Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hey all,

well didn't have a chance to do much work on the system yesterday as a storm came over. i did manage to put in place another 6 beds and drill the drains. so thats a total of 15 beds. next i will plumb up the drain and growbeds. then i will wash an absolute crap load of pea gravel. we will be using expanded clay for modular pots which can be moved from bed to bed if need. the pea gravel will be used for permanent growbeds. i figured that expanded clay would cost too much for all beds so why not just use it in some pots and use pea gravel in the tanks. the beds with the pea gravel in them will offer stability while the beds with expanded clay pots will offer versatility.

does anyone here have anyexperience feeding growbeds with airlifts?

the difficulty i see is getting an even flow to all beds. the system with be continual flow to start with, then converted to flood and drain later on.

Hi, Just read over the 4 pages and played a bit of catch up

The idea of a marine AP system has interested me many times and i have been trying to work out a way and pestering Tim with AP related questions many times as well

Kelp, seaweed and caulerpa (a more common weed) are all very hard to grow believe it or not. They are wanted and used in many refugiums (refuges in sumps for marine tanks) and seem to take years to grow to a good level.

I am soon to be going into a bit of marine fish breeding/keeping a few good ideas for fish are clownfish, banggai cardinals and a few dotybacks for the hobby side of marine.

If you had smaller tanks say a heap of 100-200 liter tanks all connected into a main sump or sumps and inside them you grew/proporgated liverock/corals.

Each tank could have a carpet anemone and a pair of occelaris clowns or even a fake urchin/real urchin and a pair of banggai cardinals.

As for marine aquaponics there is no real viable thing in which can be grown out of the water. The whole system would have to be submersed which isn't too hard as you can just fill your grow beds with a ratio 1:1 of liverock and limestone then over time the limestone will turn into liverock (though this can take 1-2 years) and you harvest the liverock (sells at pet stores for $12-$15 a kilogram and right now W.A is in a massive shortage of LR).

If you wanted if for the produce of say crayfish or prawns you can still use the liverock as filtration and possibly the coral propagation as well that would be your "plants" side of the AP system.

I am very interested to hear more about the marine AP system and if you decide to go into the hobby side of marine i would be more than happy to help you stock the tanks and offer advice

Thanks

Nic

Crayfish take a LONG time to grow out don't they? I don't think anybody farms them. It'd be like growing red-gum to sell as timber. Big investment, big but very late return.

Marron take around 2 years from 5cm to 25cm growth.

It all depends if you can keep the water near prfect clean, with the access here to fresh salt water you can do big volume water changes every few days though thats off track from the purpose of aquaponics.

There is a coral called Xenia spp. this does extract allot of phosphate and nitartes so if you had a bit of that in the sump/growbeds i am sure the crays would be pretty well growing good. You can also snip of shoots from this coral and super glue them to a rock each polyp can sell for around $5-$10 each.

Nic

hey NicC,

i've heard a lot about you and your endeavors. you obviously have a well screwed on head. much like ya bro. you have some really cool ideas that i have no doubt will one day come to fruition. keep your dreams alive and don't let the man get ya down.

you obviously love aqua. way to go!

actually it is being farmed in a top secret research facility somewhere close to me. oops. no one's meant to know that. forget i said anything.

Wow , I live just up the road in melville & Im always down in freo - I work from home and mostly at night anyway , so Im kinda looking for a better excuse to hang around in freo than going to Rosie O'Gradies .

Id love to come and lend a hand doing anything thats needed . Im only just starting my first major system at home but Ive been reading through all the threads for months , getting more and more interested in this brilliant "hobby" ( I think it can be much more than a hobby ! )

Send me a pm if you need some more slaves under the whip
Ive only just made an account a couple days ago to post pics of my fledgeling system , so I guess I'll have to work out the pm thing ...

as I said , I spend enough time in freo anyway , why not put it to good use

good timing Boris01.

i will be heading in to freo tomorrow.

i will try to organize a meet for fellow ap enthusiasts. could even make it a regular thing if there's interest.

so what day would suit everyone. friday arvo would suit me the best.

we can make it next friday if people can make it then.

so who's down?

friday arvos fine with me , gotta try find me a babysitter so I can think straight while Im there

Well down BF, hope it all goes well with the big plans!

On a side note: I spoke with an organic certifier last year, under her scheme of certification she indicated that certification could not be granted for AP due to the fish feed, and ALSO because organic plants need to be grown in a certian % of soil and not just solely in gravel. This sounded really strange at the time but it is worth querying considering she was employed to certify 150+ farms per year.

I'm with VB's 'aquaponically grown' as the best approach. 'Organically grown' is the current food fashion but it percieved value will erroad over time as the term is miss used.

To say something is aquaponically grown is very specific in its implications.

could mangroves be used to filter the water in a marine system ?

Think they only work all over the world Boris.... except maybe the artic and antartic regions

The best of luck with this project. You are at an age where you can think for yourself DO NOT BELEIVE EVERYTHING YOU ARE TOLD AS FACT always question things and satisfy your self that you have it right.
It seems to me that you are all getting carried away with that OGANIC word.
My Grandfather farmed in the Riverina for sixty years. The only non oganic product used on the farm was superphosphate. No other chems were ever used on the property as they were just not available. Arsenic (an element) was the most common problem solver from sheep lice to worms in horses and cattle. Plus it was the best conditioner of a horses coat/skin.
They grew their own vegies milked cows made their butter,cheese,jam,canned fruit, butchered their own meat.
All from home grown products and no chems in any form were used not even the pastures on which the cows and sheep grazied. The pigs were fed all the leftovers which included, ofal, from the butcher shop skim milk plus any surplus milk and all the kitchen scrapes and barley which was grown without super because the farmers did not have the funds to spend on fertilizer for barley or oats.
If you did these things today you would finish up in prison.
These people eating so organicly had an average lifespan ten years lower than today, BUT, Dementia and other age related problems were almost non existent.
I could go on and on but this should be enough for you to consider for the moment.
Alex

thanks guys,

Alexmac let me know if i'm on the right track.

what your saying is although people lived a healthier life they had a shorter life span. although they had a shorter life span they had a more simple existence and spent longer living then dying. in this day and age chemicals are used to lengthen the life of people but in the process erodes everything that is human. that is to be free and independent.

Well BF Your quote almost had it (spent longer living then dying,) Should read spent longer living thAn dying.
Stats are stats not facts.
If you consider twenty years in a fog, not knowing anyone, not being able to even speak or look after yourself is living thats OK. This living death which a number of us have had to assist loved ones through is the ten years added to our lives via medicial attention to our health requirements not always good organic food.
The facts are that the average life span has not changed much over the past one hundred years. If you take into account all the hostels and nursing homes where hundreds of aged people live but are in fact not living. They change the stats but not the facts.
I do not intend to grow fish, vegies and fruit because I know what they have been fed or sprayed with. I am growing them because they are fresher, therefore good for you, cheaper (once you have the system running OK) provide good mental excercise producing, allows one to write to forums such as this one and trade ideas good or bad with others.
Alex