Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Those bars across the FT are going to make catching fish an interesting exercise!

Yeeeeeep! I'm going to have to be cunning about it, I think - maybe use a trap, or temporarily block off part of the tank when I'm fishing up dinner.

Line and hook fishing, no prob!

Looks really good there Mel! Wonderfully clean looking setup.
Not like my mess!

I hate the fact that every time I have made something I go to bed that night and think up how I'm going to rebuild/upgrade it!


- Jens

I can just see myself dropping a line in the tank and having a silver perch wrap it around one of those bars and tie it in a bow.

Aww, thank you for the compliment! I need to keep my husband happy with me taking over a big chunk of the back yard - if it's not neat he'll get grumpy!

Turns out that having a bunch of delays before I got my slab, and then a bunch of delays before I got my tanks, was really useful! I managed to have a bunch of 'better ideas' and redo my plans half a dozen times before I actually had anything built.

You are killin' it over there, Mel. It looks fantastic.

My tanks are probably from the same factory as yours Mel - a bit smaller so I don't have any bars. But my SP are pretty good at hiding in the bottom at either end where it's most curved. It's tricky to get the net to them.

I've got better at netting a single fish for dinner, but it was hard catching them all to grade them last year. I resorted to a few drops of clove oil in the FT (with the pump turned off). There are a some posts about it on the forum including dosing. Be careful... a lot goes a long way. But the SP get sleepy and can just about be caught by hand. And they bounce back very quickly after the clove oil is diluted by the rest of the system water.

Was worried they'd taste like a baked ham but I ate one and there was no hint of cloves in the flesh.

Aw, thank you! I have to admit, sometimes I walk out there and just look at bits of it and go, "I did that. "


Ooh, thanks for the idea! I knew you could use clove oil that way, but I've been thinking of it in terms of fishy surgery and euthanasia, not "get on my plate you sneaky buggers".

The bars are going to be a bit inconvenient, but it's much better to have them than not with tanks of this size and construction - I haven't put up any photos showing it yet, but the full FT has a pretty impressive bulge on each side below the lower bars! I've gotten used to it, but wow, it gave me the willies when I was filling it up. (Also, it's amazing how my suppliers managed to put on that much silicone and still leave leaks... I fixed one big leak on the sump tank with my own silicone, and several tiny leaks around the FT rivets are already slowing down on their own, but I think I'm going to have to take marine sealant to the FT side seam.)

Well since you've already have drilled thru the sidewalls, remove the thru rods and replace with a angle iron, square tubing, etc. on the outside of the tank at the lower level were all the outward pressure is. You don't have much height to add more above that point, but if needed add them.

bad reflection on workmanship - I had two tanks custom built like that to go down side of my house.
But I only went 600mm high and they are only 1.8m long (600mm wide).

I am thinking the guy that built mine was a much better metal tank fabricator and sealer.
He made the silicone very neat and the joins are all flush. It has lasted fine.

I did wonder about the bowing. Bit hard as you have concrete pad but I guess options are:
(a) to have a wall along the back and prop at least one side against that
(b) put in some posts/pickets as a brace

one option might have been to use galvanised 50mm fence/strainer posts for your stands and then use the legs as braces. The weight of the grow beds would give them ballast and you could easily have a plate at bottom with bolt into pad.


The main issue is that the flexing will probably exacerbate any leaks as there is probably quite a bit of water pressure for the dimensions you have.

Oh hell no guys, I'm not messing with it! It looks scary but it's not shifting any further, so I think it's stable, the supplier says it's normal for this type of tank to bulge like that... and it's got a niiiice multi-year guarantee that I don't want to lose by modifying it.

I picked my jalapenos!



I'm ridiculously proud of those little plants! They were root bound in their punnet, bought really late in the growing season, immediately got hailed on, never got taller than about five inches, and still managed to soldier on and produce a pepper each... in the depths of winter. Really hot peppers. Jalapenos are supposed to be mild, but, uh, no. Those little babies have a burn.

They're also strong enough to make rubbing your eyes after collecting seeds from them a really bad idea, even an hour later and after washing your hands.

On the plus side, I now know that I can get from my study to the kitchen, find milk and paper towels, wash my eyes, find my eye drops, and wash my eyes again, all without opening my eyes for more than a split second at a time! So that's something.

In other news, my seal job on the side seam of my fish tank is not pretty, but it's effective!

Nice looking Armadillo Eggs you have there, how do you cook them?

Mostly with peppers we just chop however much we need up fine and add it to dishes to spice them up! That's what happened with the first pepper last night, my husband put a little in spaghetti bolognese. I've got plans to use them in pickles, and if the next generation of jalapenos produce enough I'm going to stuff some with cream cheese and grill them.

With smaller chillis, my husband has made infused olive oil (that was a roaring success, it was awesome). And our brand-new breadmaker (just arrived yesterday!) has a 'jam' setting and came with recipes for chilli sauce, so that's another thing to try!

There's a guy at my hydroponics shop who loves peppers - he eats California Reapers whole! - and he gave me a little sweet chilli seedling yesterday, so hopefully I'll have a variety to play with. I've promised to give him some of the seeds from the Little Jalapenos That Could so he can try them out, too.

The key to eating hot peppers is don't let the pepper touch your lips. I had that problem when in 1970 after serving a tour in VN, I was re stationed in San Antonio, TX.

Would go for Mexican food 5-7 days a week, no I'm not talking Taco Bell, I would go to the Barrio and get real aulthenic Mexican food.

So one day I saw this old man popping chile pequins like candy. So asked him the secret and that's what he told me, don't let the pepper touch your lips.

So here is my recipe for Armadillo Eggs.

First burn off the waxy coating from the peppers by holding them over a open flame. Getting rid of this makes it easier for coating the peppers later.

Peel away the skin, cool them and slit the peppers the full length.

Remove any seeds.

Mix a mixture of Cream Cheese and whatever other ingredients you want to stuff the peppers with, I, like to use minced shrimp, crab, scallops, chives.

When filling the peppers, don't overstuff them, what you want to be able to do, is be able to close the slit tightly, or when you cook them the stuffing will melt faster and run out the slit.

Put all the peppers on a shallow pan and freeze them. Frozen the following is easier to do.

Take some waxed paper and roll out some pan sausage about 1/8" thick. Take a frozen pepper, dust it with cornstarch, and coat the outside of the pepper, Making sure that the pepper is properly encased. Take them and dust the outside of the sausage liberally with a mixture of Shake and Bake. Place the peppers on a cookie sheet on top of waxed paper and re-freeze them.

To cook them put in the oven at least 350 degrees F, till they are golden brown. Or you can deep fry them, or better yet BBQ them.

And its advisable to were some sort of gloves when working with these peppers. My first mother in law, would coat her hands in lard, then dust them with flour.

Take some Poblano peppers and do the same, makes some great 'Chile Relano's'

Loving this build, so neat and tidy.

10 points for toe shot. It was once an unwritten rule here at BYAP.

Reeeeeeally love the FT cover!!