Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Cheers Darren

Will have to see what it does when I do stop adding acid (may slowly climb back up)


Basically growing lettuce, a mix of asian vegetables (bok choi etc), basil, celery, broccoli and cauliflower, cucumber and either a chilli or capsicum that survived from the last batch of plants (not sure what it was now ;P)


I plan on adding another half barrel sooner or later which will give me around 500 liters of media, also have a few 'fish tank' plants growing in the water in one of the fish tanks. 15 fish total, and 2 marron. So far I havn't had any spikes or levels rise from basically 0 in ammonia and nitrite, and nitrates havn't reached 5ppm (that i've seen yet) which is why I havn't added the other half barrel yet (plus I need to clear out some more of the garden to make space for it )

Will try the 20 ltr idea next year for tomatoes when they come back in season

>> Basically growing lettuce, a mix of asian vegetables (bok choi etc), basil, celery, broccoli and cauliflower, cucumber and either a chilli or capsicum that survived from the last batch of plants (not sure what it was now ;P)

good combinations. Here in WA the chilli will be better in a 30-40L soil pot (self watering pot ideally).
To get fruit they like a bit of soil heat and the soil drying out a bit evrey now and again to trip them off.
They also seem to like a hit of epsom salts from time to time - I have had a lot of chillis this year that way.
Never have much luck on capsicum - that it one I am still trying to figure out - lots of small fruit.

My experience with celery is the same as Colum BB's legend story - monsters and roots eventually forced me to empty out the beds. Another that I prefer in its own bucket.....

getting any cuc's ? I had more success with them in my wicking beds rather than AP.

>> So far I havn't had any spikes or levels rise from basically 0 in ammonia and nitrite, and nitrates havn't reached 5ppm

that is all good. 15 Fish is a good number over both tanks.
surprised though - usually the larger fish being fed up push the nutrients a bit and need the media.
(eg. the trout guys).

haha the cucumbers plants are only small, only been in for 2 weeks now i think, but they're starting to flower and look pretty healthy so far, so I'm hoping I will get a few! Think they were lebanese ones, but will see how they go.

Likewise, I've never had any luck with capsicums grown in the ground, although my chillies this year went nuts (until the nematodes got hold of them... or at least suspect that's the drama!) - probably picked upwards of 150 jalepenos off 2 plants which aren't looking too healthy now... but trying the marigold trick to fix that hopefully! Tomatoes went nuts until later in the season, and quickly declined (still got a decent crop), and when i pulled them up they were pretty badly infested with nematodes.

The celery is actually from the original batch of plants, has been transplanted when i cleaned out the beds.. starting to get new growth and look a bit healthier, same with the basil...

How big will the barra's get in an IBC? there's only 5 of them? I'd say they're around the 25-30cm mark at the moment? I assume they grow to the size of the tank as normal pet fish do?

Also am I better off just running salt in the water all the time for medicinal reasons as a preventative, or just do it when something goes amiss?

>> Also am I better off just running salt in the water all the time for medicinal reasons as a preventative, or just do it when something goes amiss?

usually best with food fish to have some salt in the system, fresh water is sometimes not great for the fish as they get some benefit from the chloride. Probably could/should run it at 1ppt (1kg per 1000L).
But not 100% sure with barra - 1ppt would be normal for SP and trout etc. Some even run higher.

even goldfish often happy with a little bit of salt. Helps keep the slime on their skin.

Hey, guys, I'm new here would like to be the part of your blog-tem

Hello S. Bert welcome to the forums!

There would be some salt in the system already as residual from when I started it, the fish were showing signs (I thought) of itch so I salted them when I got them just in case as I really had no idea what I was looking at, and they appeared to be fine after, however today they seem to be showing signs again after being away for a couple of days... so it mustn't have got rid of it completely!! (changed out water in stages after a couple of days to get rid of most of the salt.

There'd be a bit of chlorine in there, from the adding of HCl acid when I was adjusting the pH - would have added 0.5-0.75 ltrs so far... on the bright side no acid has been added for 2 days and its sitting on about 7.4, I will check it again tomorrow, at least that part is sorting itself out!

Argh... here we go again! now to try sort out the (what I think) is itch... anything else I can do other than add about 5ppm salt?

*if it is ich* the issue is breaking the cycle.

So you can bath the fish in a salt bath but the ich will still be in the system.
The salt bath will give the fish some short term relief.
But you will still need salt in the system to break the ich cycle (which is about 4 days)

Ich is always present but usually only a problem in stressed fish.
So bring your salt up anyway.

The only other option to heavy salting is to set up a parallel fish tank and run the fish in that under salt and then let your system run through without fish for at least a week, probably two depending on your water temps.

Not a lot I can do 'outside' of the system as I have Barra, Silvers and Marron and the two IBC's with fish in are linked running a single pump currently. I don't think the smaller silvers will fare too well amoungst the barra's as I don't have the gear to keep everything separate outside of the system.

Maybe not feeding the barra for nearly 3 days while I was away was enough to stress them / let it advance... plus with the warm weather, the water temps have come up about 4-5 degrees, currently sitting on about 24-25 degrees which dropped pretty low with the colder weather we'd been having (also wouldn't have helped...) but I have made a bit of an agricultural heating system to keep them up for the cooler weather.

Guess I'll salt the whole lot... and hope I don't hurt/kill the plants as they're finally doing well, if that fails, the barra may become dinner early, separate the silvers + marron and go from there!!