Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks Stuart. A shame you are stuck on dialup. have you considered satelite wide band like Hughes net?.

You are certainly doing well with what you have and we appreciate all the good info you share.

Yeah I have considered satelite but the price dissuaded me. Currently researching the 3g telstra option but I the challenge is I need some sort of antenna on the shed on the hill because the mobile coverage where I am is pretty bad.

Good day!
I have been absent for some months doing other things (work, playing guitar, work) and not often even getting on the net.

My 200 Jades are now down to about 185 - they went into hibernation over winter and every now and then I'd get a floater.
Then it started to get warm and they still weren't feeding so I bought a thermometer and found the water temperature around 15c.
Now its around 20-21c and they are feeding pretty vigorously again.

Its very hard to see them 'cos they move so fast - come up to the surface, grab a pellet and dive again - but I think the biggest is 15-20cm.
I rarely check the nitrates anymore, just the pH from time to time. I know it slowly drifts to acid so I'm still adding dolomite occasionally - but thats about the extent of my monitoring activity.

I now have 6 baths for growbeds and plan to add another 6.
I am currently successfully growing:
water cress (very strong grower)
lettuce (grows well)
tomato (strong plants but disappointing amount of fruit)
Kohlrabi (grows well)
egg plant (plenty of fruit)
sweet peas (growing well)
Italian Parsely (grows too well)
Celery (thrives)
cucumber (grows well)
courgette (doing great)
dwarf beans (does great)
Bok Choi (grows well)
capsicum (total failure)
Just planted rocket seeds.

Not sure what the problem with tomato and capsicum is. The peppers don't do at all well. The tomatoes obviously love the high nitrates and have lots of flowers but the setting rate is very low? Any clues?
btw,I am still adding osmocote (in moderation) without problems, so there should be no shortage of trace elements.
The salinity will still be 3ppt (which killed my itch).

One other tomato problem - the leaves are being chewed by a small green caterpillar or maggot. What's a fish-safe remedy?

Talking about floaters - don't shine a torch near your fish pond at night.
I got a couple of floaters doing that.
I went down to have a look one night and heard this loud knocking noise.
I thought a possum or cat was bouncing around on the tin roof above the pond (above ground pool). Anyway it turned out the fish were being driven into a panic and were bashing themselves into the side of the pool.
It killed a couple

I notice there are a few more websites on aquaponics
Whats the story?

Cheers
Jamie

Guess they weren't happy with this forum, or weren't getting the recognition they thought they so richly deserved....

Seems most of them are more about promoting self-interest and advertising their products (some of them laughable) than actually promoting Aquaponics and backyard food production....

A good idea always drags out the get-rich-quick types.... bet they're not around in a couple of years, for one reason or another

Welcome back Jamie. Do you have many bees there - you might want to use the electric toothbrush vibration technique on the flowers to see if it helps (of course may be a potasium deficiency though??).

Regarding the caterpillers, get yourself some BT (Thrive Dipel). Works a treat.

good to see you back, jamie.

Last year i got into the habit of "tickling" each of my tommie flowers just in case dunno if it was needed, but didn't see many bees around so i thought why not

VB - Is Dipel ok for fish?
Thanks for the tips on tommies. I was checking out the photos of Earthbounds monster tomato plant - covered in fruit as well!
I'll try the pollination trick. There are some bees about though.
pH is about 6.5. Only other thing I can think of is that maybe the food earthbound is using is different. The fish food is the only input into the system.

I have had no probs with Dipel Jamie.

Hi Jamie. 185 good sized jades, man, bet they are pumping out the plant nutes. Good to have u back.

Jamie, with tomatoes, I read somewhere that they weren't sure if they pollinated better in the morning or afternoon - so I "vibrate" the vines at both times, haven't had any probs with fruit setting.

Fish love caterpillars, so I catch what I can see and feed to the fish, easy to find - just look for the holes in the leaves

Nice to see you back

Ty this Jamie http://cgi.ebay.com.au/HEAVY-DUTY-6-5HP ... dZViewItem

Jamie good to see you around here again. I used dipel with success too. No probs for the fish.

Even a flick to the stems with the flowers on them, will help with pollenation.

That should do the trick VB
I might try a (small) paintbrush instead - I'll be able to handle it easier
Yes TT - fish should be ready for eating by christmas!! Woopeee!
I'll see if I can build a smoker.

I plan to get some more fingerlings as soon as possible - I phoned SEQfish and they said another 10 weeks.

Have heard the fingerling season is late bc of the unusually cool winter.

Jamie, you have a great selection of veggies growing. Do you have some photographs of your aquaponic garden.
The Dipel is very interesting, I will get some of that, and which are the new websites you are talking about. I like to learn all I can