Aquaponics - New system at two months

In a couple of days my new system will be two months old.

I wasn't sure how it would go being on the wrong side of the house and in shade for all but a couple of hours a day, but it looks like it might be ok.

This is the original empty growbed two months ago.

And now it looks like this.

The lettuce in the foreground went in as store bought seedlings, and the rest was from seed, but I wasted a lot of time before I actually sowed them.

We have started harvesting leaves from the lettuce and within a week or two we should be picking rocket as well.





The growbed is around two metres long and a little over a metre wide, so it should keep us in salad greens with ease.

I've also planted a few sugar snap peas at the back because I like to eat them when I'm doing anything with the garden. There's not enough to harvest but I enjoy picking something and eating it at the growbed.

Also at the back I've planted quite a bit of basil, some coriander (cilantro), and a few other herbs.

That's all. Just a quick update.

Aquaponics - New system bits

I got this.

Which is a 500L grow bed.

And looks like this from the inside.

And I got this.

Which is a 500 litre bucket.

And a stack of bags of this.

Which is around 500L of expanded clay ball grow media.










And now I need to figure out what to do with it.

I was giving some serious thought to getting rid of my aquaponics system, because we need the space for a business venture, and there really isn't anywhere else it (the aquaponics or the business venture) can go.

So I bought all this extra stuff.

This will take my grow bed, and thus filtration capacity up from around 300L to more like 800L

And depending on what I do with the gigantic bucket, I might fill that with media as well and take the capacity up to 1300L

That would mean I could actually have enough fish that it would impact on my diet.

Which is nice.

120 Things in 20 years - Busy with new aquaponics system bits.

Aquaponics - Constant flood growth

My new constant flood grow beds seem to be working.

And my new constant flood grow bed plants seem to be flourishing.

The spinach has gone crazy.

At least I think the spinach has gone crazy.

It might be silver beet.

But suddenly the words "Silver beet" don't seem to mean anything, so I might be me that's gone crazy.

I think I've thought those words too often during the construction of this post.


I'll stop.

And move on to whatever this is.

This has gone crazy as well.

It's either cucumber or rock melon.

The lettuce in the original grow bed (planted from seedlings) looked like this at various stages of its life, and also seem to be enjoying a good growth rate.

Perhaps the tomato plants were eating all the nutrient. I still have it in a bucket, but it's growth has slowed since being ripped up and cut back to just a few stems.

That blue thing on the left is the bucket with the tomato plants in it.

 All the water for this grow bed goes through the tomato bucket first until I find a proper home for my hacked tomatoes.

I also added two algae eating fish that like to suck onto the side of fish tanks, and eat whatever grows on them. These I put in the old fish tank (now a sump tank) to keep the algae down.

I haven't seen them since.

For some strange reason I didn't take any photo's of them.

As far as I know they are doing fine, but these days there is a stack of plumbing going into and out of the little sump tank, so there are plenty of places for a tiny pair of fish to hide.

I was promised they would love their new home, and grow to be around 10cm long, but I have also been told that there are no cold water varieties of this kind of fish.

Both pieces of advice came from the same aquarium shop.




120 Things in 20 years. Crazy? Growth from my new constant flood aquaponics grow bed? Sucky fish? Only time will tell.

Aquaponics - New system expansion

In this first stage of my system expansion, I'll be using my existing pump and running a fairly conventional layout.

Half an IBC as a fish tank, and three, media filled blue barrel halves as grow beds with the existing fish tank as a sump, or perhaps 4 grow beds and no sump.

In a system with a sump, you maintain a constant height in the fish tank, by placing the pump in the sump tank, and filling the grow beds by having the fish tank overflow into the grow beds. The grow beds then drain back to the sump.

This type of system is often called CHIFT PIST (Constant Height In Fish Tank, Pump In Sump Tank).

Stage two would see me cutting the second IBC in half, and creating two media filled constant flood grow beds powered by either a new type of airlift I've been thinking about, a conventional airlift, a power head, or any combination of all these.

Or something else.

In short, the absurdly low power use system is still a little way off. The main problem I face is having to find a completely new form of media that will be ultra light weight so I can pick up and move a cubic metre of it. I live in a rented house, and may have to move it at some stage in the future, and a cubic metre of gravel might weigh around the same as a family car.

Currently, that media looks a bit like it might be soft drink bottle caps put through a garden mulcher, but it's early days.



120 Things in 20 years, where sometimes my aquaponics - new system expansions, simply dont happen.

Aquaponics - New system

I had a bit of a lie down for a few days, but woke up with a new plan.

It's time for a system expansion.

The new plan involves using one of my IBCs, probably cut in half, as a fish tank. This will give me around 500L rather than the 100L I have at the moment.

I bought a new blue barrel to cut in half from top to bottom, and make two more grow beds. This should allow me to get some more fish, and also to grow a stack more veggies.

It should also allow me to run my strawberry towers safely by mounting them over my grow beds. That way it really doesn't matter if they leak.














The new plan will involve putting the fish tank outside my grow house, and when I get around to it I'll insulate it.

I hope to be able to make a part of the fish tank sit inside the grow house so I can still spend time sitting and enjoying both the plants and the fish.

Especially in winter, it's a very nice place to sit.

The plan, as it stands, is to put two grow beds across the back, and one down the right and side of the grow house, and place the fish tank so it is around 20% inside the grow house on the left.







120 things in 20 years, where my Mum claims to be able to tell how I'm feeling based on these tag lines.
I wonder what Mum will make of this "Aquaponics - New system" tag line.

Aquaponics - New grow bed

Scoria has always been the media I favored because its perfect for aquaponics. I'll be using road gravel.

Here's some I prepared earlier.

Pictured here, and using chicken feet for scale, is a  path in my back yard. It's the same stuff I'll be using in my new grow bed. It's sometimes called blue metal, and in this part of the world we mix it with tar, and make roads out of it.

Scoria is great in all kinds of ways, but it's hard on the hands, and because of it's sharp edged irregular shape, it's actually difficult to dig into.

My new grow bed is big enough that I don't need to worry about the extra surface area scoria would provide. I'll get around 2000 - 2500 litres of gravel to fill it, and I'll use the existing system as a pre-filter to seed the nitrifying bacteria.

In a former life, this new grow bed of mine was an abalone growing tank used in aquaculture. As soon as I can stop switching between plans, I'll bu using it to grow veggies.