Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

PVC geodesic dome with paint-drop plastic sheeting anyone?

Fair swap Dandee....

We had an Australian who decided to become an American.... Murdoch...

Neither country has been able to read the truth every since

Les, I have come to expect nothing less than perfection from you, and you have delivered yet again!
C1

hehehe...I only put up the good pics

An update:

pH 7.2
Water Temp 24c (morning temp) - rising to 27 on hot days
Nitrate 60
Silver Perch eating everything thrown in

Looking good Les.
I am starting to think that veggies that are a rich source of a particular mineral, for example beetroot rich in iron may have a need of those mineral during growth and development. Seems to be fair enough, the question is how does one provide such a rich mix of available minerals, without having to "top up" externally...
I guess one way could be to feed your fish with the desired veg in the first place.

sweet Les.

Sort of defeats the purpose - it's like making a machine that puts nails into a wall, but has to be attached to the wall with nails.

Talking about nais; what about burrying a big bag of rusting nails in the growbed, maybe close to the plants that need more iron? They would still need to be replaced every so often, but if you put a big bunch of them in I figure you wouldn't have to 'top up' for years.. A rusting piece of iron gives off iron to the water until it's completely rusted away, right?

Les - looking really good.

Thomas - there has been some discussion of this in the RSG thread.

Thomas, the rusting by itself won't provide iron that the plants can take up, but we believe that keeping the rusting nails in an anoxic environment (say in an RSG filter or at the very bottom of the GB) would allow bacteria to chelate the iron for the plants.

Thanks ppl, did think of putting nails in the RSG but was wondering how I could tell if and when it finished...stayed with putting in chelated iron powder (already have a bag of that)

Update:
Had a nice break and left the system on auto for a week or so, one problem when I returned late Monday afternoon.

I have a stop valve to divert some of the pump flow back into the sump tank – this is normally submerged...on returning, the water level was below the valve and due to the lower pressure, all the water was flowing out of the stop valve and none was being pumped into the main tank or to the GB’s (have no idea how long this was happening but would have been a few days). I had another pump that was aerating the main tank so the fish were still alive but there was a lot of gunk on the bottom of the main tank

Temporary solution – turned off the stop valve and go to bed...water was then being circulated throughout the system...in the morning the main tank was nice and clean but a lot of the plants were dead/dying – immediate harvest
All water reading were okay except nitrite (0.5), this returned to normal within 2 days.
Automatic feeder worked perfectly for the period, very little uneaten food on bottom of tank and no floating pellets when inspected Monday afternoon.

Readings now:
pH – 7.2
Ammonia & nitrite – 0
Nitrate – 60
RSG filter & bell siphon worked perfectly throughout the whole holidays
400 litres added over a 4 day period to bring levels back up to normal

Simple solution – turn off stop valve when going away for extended periods...this would have kept the water circulating for the whole period – the sump tanks have sufficient capacity to last for more than 2 weeks.

Next steps:
Plant more vegies
Get more fish
Prepare to harvest SP for xmas dinner

Ain’t AP fun

Les - please post pics of bare gravel patches when you get a change

Fantaistic Les, I want a system like yours!