Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The trout have settled in well, with ammonia and nitrites showing no more than about 0.3ppm, so it appears the bacterial colonies survived since December with no more than the occasional grasshopper to generate nutrients. I've been feeding them 300-450g of pellets per day for the past week.

Probably due to the extended heat into autumn, one of the passionfruit vines popped out a few flowers a few weeks ago, and there is one passionfruit on the vine now, but with the weather finally cooling down, I'm not sure if it will ripen. Normally I harvest passionfruit around February here.

Yellow plot shows the water temperature on the way down again after a small peak at the end of April.

Some significant falls in water temp as the autumn weather finally arrives



I've been catching a few mice in the GH and feeding them to the chooks, the mice keep eating seeds we are trying to germinate The tomatoes are still slowly ripening, and a big batch of capsicums are on the plants and should be ready to pick over the next few weeks.

The weather is cooling down a fair bit now, as is the water in the AP system, around 3C drop on colder nights, much of which isn't being recovered during the day in the past few days.



I syphoned out a bit of the poo accumulation in the ST a few days ago, which stirred it up a bit, but the fish seem ok. I'm still collecting a kg or so of tomatoes a couple of times per week, as they slowly ripen, and there are a lot of capsicums that will be ready soon too. There are still a few more eggplant to pick, and heaps of chives.

A kangaroo or wallaby had a dip in the ST a few nights ago, and escaped again, fortunately the Pondmax pump and pipes are sturdy enough that there was no damage other than a slight tear to the netting cover.

I added 250g of B&B to the ST today, as some of the plants appear to be a bit deficient in Iron.

I might have to syphon some water into the cherry orchard soon, as there is a very wet few days forecast from tonight onwards.

lucky it got out, dragging a dead waterlogged kanga out wouldnt have been fun.

It was a lot more challenging getting the live one out of the FT in the dark early hours of the day a couple of years ago! It took a while for the scars to heal from those few minutes of excitement

Lots of capsicums


I have a few of these pak choys, which have been delicious- a leafy snack every time I go into the GH


My wife bought these as cardomom, but we have figured out that it is actually termeric, and is now ready to harvest with the leaves turning yellow. Pot busting banana in the background



The perennial basil continues to grow like crazy

Wow! That banana's amazing!

Yes, it's a bit of a monster There are more pics form a few months ago on p56 of this thread. We had to jack up one end of the GB and put extra soil under it, as it was sinking into the ground under the weight of the banana.

I'm not planning to grow anything that big, but it's probably still a good thing I got a reinforced concrete slab to build on...

That Pok Choy looks beautiful,as do those amazing peppers....... With the Basil try clipping the flowers off as they form,it keeps the plant growing new delicious growth and keeps the plant more bushy,if that's the right terminology.

Don't listen to Dasboot, Gunna. He grows crappy basil...

In any case, we aren't too concerned about this lot, as we dont like the flavour as much as the regular basil. We are busy making pesto ATM, I just pressure cooker sterilised 6 jars this morning.

We had 70mm of rain yesterday and overnight, but everything seems to be in order this morning, other than finding a 196g trout on the ground. It must have gone for something and gone straight out the inspection hole, which wasnt covered. Normally when feeding I hear lots of them collide with the tank lid, so getting enough height to exit the FT isn't hard for them.

I found another trout had jumped out the day after the one mentioned in my previous post, it was a little smaller at 185g.
Some colder weather and lots of rain dropped the system water temp down a fair bit, and the fish weren't interested in eating at 8C, and have been eating significantly less when it is around 10C than a few weeks ago.

I put a DC10000 pump into the ST mid last week in place of the Pondmax 8000, and it appears to pump a similar volume of water, but uses about 20% less power, which is good in this cloudy weather when I have to use a generator some days. I think the Pondmax isn't pumping as much as it used to, so will dismantle and look at the impellor for signs of wear sometime soon, and keep it as a spare pump.
I finally finished off a time-lapse animation of the first 3 months of growth in this system, here:
http://gunagulla.com/organic/images/Vid ... months.mp4
I do have images for another 9 months, but not sure if I'll get around to assembling them into a huge 1 year long animation.

Lots of rain today and more to come, so the ST is overflowing.