Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everybody! Work and life are keeping me extremely busy this year and I haven't had much extra time to be on the forum lately. How's it going?

Let's see if I can remember how to work this thing... :-)

My current configuration is I dug the 70 gallon rubbermaid container as a sump in the ground next to the shed. There is a pump in there to circulate from the sump to the FT to the mortar tub that is full of lava rock and gravel. I took the arbor from last year and made it more like a frame for my plants operation this year. There is a second small pump that pumps up to a new trough that has 5" round net pots, that then drains to another trough on the ground that has 10" square net pots, then back to the sump.

I am experimenting this year with wicking Walmart bags. Under the AP trough is a plastic lined tray with a layer of charcoal, with Walmart bags full of compost on top. This is not tied to the AP water, just watered by hand. There are also Walmart bags that I set on top of the gravel bed, to wick AP water into them.

There are two middle sized koi, four small koi, and maybe 20 bluegill in the FT right now.

I was seeing what looks like nutrient deficiency so I put in all the Maxicrop I had left, which was not much. The plants have started showing this again so I'm ordering more.

More pictures

I've wised up and switched to using pond hose instead of hard line. OMG such a pain in the *ss to route pipes all the time - now I don't care anymore! All those buckets of fittings are irrelevant. In January the drain line froze but did not break (I didn't have a way to disconnect and drain it fully then), then in March it froze solid and broke. Now I have the end of the drain line hooked up with a barrel fitting to 1 1/2" pond hose, so I can disconnect it in the Winter. My conclusion now is that the Winter will not even circulate the water to a sump or filter. I don't feed the fish during the Winter. Anyway I really like using pond hose now. The powered hose is 3/4".

Can't get a good picture of the fish.

We got some chickens, we are keeping four hens for eggs. I got excited when I realized I have a pretty good reason to pursue a BSF larvae project again.

Grow bags, the sandy ones are supposed to be carrots but they haven't seemed to wanted to germinate yet. About every other one has potatoes. There is also one with bush green beans. There are four on top of the gravel bed that don't have anything in them yet, that area is not very sunny until the sun gets lower in the Fall. The grow bags have a layer of charcoal on the bottom, for wicking and maybe to reduce leaching maybe? The basil plants are just nestled in the gravel so their bottoms are wet, they have been very happy that way.

I added finer gravel on top of the gravel bed because the lava rock was leaving a lot of little pools for mosquitoes to lay eggs in. The bed is flooded as high as possible because I wanted to maximize the filtering from it. The smaller gravel seems to have helped get rid of the bugs now.

I have tomatoes, pole beans, and cantaloupes in the large net pots, to grow up the screen. There are little cucumber seedlings in the gravel bed between the bags - I think that might work pretty well once the vines grow away from the bags. I read an article talking about curcurbits and it said they have very shallow roots, they're very heavy feeders, and they hate drying out, so a gravel bed sounds like an ideal place for them to grow. I will run some twine for the cucumbers to grow up.

The round pots have strawberries and peppers in them. There has been a literal explosion of Japanese beetles in the last couple of weeks and they are going nuts on the strawberry leaves. I could fit another short trough in front of the gravel bed too, which I might add later.

The drain for the FT. On the left is a reef propeller pump that comes on for 15 minutes every two hours to help get the solids to the center and out. My plan for the Winter is to leave the tank as a big aquarium, not feed the fish, and line around the edge of the tank with filter material.

Little net pots to screen the drains.

Hiya Dave, nice to see you back.
Thanks for the update, looks good.
I see you used your moderator magic too.

This is the first year I've started seeds, that worked pretty well and I was able to get some more going to fill in the beds and bags. Most of the plants were ordered from seed from a catalog. I have had good and bad luck direct seeding into beds or pots before so I like being able to verify that the seeds germinated before putting them in.

I almost forgot the other AP system. This is in my office at work. There aren't any plants yet, but I need to get those going because this will be displayed at the county fair in September! There is a pot from a hanging basket, that has holes drilled in the bottom. There is a pipe going from the bottom of the aquarium into the pot. There is gravel in the pot, and it is supported by a piece of aluminum angle attached to the plastic rim of the aquarium. There is an air stone shoved down tot he bottom of the pipe to make it an air lift. So it pulls water from the bottom of the aquarium and the water has to go through the gravel to get out of the pot. Above the pot is a 54W LED grow light and IKEA floor lamp from Amazon. I will fill the little plastic flower pots I have with charcoal and/or compost on the top layer, and they will bet set in the hanging basket pot one day per week. I'm calling it the "plant spa". I will swap out a pot to my co-workers' desks once or twice per day. So at least once a week the plant is getting recharged with aerated fish water and light, which should make them grow happily. :-) I hope to have a mix of small ornamentals and herbs to take and line up next to the system at the Fair in September.

Thanks Skeg! Do you mean how I changed the topic title from DD's System 2016? I have been so busy with work and we name our next software version by the following year, so there was some time that I thought we were currently in 2016, haha :eyeroll:

Welcome back! Very nice looking system.

I really like your idea with the bags.

How are the charcoal beds? Are they sill trying to float?

Hi Bob!

I have been following the rain gutter grow system Facebook group and they use bags a lot which is what inspired me to use them.

I am not using charcoal in a flood situation, the layer under the grow bags is I'd say is 2/3 full of water when it overflows, so the charcoal there doesn't try to get out.

Pictures from today

Yesterday morning the middlemost round pots were falling into the trough, because the trough bows a little in the middle and the rain made it worse. I added a brace to hold the rails at the same distance permanently, so I shouldn't have that problem anymore.

Plants

It's all looking great Dave