Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You can tape the liner. We do it all the time on ponds/waterfalls. Have to use the expensive seam tape and make sure its layed out flat, clean it really good. The stuff is great. I lay boards down on seam and then put blocks, rock on top of them. Rolls are around $100.00 for 100' roll. I think you can find smaller amounts also. I've used it under water on large jobs and it's never leaked on me. If you can use the smaller liner, no biggie, but if you don't need additional liner material, use the seam tape.

Good to know CoachCris, I looked at it from a seaming point of view and it didn't seem possible. At issue is the depth of the sump tank. The walls are three feet (~meter) tall, the corners are irregular making for some crazy folds. I could barely get the liner in there to begin with. I searched the InterWeb and found TotalPond 10 ft. x 13 ft. pond skin Pond Liner for $60.00 which is far better than the $150+ liners I saw at first glance.

Instead of working on the sump I attacked another issue needing attention. The board-walk has been on my mind since we laid it over the pond. It gets narrow, even for a 24" (.6m) wide massive plank where it meets the flagstone steps. We set it in backwards; I wanted the wide side which is closer to 3' (1 m) facing the steps, but with the difficulty moving the wet maybe 400lb plank I just left it like that. I've seen guests and my wife traverse that section like the first thing I needed to do was install a damn hand rail. For going in and out with a wheel barrow I laid a couple small planks across this corner and that seems to make most people feel safe(r).


I don't know if you can see, but the top of the 4" (.1m) thick boardwalk plank is notched on top and the addition which is only 3" (.07m) is notched on the bottom. They now fit together snugly. The white 1" pipe is the excess water not sent to the wall mounted growbeds which will be shot down into the pond with a nozzle or I don't know yet, but it should create some current in the pond hopefully a swirl of sorts.

I did not check the outside ambient temperature yesterday, but it was damn hot. We're heading to the lake to go fishing today, but this is too hot for trout. I did freeze some water bottles so I could try to bring the temperature down. After what my friend said yesterday it seems like I need to stick to one kind of trout in the pond. So perhaps today will be a learning about trout day. I'll be going with my son and he knows fish. I can still bring the cooler and oxygen pump and try this transport system out. Plus we need to get everything ready for the first fishing trip with the boat.

Looks good.

I'd go with the paintable sealer though over the pond liner (keep it for a big bed). It's already concrete, adding liner to that just seems like a silly thing. Give it another sealer coat of concrete, and then let it dry, and paint it up. Will work better than the pond liner over the top (easier to clean with no cracks for solids to settle in, etc).

Thanks Colum. It's getting close and issues are coming in fast now: Should I bother lowering the pH in the aquarium. It is at ~8. mountain well water, btw. If so will I need to deal with this for the pond when I get it filled from the well? Or should I move on and do the rest of the API tests to familarize myself with those?

Unless I'm mistaken the only one showing anything abnormal is the high range pH.
This is a 55 gallon (208 liter) aquarium. It's had five Comets in it for two or three weeks. The aquarium and filter were purchased used and the filter already had dirty water in it. I hoped the bacteria was still active. To my inexperienced eyes it looks like that is the case.
The question remains should I add pH down. This will be a trout quarantine tank

Hey Brian, gee you get things done! With the pH, you don't want to be changing it by more than 0.4 a day when you have fish. Ammonia will be less toxic at a lower pH which gives some leeway if you get an ammonia spike when you add fish. But it really depends on what the pH is of the water where you get your trout. If its much lower than 8, you might want to adjust your pH down in your quarantine tank before getting the trout. If you already have 'pH down' use that, but otherwise get hydrochloric (muratic) acid from the hardware store and adjust your top up water to around 6 then add that to your holding tank. You also want to be careful of large temperature fluctuations and high temperatures with trout. Rainbow trout get stressed and stop eating at 23C and die at 27C, which is why we generally get them in autumn and harvest in spring.

Once you have your fish, you could gradually bring up the pH with your normal top up water so that it is close to your main system pH. But I would recommend you get your main system flushed and filled first, and give it time to stablize beforehand. Are you planning to cycle with fish or without? Even with warm temperatures it will take a couple of weeks to cycle.

I hope someone more experienced can eithrr confirm the above or give you better advice. I really want you to have smooth sailing for the start up of your amazing system.

My son and I finally got the boat sorted and put it in the water. We put tackle on and dropped our lines in at around five o'clock in the evening. The first hit was less than five seconds later. Nice little Rainbow Tripiloid. Beautiful afternoon, wonderful conversation, and we reeled them in steadily until the sun set over the 10,000 foot (30048m) Sangre de Christo Mountains. The oxygenator worked well, but of course with the spinners we used the fish suffered too much trauma to survive long in the water cooler.

I hope I'm just worrying too much, but I can't help thinking I've selected one of the more difficult species of fish to begin my aquaponics adventures with. We did learn from this last trip, for example, we need to make certain the drain plug is in the boat, lol. It's a good thing we went in my Jeep with all my tools and supplies so we had the resources to fix that little error. Second, the cooler is too small and still it is difficult to handle with water in it. We need a second container for filling the cooler from the boat as not to chance tipping the boat over lifting a cooler full of water in and out. Perhaps a taller less wide fish transport container would let the air bubbles circulate through more water better.

Ah, and those learning processes are just beginning. I wish I would have thought to bring the infrared temperature reader to the lake, as that water seemed quite warm.

Oh well. before we left I made progress on a project I choose after the sump tank liner didn't fit and I ordered a new larger one.




That was just about the best Fathers Day I ever had. Thank you Austin and Brittany.

Hi Brian
I moved a couple of trout from my second tank into a glass aquarium. They went berserk. Literally smashing into alternative ends. I wrapped a blanket around it and they calmed down immediately. Not sure wether it was the extra light or movement that spooked them but be prepared.

Good Morning!
I'm starting out with a comment from backyardaquaponics forum, I will post your comments if you email them to me at brodgers@desertgate.com with instructions to include them. Also, since I let my Website go, my newsletter is now email only. If you would like to get on my list, please email me at the above address.


Good to know, Titus. We've also bought a 110 gallon recycled plastic water stock tank which I thought might be a good grow bed, but maybe it'd be a better fish tank.

A few more parts and pieces are flowing in; We now have two very short waterproof extensions for the underwater LED pond lights, which came all the way from China. I didn't know they were only a meter long, kind of lame. What are they for miniature ponds? Oh well I suppose they'll be getting mounted near the power outlet barely under water.

The new case for the Laguna pump is here, I haven't had time to deal with that yet, although I did end my claim with the Amazon Seller as soon as it arrived. Another pond liner cloth has been shipped, this one square, 3mx3m.
We're loving having comets in the big aquarium to watch. It is fascinating watching the behavior of a group of same species fish. Big ones get bigger, while the smaller ones struggle to compete for food. Comets are apparently tolerant of many environmental conditions, which is a good thing, as the aquarium temperature varies wildly with the ambient temperatures in the greenhouse. My hope, of course for the pond is it is so deep and underground that it will be stable. We will see in a short time, won't we? Perhaps it is a good thing the pond isn't full yet, naively I thought my trout would be immune to rules governing other peoples' FT seasonal use. What brings this to my mind is the fact that it was hotter than I care to recall it ever being here in northern New Mexico and I've been living here for 40 years! Maybe it is because I now work outside under other people's schedules. I didn't have any trouble keeping my gallon of water per day of consumption rate up yesterday. The excess urination issue was not a problem either as most of that gallon of water came out of my skin.


Am I getting too old to tolerate Climate Change or what?








(this is the limit for pics)
Sage is flowering for the first time.

Honey bee deep in Columbine flower
Outside gardens are doing really well, even with the extremes in temperatures. We're hoping and praying the hail keeps away, because that's a game changer here.
Upcoming projects: I've got to buckle down and learn everything there is to know about bell siphons. The fiberglassing resin should be here any day. I've got four 2 meter by .5 meter media beds to construct. Also I've decided to build the DWC (floating raft planter system) over the sump tank right away. I've got two of the massive planks which I will use one of to put under the DWC for support.
The final gallon of Herco Koi Pond coat ought to be here any day. Now it is time to shine and build my own version of a SLO, which will work with the natural slopes curves and current flow for our FT/pond. I won't know what it will look like until I start scrounging through our stash of parts and pieces. I know what it needs to do. This is the inflow to the first filter/strainer. It will pick up as much solids off the bottom of the fish pond as possible, lifting them without disturbing them up and into the filter.
Our vegetable gardens are behind, again. We've got to start earlier. Our friends Louie and Prissy get a huge head start by cutting the bottoms out of buckets and placing them over seeds planted in March. That is a three month head start over what we're doing. Next year that is exactly what we'll be doing too. It totally makes sense when I look around the yard and see native plants towering over garden plants at any given time of the growing season. I'm tired of playing catch up, time to be smarter.
Lady bugs are out in force this year, We've moved our aphid infested house plants outside to let the lady bugs have at them. Last night, I came home suffering from heat stroke even with all the water I drank, at some point while I nodded in and out I heard the wind buffeting the six foot tall Dieffenbachia


Looks like they survived the wind

Buddy got a clean bill of health from the vet yesterday; including negative for heart-worms. He also got all of his needed shots and is now on monthly dose of medication for heart-worms.
We've got appointments for the other two dogs to be checked out and booster shots given as well.
Pricey this will be.
Everything we love in our wonderful lives seems to demand that retirement is a long long way off.
Sincerely, Brian Rodgers

Hi Brian,

It's looking good there .

You might want to try an Affnan Bell Siphon

It's kind of fun to make a clear one to see how it works, this is about as simple as it gets (you'd have a media guard surrounding the bottle) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB04_RpKy68

The key component for helping get the siphon to break is the reducing coupling on the end of the standpipe, just under the bottle. The components that are internal to the grow bed should not be glued because you may have to remove them or change the standpipe length to adjust the water level. You'll see some siphons with a breather tube but you don't need one. Since I've been using Constant Flood for some time now I don't use siphons and there may have been some improvements I'm not aware of - that's my disclaimer

cool subscribed to his youtube show, fascinating demos. Thanks Scotty435

I'm surprised it's a humid out there as it is down here in Florida. The last week has been 93-96, with a "feels like" of around 110-115. That gallon a day is easy. We average over 2 a day down here. Today was an early day, and I had 1.5 gallons before 2:30. But just finished off another quart of Gatorade and a 24 oz of water after getting back to the shop. You have to stay hydrated in this weather, or you will just drop out. I see it all the time. I tolerate it, but hate summers here. I love it when people tell us how "lucky" we are that we get to stay outside and work in the sun. That as they run from their air conditioned house to their air conditioned car to their air conditioned job. I don't like being inside much, but when it over 100, it's pretty hard sometimes to do a hard, physical job for 10-12 hours. Then my daughter wonders why I'm a little slow to get going for our afternoon gym session. Ahh, to be 22 again.lol

we're experiencing weather swings such as predicted by environmentalists ten years ago due to Climate Change; essentially more and longer droughts and the same for heavy rainfall periods. I'm lived here in the southwest for four decades. Like clockwork our little monsoon season begins July fourth, we all know this because it messes with fireworks displays every year.

Several ranchers I've spoken to recently, said they received 10 inches of rain in each of the two big storms last Summer. That is nearly our annual rainfall in two storms, all this after a three year long drought. I'm here to tell you the results of massive hail storms after a prolonged drought pummeled the bare earth and caused some of the worst flash floods I've ever seen, here or anywhere. Most people are willing to forget the weather swings went dry while it is humid and wet. It seems humans just do this. Not much we can do about it anyway, except of course, build earth-sheltered greenhouses with balanced aquaponics systems inside.

Yeah, that's very dry. We get that much rain in 1 heavy thunderstorm. I think our average rainfall over the summer months is about 6" per month. We've been a bit higher then that lately. It only takes a few days of no rain when the temps are mid 90's and everything starts to dry out. We rely on our daily thunderstorms to keep things green. Your average high is about 15 degrees cooler then are avg low this time of year. I would love to have a nice mountain home to stay in during the summer, then come back to the beach for the winter. Don't see that in the future...unless I win the lotto.

Good Morning!
Wow, we went on an adventure at work yesterday. We're looking for a remote tower site which we were told about but have never been to. Finally got to give the lift kit on the Jeep a workout. Unfortunetely, we never did find a road nor a path to the tower site. I'm proud to say I was the one that found it, yay for the oldest hiker! It was on the way back to where we parked the vehicles that we found this little guy. I had to run back to the jeep for the camera in my smartphone.
Since this isn't AP related I'll post one more ad let you go

Hasta la Vista Baby