Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Dave,
Interesting concept but looks pretty labour intensive. The boss would not be happy with something like that in the yard although she has tolerated quite a few geodesics springing up every now and then.

Rigid tanks of any description are just plain silly prices over here..maybe i can slip a 10ft diameter framed pool underneath the trampolene without the boss noticing.
Ideal for making the most of the space ..the kids may get their feet a tad damp though

The temp was 86.6 last night, and the water felt very warm. I checked the heaters and I had them set wrong, the two in the tank were maxed out. They have formed some kind of deposits on them. I dialed them back to 81.

Today I hope to rearrange some plants and reduce the nitrates by replacing some of the water and by cleaning out some of the solids that pile up on the beds.

Throw some compost worms in the beds. That takes care of the solids. My worms are getting large enough now that they can take care of any mess on the surface that the fish can make.

hey dave, don't trust the heaters :shaock:

I have a reasonable brand heater, and it maintains temp, but if you change the setting its best to check every so often. MONTHS ago, when i has an ich problem in my tropical tank i dialed it up to 30C, then back to 28C, i've lost about 3 fish for no apparent reason over the last few months, check the temp the other day 31C and the heater was set to 26C.

I had my guppy tank set to 24, walked up to it, thought, where is the heat radiation coming from? Put my finger in, it was well above body temp.

I cleared out the lettuce plants today, and put peat plugs with green beans, broccoli, tomatoes, and peppers in them. Only one half of one bed has mesclun mix in it, and the Thai peppers, green peppers, the wee brocoli with no light becaiuse of the basil, and the basil plants remain. Temp is falling slowly over the past couple of days, tonight it is 81 which is about where I want it.

I scooped out the biofilm that has been piling up under the outlets. The sump is almost completely clean and I've been feading the little ones with crushed fish flakes. They are transparent because the lid is always on the sump - maybe that would be a desirable kind of fish - glass tilapia?

The plan tomorrow is to pull out some of the AP water and replace with fresh, rather than just topping it off as usual. I think it will go out in the dirt garden.

Oh, I also fiddled with the gravel beds. I added more gravel because the water level is right at the surface and the lettuce was swimming a bit. In the gravel are a ton of little bugs that look like teeny slugs with antennae, but that are 1mm long or less and fast. I also saw a little earthworm in the gravel too! I have no idea how he could have come in! After that I decided to put a bit of my dirt from the dirt garden in the gravel hoping that maybe some good stuff or maybe worm eggs could be added. The dirt garden has very nice soil and I'm confident that it has a healthy balance of little guys in it. One spider came in with the dirt, as well as a pill bug.

Anyone want to guess what these things might be? They are dark and look like little slugs. If I move the gravel away and make a puddle a bunch of them will pile up on the surface of the water. I'll try to get a picture of them sometime.

flatworms?

Oh No......... You've let the pill bugs into the grow bed DD...???? Hope it was only one, and not pregnant..

I can;t get rid of them from my bed...

Are they bad? I thought they were good predators?

Their antennae make them look exactly like slugs, not so much arrowhead shaped.

Well it all depends on who you talk to DD.. I had always been told that they only eat dead or decaying plant matter and they won't eat live plants, but I have had them in plague proportions sometimes in my dirt beds and they don;t just eat dead and decaying plant material.. I've had them ringbark seedlings and plants, eat out the trunks of pawpaw trees, and generally cause some major carnage... They haven't quite bred to the same levels in my AP growbeds yet, but I'm very concious of them and keep an eye on their population.. Slugs are my biggest problem...

Righto EB, I read the same thing on wikipedia about them today. It will be fun to have them in the house.

If all goes well I am going to try making a spiral heat exchanger out of some wood and this plastic (PVC) flashing left over from building the deck. I considered rubber tubing inside PVC pipe but I think that will clog too easily, and the sheets will provide more surface area. I also considered parallel sheets in a box but it would have been tricky to close up the ends of the sheets. This seems pretty simple, the plan is to use the dremel to rout out a spiral slot in a square piece of wood for the flashing to sit in. It would be secured with a bead of silicone. I think the tricky part would be getting the other side to line up whilst trying to close the box at the same time. I would also like to be able to get to the insides to clean it out regularly, but whatever.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image ... hanger.png

Sounds like a lot of fun

You can use correx for a cheapo flat plate HE.. works well enough with air but haven`t tried one using water.

Alternate each sheet of correx at 90 degrees and clamp them together to make a block. One block is ok but 2 is better (counterflow double pass)