Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You've done an amazing job on your system Mel. It is absolutely pristine. Beautiful craftswomanship.

*blush* Aw, thank you! There are some bits that aren't perfect but for some straaaange reason I never seem to take photos showing them...

I have enjoyed following your build. Great job.
I have never seen a perfect system.

Thanks! I'm sure as heck never going to build a perfect system - even if I get everything right there's always going to be something to add / expand / change...

Little update to the system I did yesterday:


What I did this morning (with my husband's help):


(we also voted in our local territory election)

What I'm doing this afternoon:

ahem I saw a cat looking the neighbors fish tank and he/it was standing on a frame ....just like yours... funny as when he/it moved to the 2nd frame and it was softer...he/ot certainly got a very close up view of the fish opps

Pretty sure any cat that tried walking on the shadecloth part of the cover would get very wet!

I got a second wind.

Amazing! Great job Mel! Love the covers, hoop house and the matching colors. My current system is all from recycled materials but I dream of one as clean and custom as yours.

Can't wait for the next update!

There should be one soon, fingers crossed - I've planted some more stuff and am setting up the second row of growbeds. Thanks for the compliments! I'm having a lot of fun building. Slower than I hoped but faster than I feared, so I figure I'm on track.

Hi Mel,

what's the reasoning behind the root pouches around the tomato's? They look like they raise the surface around the plant, do they dissolve or will you be taking them off at some stage?

Thanks, Pete.

Tomatoes have a reputation for growing huge root systems that block off chunks of your growbed and can create dead spots; also, the bottom 20cm of my growbeds has scoria (lava rock) instead of clay pebbles, and I already found in my teeny test system that plants with big root systems really grab onto the scoria and drag a lot of it up when you remove them. Basically I just want to see if the tomatoes will grow happily with a root pouch restraining their colonialist tendencies.

The root pouches won't dissolve/disintegrate - these ones are made of recycled plastic formed into a kind of tough felt. You can get biodegradable ones too but I wanted mine to stay solid.

Thanks Mel,
sounds a bit like being pot bound in a dirt system, good luck.
Pete.

Can't say I've ever had problems with tomato roots clogging up the GBs. Celery certainly forms a dense mass of roots, and so does ornamental ginger- on a massive scale, but no dead spot problems, as the roots were not rotting at all, even in the middle of the mass. Maybe F&D is a big help with preventing dead spots

I noticed you've painted the outside of the GB's presumably to prolong it's service life, reduce algae and make it look pretty.
Do you or anyone else know how long the plastic will survive out in the sun before it cracks and needs to be replaced?
I got a couple from Seasol and the guy reckons they keep them for at least two years but never retire them because of UV damage.

Pete.

All three reasons, yup!



No idea beyond "after several years", sorry. RobBob from Bits Out the Back on YouTube (he's also on this forum) had a growbed where he'd left a strip unpainted so he could see the water level in it, and it eventually broke at that point when he bumped into it. I just don't know how old it was when that happened.

I figure shielding them from UV has multiple benefits beyond extending their durability, and I want my growbeds to last as long as possible - replacing them when they eventually need it is going to be a pain and a half! - so they're all getting painted/covered.*

(*the second row of growbeds isn't getting painted, because sanding the plastic to help the paint stick is an absolute [SEVERAL RUDE WORDS GO HERE] on my shoulders and back; I'm covering them with reflective insulation wrap instead. Arthritis ain't fun!)