Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It's time for me to set up my system finally, been researching and such for months and today I found a man on Craigslist who's gonna give me three aquatic turtles(1 red eared, & 1 yellow belied slider, and one painted turtle), which will take up my three largest tanks, and I also have a bunch of guppies, twelve large ish gold fish, and a large common pleco. I'm gonna be using a narrow growbed- cut out of a pvc pipe, a large sand filter filled with gravel, and dutch buckets to grow plants in. I got all my fish, buckets, filters, and most of my tanks for free on Craigslist, and I've spent a total of 82 USD on this project already. I'm gonna start trying to plumb it together with what I have tomorrow, as well as insulate with Styrofoam, and set up wind shields. I need to have as much of it set up as possible by the end of this week, as that's when I'm picking up the turtles! Very excited, I'm hoping to keep the total cost below 200 USD, but... Well we'll see how well that works.

I'm planning on buying a bunch of freshwater clams to put in, and continue harvesting the invasive species from our local parks, because they'll keep my sand super clean. I also would love to keep some crays in one of the bigger tanks I have, but I'm not sure how well that'll work out, depending upon layouts.

My tank sizes as I have it are 1x 75 gal 1x 65 gal 1x 55 gal 1x 50 gal 1x 35 gal 2x 20 gal and one ten gallon tank I might use for quarantines.

The space I'm using is a six by six by six and a half foot box. It's an old fort attached to a swing set that I'm converting to a greenhouse(screwing clear plastic roofing and a few windows onto)

Are you not worried about the salmonella from the turtles?

I had a turtle in my system for four months an it was fine
But it died due to cold water temps

How cool. Will be interested how it all goes. Would love to setup a turtle pond... Just don't have the space.

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Signore wrote: "Are you not worried about the salmonella from the turtles?" oh man, another thing I didn't know. http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm048151.htm Thanks for sharing.

So as long as I practice safe and clean behaviors, I should be fine, the turtles need a home and I can provide, and I wash all my veggies before I eat or feed em to pets anyways. I'm not sure how exactly salmonella transfers through water or anything so I have some research to do, but... No I'm not really worried. I'm more doing this as a hobby. I'm not expecting to replace my groceries with it.

this is sort of how i'm planning upon setting it up :dontknow :
like obviously this is just sort of roughly sketched i'm not used to the program yet, but... yeah, four tanks with the long sudes next to eachother and pvc overflows set up, inlet on one side, pump out on the other, two canister filters set on the center two tanks, and hob filters on the outsidetanks? i'll have a big ol flourescent light uva uvb setup, and maybe some clip on lamps too, over the basking area.

also, i'm thinking of using the turtles only to grow ornamental plants as the guinea pigs can contract salmonella and transmit it to humans via fecal matter also, so... only ornamentals and plants i plan on feeding to the turtles anyways i guess. still a much cheaper filtration setup than commercial filters available.

i guess it's closer to RAS now than aquaponics, but...

what do you think of this? i missed a connection back from the sand filter to the resevoir, buuut...

this way, if i want to grow plants, i just plumb the growbed to the resevoir/sump. which will be either a fifty five gallon drum, or a thirty three gallon big plastic brute barrel. probably the barrel as it's what i currently have. do you think the cheap uv filter/algae killer sterilizer would kill salmonella before it got to the water? how strong of a sterilizer do ya'll think i'd need?

oof! level 2 uvc sterilizers are running over 500 usd it looks like, if you can even find a reliable one that cheap! tough to justify when i can just dump some bleach in a bucket with the water and use it to water soil plants after i've let it sit for a day or so... i guess time to start saving up for that and a chiller!