Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi this is a system i've been building for the past few months, so far it consists of a ibc for a fish tank which houses 22 jade perch (mostly from kuranda fish farm) a few goldfish , and some snails and a snake tailed catfish. The media grow beds are the top of the ibc and a barrel cut in half. When the pumps run water floods the grow beds then drains into the fish tank which overflows into a swirl filter (with a couple of goldfish for mosi control) the swirl filter overflows in to another drum with 10 lt of bioballs ( not sure this is a appropriate amount but there is plenty of room for more later) , a mesh bag full of smashed shells and coral, a large air stone and the pumps.

The dwc tank was a 2200 lt tank i found at a salvage yard originally used to store concentrated bleach so i figure it cant get much cleaner just presser cleaned it a few times to be sure, still haven't worked out what to do with the other half. Water from the bio filter is pumped up to a set of filters then in to the dwc which returns to the swirl filter. The are 3 large air stones under the floating rafts feed by a 38 lt a min 12v air pump.

The system is powered by 2 120w panels which charge a 100 amp hr deep cycle battery.

So far i have had to add hydrated lime to keep my ph up I am trying to keep it above 7 ish so I can add some red claw to the dwc sometime soon. Also chelated iron as the bok coy was very yellow. The only other problem i have been having is withering of chile leaves there are four plants side by side only 2 we affected i tried adding sesol raising ph adding iron ( for the bok choy ) and potash, I then decided to trim back to 2 affected plants to see what would happen the new growth is better then it was but not quite right any advice would be appreciated.

Welcome to the forum Smegoal. Sounds like a good start. Some pictures of the plants would probably help us figure out what's going on .

Here's a tutorial on posting pics to the forum that Tallman wrote in case you need it - http://byap.backyardmagazines.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=21754&sid=a2584b90fe349657d5ab186a013f3f10

Cheers

Some pics bit hard to take long shots as its all in a 6 X 3 green house

long view
http://i482.photobucket.com/albums/rr18 ... ynjabl.jpg
media beds

top view
Fish action shot

same fish

more pics

coriander and basil

swirl filter

control bucket

CB with battery

isolation switches

Floating rafts

First tomato

chillies

timer omron hc3r if you are using 12v or any other odd voltage look at ebay for these dont come up often so keep a eye out

bio filter and pump housing

long view

withered chilli

good chili

another good chili

wosrt leaf ever

same plant

a capsaicin that is also doing terribly

pre dwc filter covered to hopefully stop/slow down algae growth

first filter

last filter may be to fine 10 microns will look at changing this filter set up later




so that it for now i want to add some red claw soon going to put some perspeces in the bottom of the dwc to give them more room and a lot of pvc for hide holes any tips on the chillies would be appreciated thanks

Plants are looking good Smegoal. I see what you mean about the chili peppers, though. I think it's possible that at least one of the peppers is having spider mite problems. You may want to take a magnifying glass out and have a look. Sometimes shaking them onto a piece of white paper helps too.

A couple of other possibilities for the plants with bumpy leaves would be calcium deficiency or a virus. You would see a calcium deficiency on the new growth first.

Thanks did have a lot of mites before but i released a heap of lace wings and they destroyed them unfortunately i did not have enough flowers around so they grew up and left, i've planted a garden bed at the door full of flowers so ill give the lace wings a go when the flowers are bigger in the meantime ill try chilli garlic spray bit of a shame to have to waste my first chillies on bug control.

thanks for having a look

Cool setup smegoal. How long is that hoop house? Looks like you fitted in quite a lot.

6 x 3 meters got it primarily to keep the wind out there is a vacant block beside us then a turf farm so no shelter from the wind great on hot days not great for seedlings