Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Plenty of conversation on YouTube and reddit, byap never watches many videos, usually about 10 views on a video.

I just went and looked up the stats. On my 2.5 million views, combined with people watching it on the forum, and following the link, I've had about 2,000 views all up from BYAP.

Reddit seems to draw the most views, 26,000 views from there.

Youtube seems to form it's own communities, or people subscribe and watch the videos direct.

I still prefer the peeps here though.

lol.... "My youtube channel has evolved. Into what? I'm not quite sure..."

There is only so many aquaponics videos I can do before I'd get bored, or run out of material.

Plus I enjoy making stuff. I made a 2.4m vibrator on Wednesday, that'll be a fun video.

bet you that gets some hits from the porn channel......

hey Colum, thanks for the video. I have been planning to do a system with a greenhouse and was hoping to grow it to a pretty large-ish scale. after watching your video.... i have given up on that idea and am going to just go play video games when i get out of work instead of wasting my time on aquaponics!! THANKS!!!

I never said it wasn't doable, just make sure you know what you're walking into, or keep it as a backyard system.

HAHA! no worries man. I am totally joking. I learned something new from your video. from 6:20 - 6:50ish you say there is a compromise and I may just re-design my system based on that! I am thinking now that I want to separate the system more... like restructure this marriage of aquaculture and hydroponics.

1 guy I learned a lot from is a guy on youtube with username PonicsWars. I took a lot from his system and I want to be able to isolate the fish system from the plant system. maybe there is a way to separate everything and make everything happy. whether that requires more pumps, more water storage, more fish tanks, or all the above...

For instance; 1 system (FT,ST,GBs, etc) per TYPE of plants growing. In that case I would focus solely on what the plants want and have the fish compromise.

Recently I have been planning to separate the FT from the rest of the system and have a very large volume of water in sump tanks that are buried in order to maintain the right water temp for the fish. then hydroponically handle the plants by doing water changes (swapping from the huge sump storage and a hydroponic storage for plants). Not sure if anyone has tried this or if it will work? just something that I have been tossing up in my head.

If that works, then add to that the separation of plants to have the ideal growing conditions for each. If anyone is doing this I would like to see it. If not, I would like to see someone test it!

You mean like this read from here on
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=663&start=2175

that is pretty much what you will find people saying around here anyway in many various threads. As things get larger scale you end up needing to separate the veg and fish sides much more - particularly so you can treat each for issues independently as they tend to conflict (ie. fish = salt which veg don't like, veg = things fish don't like).
At large scales you need management efficiency to keep costs down (purchased inputs and time/labour).

The least option is to use filters to clean the water and to take any solids etc out of the AP/AQ side.
Then bio-filters of some form to handle the nitrification. At that level you use waste water for the plants as needed and top up fish water with new water.

You can run some level AP to simply clean up the nitrates from the fish (given it is mainly clean filtered water now).
Usually a DWC or something for leafy's like lettuces etc which thrive mainly on nitrates and dont really need the other inputs as much and whose bug treatments are fairly minimal.

Rest of the veg you keep separate and go for it in whatever way you prefer.

Ahh, Had my system in for 5 years now. Must have missed the bit where lettuce need heaps of N, toms need plenty of P. Sort of explains why toms (and now peas) grow well in my system, lettuce not so...(most greens)

Thanks CBB

I think the tomatoes were a tid bit I picked up from Ryan (no idea where now on the forum).

It's a little more complicated than that though. I think you want higher nitrates while the plants are younger (encourage leafy growth), then when they are at fruiting size, the nitrates are dropped down, and potassium/potash added. This makes it focus on fruiting.

I learnt about the lettuce not liking the potassium the hard way, I added iron based snail/slug pellets. They are a mixture of iron & potassium (nitrate?), and my tommies went nuts, and every single lettuce in my system went to seed, all the rhubarb started to send up flowers.

I'd love to make a video on it, but I don't have the ability to control my system that well. Mk2 will be capable of that though

I am thinking my system will normally be on the lower side of N as I don't feed the fish anywhere near some of the systems around. They regularly go without a feed over a few days.

Get yourself a fish feeder

I'm in the same boat though, I've never seen any nitrates in my system, maybe the odd spike, but never much.