Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have an old swimming pool at our place in the Philippines. I am thinking about turning it into a fish pond and may integrate aquaponics at some point. I would likely start as a aquaculture project and expand it to add filtration and grow beds. Thinking I'll start with African Catfish. They are very hardy and I can get fingerlings over there. Here is a picture of the pool in it's current state:

That looks like a good place to start, wish I had one of those

I am doing the same thing in South Australia. Follow my progress here http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=30100. Looking forward to seeing what you do.

Thank you guys. I saw your thread Ash, looks really nice. I will be following.

This will be a retirement project when I move back over there permanently. I'm still thinking what I will do.

The deep end of the pool is 9 feet deep. I will likely install some air pumps to keep the water from the bottom moving up to the top and provide some circulation. I'm thinking maybe two large air pumps for that purpose.

Also, I will probably have a bio filter set up before grow beds with a bypass installed so I can service the bio filter as required and pump around it as necessary.

For grow beds I think I will use IBC containers. My thought is I could get three grow beds from two IBC. I would cut the top off the first IBC and fill the bottom section with grow bed material creating a "deep dish" grow bed. The "deep dish" grow bed would drain directly back to the main pool.

Then on the second IBC I would cut the top off and use both "shallow dish" tops from the first and second IBC as grow beds that drain with bell siphons into the second IBC bottom. The second IBC bottom would serve a small tank that would drain into the main pool. I could use the small tank as a hatchery, storage tank for fish prior to harvest, trying out different species or maybe even shell fish or crustaceans keeping them separate from the main pool.

My vision would be to keep expanding with alternating "deep dish" grow beds and "shallow dish" grow beds with secondary fish tanks. I could line these all around the edge of the pool and take these grow beds on and offline as required. I think I could have a large amount of filtration by this method.

I hope that makes sense. Your thoughts and questions are welcome.

I'm not sure how I am going to harvest all of the fish from the main pool. Especially since the deep end is 9 feet deep. Maybe some type of net arrangement.

Anyway, these are my initial thoughts on the project.

Sounds exciting. And you can fish from your back patio. How good is that!