Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sigh i feel so inadiquate right now.. my poor little 2000 liter tank an 2 grow beds looks so sad now

Gee I hope you're only joking Andrew. As they say, it's how you use it that counts!

is it going to be tough to harvest with the IBCs being up against the wall? I'm working on my plans and how to make everything fit, that would help if it's not too difficult to reach with them against the wall?

It's not ideal in that regard but I can reach through to the back easily enough. If I left room to walk between the IBCs and the side walls I'd have less than 1m down the middle. I'd eventually like to run a few grow towers in that area.

Everything's powering away here including some vigorous basil, however I'm seeing some yellowing between veins on a few leaves. Any idea how to correct this?

google suggests potassium deficiency.

Confirmation from someone who can actually garden may be an advantage though :-)

Today I bought some 13% iron chelate powder (Manutec). It comes with a 5g scoop (just under a tsp?) so I put 10 of those in, plus 10 scoops of epsom salts and a 500mL cup of pool salt. See how that goes.

Meanwhile the plants are still doing well with a few apple sized tomatoes and dozens of smaller ones. Only one cucumber so far after trying my hand at manual polination. Ants have been a bit of a problem - I won't say how I'm controlling them!

The iron chelate should take care of the basil. It looked like the upper (newer) leaves were the first affected and that indicates a non-mobile nutrient so probably Iron. Doubt you needed the epsom salts although it may not hurt anything since the nutrients do compete for binding it might .

Thought I'd share some footage of the silvers feeding this morning. One of the catfish makes an appearance near the end as well as my trusty shadow, Harry the schnauzer.

Sammo,

great system!!
Where abouts in Melbourne are you?
I'm going to be down in Mordialloc, It would be cool to see what works well locally
cheers
Damo

Hi Damo, thanks. I'm in Pearcedale. Happy to take some more photos if that would help?

I made a lid for the fishtank out of cypress and metric poly, plus a few bits of twin wall poly and stainless fittings. It has two hatches for feeding/harvesting and waterproof shade cloth to keep the rain and debris out.

Unfortunately it was ripped off in strong winds a week after these photos, cracking one of the timber struts. Once I finish the repairs I'll be refitting it with some guy-ropes!

Very nice job on the lid sorry to hear the wind did a number on it. Post up another pic of your rebuild I'm interested in seeing how you do the guy ropes.

How big in diameter is that tank?
Is there polycarbonate all over or just in the door sections?

Thanks Scotty. 2.5m diam. Only the door sections are poly, with a shade cloth "skin" covering the remainder. I tensioned the cloth using eyelets and rope underneath so that it could be tightened if it sagged over time. That's the theory anyway!

Ditto on sorry. Damn fine looking system and lid

A long-overdue update!

Finally got around to building a sturdy cover over my FT. Cypress posts in concrete, hardwood purlins and lots of fasteners, she ain't going anywhere! I'll be fitting a stay to the lid as well.







I had some old bamboo stakes lying around so I made a trellis for sugar/snap peas.



I was a bit late planting my winter crop but it's powering along now.