Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Mel,

Potentially good timing - I am about to move house in the next few Months (I suspect around August) so will have to move my system. I've been thinking about selling my (50ish) SP to make the move a bit easier as I'm not sure how long it will take for me to setup the system again and I'll likely also have 50 trout as well that I'd like to try and keep (well I'd like to keep them both it's just going to be hard working out fish housing during the humans moving period).....

Send me a PM we can take it offline

I bet you will Bunja, it's a lot of fun and very rewarding!

Welp, the teeny test system is looking a bit denuded at the moment. I pulled out the biggest marigold a few days ago because it was the center of a massive eruption of spider mites (wtf, marigolds, you are supposed to be bug-resistant) - it's all under control now, thanks to some homemade spray (emulsifiable oils and a little Dr Bronner's soap), but the buglets had that marigold basically wrapped up in a solid cocoon of webs and I decided that total destruction was the way to go. So that put a big hole in the wall of green and flowers I had going across the back of the growbeds!

Things have been slowing down in general because it's getting pretty cold, and also the teeny test system is in the worst possible location for winter. It gets zero early morning sun, is in full shadow behind the house until very late morning, and gets kinda sketchy afternoon light/warmth as well because the sun is so low on the horizon it's blocked by trees and fences intermittently. It was a good place to put it in February, but it was never meant to still be running now - if my slab and tanks hadn't been kinda delayed I would have my big system up by now and everything in the teeny system would have been moved over there. I don't really regret the delay, because my plans kept evolving and it'll end up a better system than if I'd built it last month, but that still leaves the current system literally out in the cold.

...as in, really cold. We had our first frost last night, and although it only hit -1 officially, I'm wondering if our back porch actually got colder than that... or at least held -1 longer than elsewhere... because things froze all right! The patches of open water around the jar reservoirs in my seedling trays froze over (gotta move those inside), the splashback from the water inlet in the fish tub froze on the mesh cover, and both were still iced up at well past 10am when I went out for a look. The basil went black and fell over, so that's been pulled out (it had a really good root ball which is currently sitting on top of the media to dry out), and although the squash looked OK this morning, all its leaves have now gone completely limp. Methinks I shall have to pull that out tomorrow too.

My tanks for the big system won't be here for another couple of weeks at least, and then it'll take a while to finish the growbeds and plumbing (and gravel washing, ow), so the teeny system has to soldier on a bit longer! I've got corn salad and bunching onions filling in a bit of the open space, and I've got some seedlings that will have to go in the new spots as there's no way they'll be happy in the seedling trays for weeks waiting for the big system to be ready; hopefully they'll do OK until I can move them over!

(hoy Cunning, I sent you a PM about your fish weeks ago... did it get to you?)

Hey Mel, spider mites don't like humidity- regular spraying with a a hose removes them and keeps them away- no need to remove the marigold, which is good for stopping lots of other bugs.

Er... too late! I'll bear that in mind for the future, and I've got several left.