Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey all!

I am new to aquaponics, and am currently building a 55 gallon barrel system. I've got my barrel and plumbing lined up, and am going to start construction today.

I'm planning on running the system with either goldfish (or preferably) koi, and will be planting some tomatoes in my grow bed.

This will be an outdoor system on a continuous flow. I'll be placing it next to a couple of raised beds for comparing growth rates between my system and the beds.

I've got an indoor aquarium that I'll be borrowing water from, to help initially cycle the system.

Any advice on plants or fish? I'd like to use koi in the general idea that they'll be more winter tolerant, but that single sentence encompasses 99% of the research I've done on that particular topic

Thanks!

Welcome.

What are your temperature extremes?

On the extreme side, our temperatures can vary pretty widely.

In the summer, we can get up to the high 90s or even into the 100s.

Winter temps can get down below zero degrees, Fahrenheit.

In Celsius numbers, that's something like -20 to 40.

Average numbers are much milder, something like 20 to 85 Fahrenheit, or -6 to 30 Celsius.

I've been treating the whole exercise as a step-by-step process. My wife keeps asking me what kind of fish I'm going to get, or where I'll find them. I keep responding that I don't need to worry about that until I have the system plumbed out and cycled.

But as of last night, it is at least plumbed

So I have grow media in place, continuous water flow running, and four or five tomato plants in the bed.

My plants are what we call "volunteers" from our raised bed- plants that started growing in the bed this spring before we planted anything. Presumably these were from fallen fruit from last year. We transplanted them to a small planter when we planted this spring, as a what if, and they were growing fairly well.

I've taken two of those volunteers that were roughly the same size and condition for an experiment- one has gone into the new barrel system I've built, and one has gone into our regular raised bed.

Getting the water level right was tricky. I have too much pump for the barrel, I think, and even at the lowest flow rate, I had to keep adding drain holes to the stand pipe to keep my expanded clay from floating, with water sitting at the surface. I may need to tweak it a bit more, to raise the water level just a bit, but at least PVC is cheap.

I don't know the exact term, but the outer pipe that surrounds my standing pipe (root pipe? Inspection pipe?) is open at the top, so I can access the standing pipe easily enough. I hadn't installed that at first, so tweaking the water level in the bed was a royal pain in the posterior.

They should get roughly the same sunlight and weather exposure, being about three feet apart. It will be interesting to see how they grow.

I've added about five gallons of aquarium water to the system, and I'll be adding fish to the system tonight. I guess I'm going to go with goldfish.

Hi Wicker, welcome to the forum.

A larger volume of water would reduce temperature fluctuations, but you have to go with what you have got. The pipe around your standpipe is call a media or gravel guard. Fruiting plants like tomatoes need a wider range of nutrients than leafy greens. You will need to make sure you are feeding your fish a quality fish food and not just flakes that are designed to maintain fish will little growth and keep the nutrients down for clean water. You might want to add some liquid seaweed (eg. Maxicrop) that has potassium and a range of trace elements, and also iron chelates if the leaves are yellowing.

Seems you are adding your fish immediately, do a search on cycling with fish so you can look after their wellbeing. You risk high ammonia and nitrite levels before your bacteria colonies establish (can take a few weeks). Make sure you do daily water testing initially for pH, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate to see how cycling is progressing. Goldfish are pretty resilient so should be okay if you are careful. Not sure how your system will go over winter as your temps are much lower than what I experience.

To adjust down your pump flow to your GBs, put in a T with a tap/valve just above your pump to short circuit excess water back to your tank, which has the added benefit of extra aeration.

Well, that was a grab bag of random suggestions. I hope it all goes well. Keep posting pics of your progress.

Thanks for the terminology, and suggestions about additives.



I did research back and forth, and it seemed to be a toss up on cycling with fish or without, so I just went for it. Gold fish are pretty inexpensive, so I'm willing to experiment. They're considered "feeder fish" so I'll see how it goes.

I'm hoping that the water contribution from our indoor aquarium will help speed up the cycling, as well.

I have tested the water after the second day, but I screwed up and didn't get a tester that reads ammonium. My nitrates were up slightly, but I don't have numbers committed to memory. I'll be getting a better tester this afternoon.

I have lost a couple of fish already, probably due to water chemistry. I'll know more later.



That's a fabulous idea, and might help me come winter time. A local pond expert I talked to told me that the key to wintering the gold fish was having some open water that doesn't ice over.

At this point, my main goal is growing tomatoes better than my raised beds. Kind of a bet with the wife.

Thanks for the info!

Here are a few pictures of my barrel setup.

Hiya wicker, it appears that your standpipe is too tall! The top of the pipe should be a bit lower than your required media flood height.(1-2") The water should flow over the top of it which sets the height. A hole at the bottom of the sp is generally only used in a timed f&d cycle.

Thanks for the info, Skeggley. I've kinda fought the system to a standstill at this point. I have the water level getting to my plans, now, but I'm kind of fatigued with it at the moment. I'll probably try to address the stand pipe issue at a later date. For now, it's kind of working, and I'm good with that.

So I've put about 18 goldfish into this sytem, thus far. Sounds like a lot, I know. Unfortunately, I've also pulled about 8 back out after they became floaters.

I've checked water chemistry, and it all looks pretty good. pH is a little high, but within published "goldfish like high pH" numbers.

My ammonium was up just a little (0.75 ppm), but that's not too surprising given the age of the system, and the fact that I had a dead fish in the water when I tested. I am pulling the fish out once they die.

Nitrite was around 0.25 PPM, and nitrate was at zero.

I think I'm going to feed the fish a little more. I had been holding back, but given my results just far, and the water chemistry, one possible explanation is that the fish could be starving?

Or, they're just feeble little feeder fish with a high mortality rate. Dunno yet. This is still very much a work in progress.

Might want to look at the pH and temp of the water then check to see if the ammonia concentration falls into the toxic range based on your total ammonia reading. There's a handy chart to help you do this in the IBC's of Aquaponics (freebie downloadable pdf, the link is at the top of the page on the right) or the online tables and charts version here - http://ibcofaquaponics.com/information/tables-and-charts/.

I'd also look at the temperature fluctuations.

Cheers

If you don't speak Celsius, like me, I've updated the handy chart to Fahrenheit...

So my latest test shows the following results:

pH: 7.8
Ammonium: 0.25 ppm
Nitrite: 5.0 ppm
Nitrate: 0

I'm a little concerned about the pH levels at this point. I'm more than a little concerned about the nitrite levels. I guess the good news is that the system is starting to cycle. I'll be doing some research on bringing the nitrite levels down in the mean time.

The nitrites are a worry. They cross the gills and bind with the blood instead of oxygen. You can stop feeding for a bit to let your bacteria catch up and salt you water to 1 ppt which is 1kg in 1000 litres or 100g in 100 litres - your 1/2 barrel would be around 100 litres. The chloride in salt helps to reduce the nitrite crossing the fish gills. Use plain salt with no additives - I get evaporated seasalt from the supermarket, others use pool salt.

Check- adding salt is on my list. What about adding some water or doing a water change?