chance of leaks or human error.

The area it will be placed in is our aptly named Shady Lane portion of the garden. Between the house and the neighbours white washed garage there has been for the past six years our wildflower meadow and lily/peony gardens and further along the winding mossy path a small "woodland garden" with delicate white flowering shrubs pruned high and airy, wild strawberries, crocus, a straw rhubarb and lily of the valley. We will be clearing out a part of the wildflower meadow and trying to grow some shade hardy plants, the area does get sunlight for four hours dispersed through the day and dappled light for a few more. We've taken out garbage trees and raised the canopy of the others nearby. Paddy pans, butternut squash, salad greens and chard, probably a couple other things in the primary grow bed, and ginger, strawberries, herbs in little pots in the duckweed tank.

I'd like to use tilapia (from NOA) and either some "freshwater lobster" or yabbies (from I'm not sure where yet). fish in the fish tank and yabbies in the duckweed tank...? The fish make me nervous not gonna lie. I want to make sure they are happy and friendly with each other and feeding the beds properly but it's all quite confusing.

I've seen this comment on many of the first timer posts here but I'll say it too, the more I read the more questions I have and every time I think I've understood and solidified my plan I read something else and everything is in question again.

So far J and I have the duckweed tank built, sans pond liner at the moment, and have been furiously digging up plants, including three healthy peonies [fingers crossed they survive the rough transplant] and massive amounts of phlox and lilies, levelling ground and pulling up roots as we try to make room for this project.

I'll do a lovely little drawing and post it up here when I get around to it.

Some things that worry me or I am unsure of:
- Is my pump powerful enough or possibly too powerful?
- Do I need some kind of solids filter?
- Will the water hight in my fish tank stay consistent because the pump is in the duckweed tank or am I misunderstanding that whole situation?
- Do I need some kind of screen or filter bag around my pump so that the duckweed doesn't spread through the system?
-Since the area is a bit shady will I need a water heater now or only as the temperature starts to drop? (No chilly fish in my house! ) I suppose that I'll just have to watch the temp and buy one if needed.
-How many fish do I actually need? [the vast amount of information/acronyms/calculations is making my head spin, anyone have a concise answer?]
- Where can I find some tasty crustaceans to grow in Ontario, Tri-cities area?

I hope this all makes sense, and I warn you, I'm not too good with all the acronym stuff even after reading the handy-dandy FAQ post about it, so be patient friends.

In your pump manual, there is a graph that gives you the head height in feet graphed against the volume in gallons per hour - http://media.hydroponics.net/documents-hf/9365_Pump%20Instructions.pdf

The head height is the distance from the top of the water where you have the pump (In this case the duckweed pond) to the highest height you'll be pumping your water (so probably just over the top of your grow bed). Using what you calculate for the head height you'll be able to read how much your pump should deliver in gallons each hour. You want the pump to be able to move the volume of the fish tank once per hour (roughly 275 gallons in your case)



I'm not sure about this one but any duckweed that's in the fish tank will probably get eaten by the Tilapia and I doubt duckweed would be a problem in the grow bed either. I'd probably screen the pump though because the duckweed could cause problems for the pump or get stuck in the plumbing.



If you are doing this mostly for the plants and only have a few fish you won't need extra solids filtration. If you decide later that you want more fish or you see lots of solids accumulating in your grow bed, you can add solids filtration between the Fish tank and the duckweed pond or you can add more grow beds since these act as filters too.



Yes, if you set it up correctly it will just flow by gravity to the duck weed tank. Most people use a Solids Lifting Overflow (SLO) for this but it does require a hole in the side of the tank. I think you're better off drilling the holes because using no holes overflows is not quite as reliable. You wouldn't need a hole in the duckweed tank and the hole for the grow bed would be directly over the fish tank. Using a hole saw these aren't too difficult and there are ways to fix screw ups by resizing the hole and part of the plumbing.



Temps below about 50 F are fatal to Tilapia. When the temps below 70 F they don't eat as much. If you're not interested as much in the fish, a different species would be better.

Oops! accidentally hit submit while I was still working on that.

You probably should get a heater for the fish now if you're going with Tilapia



It doesn't take many to grow the plants - At a guess I'd say you need between 10 and 15 Tilapia for good plant growth assuming that you will harvest the Tilapia at 1 Lb (). The maximum number of fish (which is not recommended for a new system) can be calculated in the link below - 1st post.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6646

Find out how to get the bacteria growing using the fishless cycling method. Your plants will do better early on and since you don't have the fish in yet ammonia spikes won't be a problem. Once the system is cycled (the Ammonia is being converted to nitrite and then nitrate) then add the fish. Ammonia and Nitrite are toxic to the fish, that's why you want to do this

Cheers

Hi Harp, I come from a mild climate zone in Oz, so I'm not sure how cold it gets in Ontario. Will you have trouble with your system freezing up in winter, and would your growing season be extended with a small greenhouse which will also help if you have to heat the water? Just asking as I have read through a couple of cold climate system threads lately eg.Tori's System.

I have 2 species of duckweed in my sump tank where my pump is. I find that when the siphon dumps from the growbed into the sump, one species (lemna) gets mixed down enough to get pumped around the system, but the azolla doesn't. It doesn't matter to me as I have worms in my growbeds and towers to breakdown solids - well that's the theory so I will see if it works... I also have some yabbies in my sump, but be careful as Curious warned me that his redclaws stripped the insulation from the pump lead making the water 'live'.

Have you figured out you pipes yet? I made a rookie error and undersized my solids lift overflow (SLO) from the fishtank resulting in water backing up and potentially overflowing. I had a 1" pipe going in from the pump and 1 1/4" SLO which I had to increase to a 2" SLO. You can get a lot more water in under pressure than you can get out under gravity for the same sized pipe! Also need to consider whether your growbed is constant flood with a standpipe or ebb and flood with a siphon. If using a siphon directly to the fishtank, your SLO will need to be big enough to cope with tbe water being dumped quickly by the siphon, or have sufficient headspace to not overflow. Set up you growbed so that it can be either (ie. you simply remove the bell to turn the siphon into a standpipe) to give you options down the track.

Hello all,
Thanks for the advice, we are just setting the Duckweed tank into the massive hole we dug and building up some ledges for plants and the pump to sit on so when I know the final volume it's going to have I'll consider all this thoughtfully and post a good response.

Much love

Alrighty then, after much success in the first leg of the race, building/filling/conditioning/planting/testing etc we have come to the part where I have inadvertently become a fish slaughterer.

We went to our local aquarium store, pretty much the only one in town aside from the big box general pet places. They were supposed to be experts. FALSE.

We got a bunch of 3" feeders at first, about 20. They were housed in a large densely stocked tank at the store but I didn't see any lethargic or dead ones. We floated the bag and gently let in some of the pond water, after twenty min. or so we gently let them swim into our tank.

Come morning, surprise surprise, we had six floaters and a couple dead and sunken in the bottom. I felt sad but I had read the horror stories here so I thought I was doing alright, they were feeders after all and maybe they just weren't hardy enough or something.

The next day low and behold there they were again, floating, a few on the bottom and I noticed that the remaining 9 were slow and occasionally coming up to the surface gasping. I also noticed that the dead ones felt sort of rough and caught on the net, scales rough to the touch and some looked like they had very full bellies.

I checked the water temperature, as we had had a cold night and the water was cool but still in healthy range (can't remember exactly but I did check at the time) so I figured it was maybe the temperature.

At the end of another day we had three left.

We waited until it was warmer, until the plants had become more established, and tried again.

We bought around 30 this time as well as about ten crayfish (blue claw and red claw).

Same thing. It took about four days but in the end we had 9 total surviving comet goldfish but all of our crustaceans were as happy as could be ( aside from one lopped off claw).

The fish seemed happy, were playing and eating well in the warmer temperatures even nibbling at some strawberry and basil roots.

I was looking around and thought perhaps it was a parasite, it was the only thing i could find that made sense with all that i was seeing and not wanting to put more fish in our new graveyard I thought I'd go back to the store and ask. He seemed defensive immediately but I got no answers.

All the plants are healthy. our master test kit is reading a 7.5-8 ph and low amonia and mid level nitrates and high nitrates.

What the heck is going on friends?! I really don't want to massacre any more fish but I also think that maybe it's a problem with the fish at the store and I should try buying somewhere else? or is there something I'm missing?

If you need any clarification or more specifics just ask.
Many thanks.

Hi Harperbug,

Sorry to hear about the fish.

I'm going to suggest you post some of the readings from your system
pH, Water temp, Ammonia, Nitrite

How long did it take to get the fish home?

The gasping sounds like there isn't sufficient oxygen in the water. Do you have lots of algae in the water - it produces oxygen during the day but takes it in at night so that you Oxygen levels get to their lowest just before dawn. It can also be that their gills were damaged by either ammonia or nitrites and so even with sufficient oxygen they are having troubles. I think it's probably something along these lines, the damage was done and it just took a while for them to die.

Not sure about the raised scales which does sound more like an infection.

If you don't have any strawberries in your system I would salt the water to 1 ppt (1KG per 1000L or 1gm per L). This helps prevent problems with nitrite toxicity in the fish (some will probably continue to die from damage they already suffered). Use uniodized salt (sodium chloride) with no added anti caking agents. All your other plants except the strawberries should have no problems with this amount of salt.

Hope this helps

Thanks for the advice scotty!

I just put in the aquatic salt this afternoon and went to a different store (next town over sheesh) to get a hand full of minnows to see if it helped at all.

Everyone seems to be fine and I even found out that this new place has a fish doctor. He said it sounded like a disease probably contracted in the breaders facility because they are a very low quality fish and it prevented their gills from taking in enough oxygen AND that putting them into my highly oxygenated system probably shocked them into a quicker death because they came from a totally opposite environment...I also picked up two super cute fantails because I fell in love and couldn't leave without them but I think those will have a home all their own for now.

Again thanks for the help, very interesting about the algae, we do have some but not a green carpet or murky water or anything but I will keep an eye out....I guess we will see who survives tomorrow morning! eek

Success! After raising the salt levels and adding the minnows, and even the fantails, everyone looks happy and healthy this morning, playing around and munching on my waterlily (jerks lol) so hopefully this is the end of the problem.

A little update on what's going on in the shady lane aquaponics project.

We added our tilapia finally after solving the dying goldfish problem after which there was a huge nitrite spike which knocked off one of my comets before I caught it. Such is life I guess.

Added some packaged beneficial bacteria and stopped feeding to avert the crisis and it saved the situation. Six hours later the levels were settling back to normal.

We had some high nitrate readings this morning but we planted a whole slew of new things which should balance it all out soon I'm guessing.

We also added an air pump etc. to help the circulation of water and eliminate some dead zones we were noticing in the fish tank (among other benefits of course).

The waterlily is recovering now that the mischief makers are being fed again.

Basically it's all blue skies....until the next hiccup.

Full plant list in the shady lane system now includes; cabbage (stonehead, red, savoy), brussels sprouts, italian kale, peas, custom mixed micro-greens, cut-and-come-again lettuce (butterleaf, curly red), ever-bearing strawberries, watercress, spicy oregano, cilantro, lemongrass, parsley, mint (spanish, mojito), thai basil, lemon balm, squash (white paddy pans, acorn, spaghetti, butternut, small cooking pumpkins), honeydew mellon and mouse mellon. Also deck tomatoes in heirloom varieties and I am super proud of those babies for surviving a pretty horrific attack and recovery of early blight.

I also have become a teeny bit obsessed with my new fancy goldfish buddies indoors and have been dreaming up ways to expand and MacGyver a setup with them. They are just so full of personality it's great.

On that note if anyone in the SW Ontario region is getting rid of water tight aquariums over 40 gallons I would love to take them off your hands or maybe trade for an oil painting.

Hope you are all having a great day.