Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

what brand of blood and bone are you using?

Hiya goro, I'm using the Richgrow b&b with added potash sprinkled on the gbs fortnightly, handful or so per bed as per recommendation by others. Like you I lost the majority of my fertilisers and wanted to get a bit more action plant wise. Still no rates though. Whether it has helped or not I honestly couldn't say although the plants are growing and producing. I began AP thinking I wouldn't need to add any extra minerals using quality fish food however obvious deficiencies have proved me wrong. Iron, potassium , magnesium and now b&b seem to keep the deficiencies in check. I have run out of GB space and would like to bring another GB online however I'm unable to find the time to add the spare BYAP bed and pipe system to the set up. Why is it as you get older time flies? Percentages I guess. Still haven't fulfilled last years resolution to clean up the shed so that is my spare time priority. Stoopid beer... Mmmmmmmm beer, hic. Ahem. Ibc wicking beds are on the back burner.

On a side note I'm going to move the remaining 5 rt's to the big tank as they don't have the same vigour at feeding time, the flings in the big tank are smashing 7mm pellets now possibly because fatty is spurring them on. Koi is the next residential choice for the tank to on sell if I can to recoup some fish food costs.

Well all that to answer a simple question! No wonder everyone calls me havachat... Time for a beer.
Cheers

Pictures.
Yes it is still a mess...

Hiya all
To celebrate my 1000th post here's an update in dry July.
Sure enough 6 days into dry July, 2 of those days 2 functions, free alcohol....

Everything is going well, the system just keeps ticking over without issues. I've finally cleaned the filter out and the Ph is now dropping which is allowing me to supplement with calcium and potassium buffers for the first time for a year at least. Not saying the system appears to be lacking at the moment just being proactive.
The plants are growing ok and we are getting food each night for dinner from the back yard which is what this whole hobby is all about. There must be over 40 different kinds of plants growing in the AP currently, and most of what we try to grow does, with the exception of garlic which is a shame as we use so much in the kitchen. We've pretty much run out of planting space and now that we are getting returns from what we have, more beds are in order.
All fish are going swimmingly, the rts in the big tank are definitely growing larger than the sml tank perhaps as there are more in the big tank there is more competition which makes them attack the feed with more vigour than the 3 in the sml tank. So last week I moved a couple more into the lge tank after matching tank Ph. All went well but about an hour later I walked past the tank and heard some flapping and Lo and behold fatty the trout had jumped from the tank and was carrying on like a, well, fish out of water.First fish to have made the journey and the biggest at that! Odd. I plonked it back in the tank and after about an hour of feeling sorry for itself it was back to its old self.
Since adding the smaller fish into its tank Fatty seems to have lost a bit of weight and doesn't look so tall... Once again I put it down to competition. I feed the fish usually twice a day not by weight but by demand which in a back yard application I think is the way to go.

Bee keeping is my next study subject and am looking for a good forum to join, unfortunately I've been spoilt by this forum so have high expectations but would appreciate direction to a good bee keeping forum. Back to newbie status again...

So I come to the end of the update post number 1000. The next update to this thread will be during the next expansion unless something newsworthy occurs.
Pics of the system as of Saturday.

Hi all.
I know I wasn't going to update until I did an expansion however I feel I need to log the end of this winter before I prepare for summer as the diamond back moths return and the perch start eating again, for future reference.
'Twas a good winter, the trout seem to be bigger than last year and we probably need to start harvesting as the weather starts to warm up. We have had a couple of 'routine maintenance' power outages and although have no backup system, due to our conservative stocking haven't lost a fish and as the system has matured the plant growth is improving. The only plants to fail were the garlic but everything else has gone well and provided us with the majority of greens over winter. We ran the sys with the stand pipes out for a while during the rain and doing this seems to have cleaned the beds up somewhat, digging into the media there shows no sign of clogging whatsoever. I have been struggling to keep the pH up over 6 and have been adding lime and pot carb to combat regularly since cleaning out my super inefficient filter...
Lettuce, celery, beetroot, rocket, silver beet, spinach and broccoli being the performers.
Looking forward to seeing how the system goes this summer with a few years under its belt.
That's all I can think of, just a few photos now.
Go Eagles.

Now that is an impressive and beautiful mess!

I have three very successful hives at the moment. They have been going strongly for nearly 2 years.

Am not a member of a bee forum but have found very useful information on utube.



For a beginner i found the trials and tribulations of "Backyard beekeeping" very useful.

"Fatbeeman" is a legend - but a bit more advanced.

How much Potassium Carbonate are you adding Skeg? I'm adding about 150g per day to my large system lately (I've added nearly 5kg in the past month or so) and rarely get to pH6.5, usually it's pH 6.3 or less each morning. I occasionally add Ca(OH)2, but not so often, as there is quite a bit of shell grit in the ST and GBs, which should be providing plenty of Ca at my operating pH. I've run out of KOH, as my supplier ran out, and he was supposed to phone when he had more in...

Mess Gabe, really? Sounds like you are in cohorts with my partner......

I'm quite looking forward to my foray into the bee journey and am hoping to use these gals in the pic to get started.

I'm using mr d's 3:1:1 twice a week using heaped tea spoon measures, not near your quantities Guna but I've just over 5% of your stock. Comfortable . When I didn't clean the filter the pH sat at 7 and I kinda miss that now but I need to soldier for the rest of the year to gauge the difference in plant growth. I do wonder what happens to it all, can you have too much calcium and potassium in the system or does it disappear with the nitrogen cycle?

Mess indeed.

beautiful natural beehive, all you need is a door. System looks magnificent too. We need a AP beekeeper thread

I think Calcium will start to precipitate out when you have too much, and, I suspect, have it near the precip limit and add lots of Potassium. So it may be sort of self-regulating, but I'm not really certain about that. I know that in my small system, something white precipitates out when I added K2CO3, and I think it may be CaCO3.

Hi Skeegs just looking at your last couple posts bloody awesome mate I noticed you mentioned you use blood and bone have never heard this one before it's been two years my plants grow ok but like you have deficiencys can you enlighten me a bit please as in what sprinkle on gb s and leave it like that or use ft water to water into gb cheers mate

http://files.alamedabees.org/text/root/The_ABC_and_XYZ_of_Bee_Culture%201908.pdf I hadn't looked at the whole thing here, but the hardback version is a must for every bee keeper

Thanks boss, I'll try to move onto that once I've finished my current books.

Had a fatality today, the last of last years trout, shame. Checked the pH and read at 5.5... Doh. So I added a cup of lime and 1/2 hr later checked pH.... 7.0.... Double doh. Water temp 21°c.
I pulled a few stand pipes, turned on the air and am now running cf. we'll see how they are in the morn, hopefully the pH will level out....

So a photo of the trout check out the roe!!! Fish weight well over a kilo but the flesh isn't the nice orange colour, perhaps it wasn't eating? Or the pellets have gone stale.
But check out the roe!

I didn't think trout would breed in a tank like that hey,
Some fish don't eat while breeding so that might explain the non orange colour,
Awesome growth mate.
I'm hoping my little red fish will breed once they eat pellets

very cool, well and sad too. But yeah, look at all the roe! How old are the trout? I've been looking on PondBoss forum and they recommend putting old Christmas trees in the ponds for the fish. I think it's to give the fish a place to protect eggs and then fry. I'm such a newbie, I'll keep reading maybe by the time my trout are ready I'll have a better idea what is what and either build a place in the pond for them to lay eggs or use my aquarium for eggs if I can get them to that stage without too many mishaps.