Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

And because I should have posted some of these before.
Here are a few of the small catfish that didn't make it.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

I found the same thing. When weather was warm and you have a stocking density of even 4 fish per gallon then there is ammonia with intermittent pumping. Truly, continuous pumping through the fish tank and some type of filter IS required. However you want to do it it makes a real difference. I have a bio filter and swirl filter to remove solids. This small system runs all the time and the fish are much happier with 0 ammonia.

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Think Outside the Box, Do your Thinking for Yourself!

TC have you ever tried predatory fish to control the tilapia breeding. I've read that tilapia release growth inhibiting hormones that stunt each other when they have successive generations living together. That's why they are smaller after a few generations. To avoid this I threw in about 6 jaguar cichlids with my 200 tilapia. After 6 months my water was so green that I thought they'd all be dead but when I went to pull out some tilapia I caught an 8" jaguar cichlid. Mostly all my tilapia have grown to over 2 lbs. and there are some of smaller size (6-8") but I never see any fry. I think this approach has worked to keep them growing and I do plan on breeding in a separate system.

To keep the fist from breeding I had them in a cage so they could not successfully pick the eggs back up for brooding. The truth is, my Tilapia didn't grow between October and April because the water was too cool. The Tilapia hardly eat when the water is below 70 F.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

arg, had another small nitrite spike the other day. This time due to not cleaning the pump trap soon enough. I measured a .25 nitrite reading which the catfish do seem to react to slightly.

Today I did another test and the nitrite is back to being only a trace but below .25.

Another thing I have noticed lately. My pH is not as rock solid at 7.6 as it used to be. I've measured it as low as 7.2 I think though 7.4 is probably more accurate. System quite full of sea shells but a little over a year along and some heavy dosing of iron and stocking near filtration limits and the pH is coming down a bit.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

The nursery bed (my 4' wide by 8' long by 6" deep) bed is getting an overhaul. It has never flooded and drained very satisfactorily and I've tried several different things. I've been noticing that the nursery bed was just staying way too wet. The siphons would suck air before the bed managed to drain much at all. I was definitely getting anaerobic spots in there though the worms were still multiplying well.

Now I have emptied all the gravel out of it. We will move it off it's pallets. The pull a level of pallets out and put the bed back in place. Hopefully this will put the top of the nursery bed on the same level as the bed next to it. The bed next to it is 12 inches deep though so I should be able to get some extra drain time on the bottom of the nursery bed. Then I will plumb those two beds together and the FLOUT in the bed next to the nursery bed will drain both beds together.

Lowering the bed down another 4 inches will also help me since I'm short and that bed is quite high right now.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Ack! another dead catfish.
Well, with emptying, shifting and re-filling the nursery bed, things were pretty stirred up earlier yesterday, perhaps that got em. Or that one bed being offline for the night.
After getting the nursery bed back online and adding a little iron to the system the water test results were as follows.
pH 7.2
Ammonia slightest trace
Nitrite just below .25
Nitrate 40
salt is still about 1 ppt according to the EC reading.

Anyway, nursery bed is re-filled and on a level with the bed next to it. The nursery bed and the one next to it are filling and draining together using the FLOUT. Seems to be working very well!!!!!!

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Harvested 4 tilapia today in prep for grilling tonight. They were all around 12 oz give or take a bit, I avoided the light colored males and tried to catch the larger ones otherwise. The largest tilapia I have are at least a pound and the smallest ones are probably less than 8 ounces.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Now that I have the nursery bed working nicely, I decided it was time to think about strawberry towers.
Well, perhaps not traditional strawberry towers, my case will likely wind up being some hanging pots in front of the house that will get a regular little drink from the system whenever the NFT header tank fills up. This will likely be left as run to waste (I'll stick some planters under the drips so it won't really be wasted.) I think my system could use a little regular water change out anyway since that will probably help me avoid having to do too much additional buffering since the pH has finally started to drop down a little.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

I mentioned dinner and tilapia didn't I.
Ok so only the tilapia came from the system, the rest of dinner was from the dirt garden.
There was baked tilapia crusted in bread crumbs.
Then the jack be little pumpkin
Some summer squash
and Artichoke

I love eating out of my own yard!

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Ok, jumping back to the strawberry tower idea. (have I been jumping around enough for you all?)
As I said, not really any towers as of yet, just hanging pots and not tied back in for recirculation.
Anyway, some pictures.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

At first when I hooked it up, I couldn't get any flow through but then I placed some extra Ts in line and put vent pipes up and release any air locks I was getting and WOW it worked, worked so good I had to add drippers back onto the ends of the 1/4" tubing because it was flowing too well. Will see how bad they get clogged up.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Now I just need to run a 2 x 4 board across with the pipe from the header tank to provide something to secure the pipe to and support it all better.

This line only gets water for a few minutes as the header tank is overflowing during the monster bed pump cycle. The water is fairly well filtered but there still is a small amount of material that seems to get through all grow beds but doesn't seem to block up the roots in the NFT pipes so I'm hoping it doesn't give the 1/4" tubing or drippers too much trouble.

Since the water flow to this line is intermittent, it probably would not work well for full on gravel filled tower operation but I think it will work run to waste for towers or pots filled with a somewhat better water holding media. As it is right now, I will probably have to do something to keep these strawberries from getting too wet but they seem to be ok so far as I planted them with the crowns way above the compost.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Good idea TCL. Strawberries are SO good.

_________________
Think Outside the Box, Do your Thinking for Yourself!

I've been having these mildly worrying deaths of catfish fingerlings every several days or so. And lately I've noticed that quite a few of the catfish fingerlings have what look like injured or damaged fins/barbs. Pulled one fish out yesterday that had a couple of nasty wounds on it's lower side and there is at least one fish down there with a buldging eye.

So, I've salted again. After all that rain the system had been down to about .5 ppt of salt so I brought it up to 3 ppt yesterday and will probably bring it up one more ppt today.
I think the one with the buldging eye may actually be doing far worse this morning after adding the salt though.

On a side note, some of the tilapia must have been breeding, I saw a lone tilapia fry yesterday down in the catfish tank (must have washed over the waterfall and some how avoided getting eaten.)

_________________
Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics