Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

by the way thanks everybody for the imput, i can see i wil be doing a lot of reading and asking a lot of questions. Cheers!

easiest to call the water board/supplier in town and ask them if they use chlorine or chloramine. You may not have killed them totally, but they would probably have been knocked about a bit.

pah, best just to stick it in a bucket and let the cholorine evaporate before you put it in your system. Next time eh. Also, the water in canberra is supposed to be "soft", you can go to any pet/aquarium store and get some water hardner powder which is supposed to help the fish (its supposed to have salts and minerals in it which keep disease at bay etc).

My brother has a tank with a murry cod. It's a boring fish as it just sits under a log.

yes next time i will be more patient and organized. and yes canberra water is soft but be careful buying water conditioner and stuff, the stuff from bates pet shops is made in melbourne and there water is hard( i am led to believe) jem aquatic sell salts special made for canberra water.

and yes cod can be boring(but there a nice looking fish) but i bought 50 for aquaponics because there not fussy eaters. unfortuneately they are aggresive, next time i will go silver perch.

For general water hardness you can use Epsom salts. Bicarb can be used for pH up and a little bit salt goes a long way.

Get a bucket, add the ingredients a bit at a time, and test the water. Work out how much you need to get it too the right level and divide by no of litres. Then you know exactly how much you need to add per litre to get it to the correct levels.

i have set up my system again and it has been going for a few weeks now. i am having a few problems with some pests. First was little green caterpillars which i have eradicated using my thumb. Then there was white powdery fungus on my strawberry plant which i have treated once so far with a milk solution. Now i have very tiny black flies and dont know how to get rid of them. i am guessing they were soil born from the two punnets of seedlings i got. One last thing is my won bok is looking like it is lacking something, i will provide pictures and hopefully somebody can suggest something. i have tested No3 and is at 40ppm. i look forward to comments. Cheers.

still coming to grips with adding attachments, so heres the before pic of basil and sick looking won bok.

so in 26 days the basil has turned around from almost dead to looking quite good.

here are some more pics of a floating bed i have in another tank, first pic taken 31-5-07 and next pic taken 17-6-07. once again the won bok is yellowing and dark green veins, any help? No3 has remained stable at 40ppm.

the wong bok looks like it is deficient in some mineral, I'm sure one of the brains on here can tell us which

No expert on this, but is that iron deficiency on the wong bok leaves?


Put more eloquently than myself (and quicker too)

any ideas on the little black flies Jaymie

which pic pah

EllKayBee if it is iron what should i do.

are the little black flies doing anything to the plants? eating them, binding them up with "web" type stuff? What I'm getting at is, are they really a problem?