Aquaponics
~ Growing vegetables, fruit, fish and crayfish at home ~

Here we go again... we now have a new addiction to fuel us along. We were recently sent a DVD on Aquaponics, which certainly peaked our interest. After a couple of weeks of research into the concept, we decided that we would give it a go.

What is Aquaponics? Basically it's a way of being able to setup your own system at home to grow fish, crayfish and vegetables, herbs and some fruits. The most basic of systems consists of a fish tank and a grow bed above for your plants. The water is pumped out of the fish tank and over your grow bed. The water then filters through the gravel or whateever medium you choose and then goes back into the fish tank. Fish produce Ammonia, which bacteria in the grow beds then convert into Nitrites & Nitrates which fertilise the plants, then the clean water goes back into the fish tank and the bio-filtering process starts all over again.

The benefits long term for us to be more self efficient with our own food production was certainly a major motivaton behind setting up the system. We have been owner/building our home since 2004. We are at the stage of putting up the front verandah and have two 'dead spaces' in between buildings, which my brother suggested would be great spots to start our aquaponics setup. The first attempt is going in between two buildings, which has the kitchen off to one side for easy access to herbs and veggies.

The space in front of the blue chair is where the Aquaponics setup will go....

The work to level out the area begins

Once the area was leveled out, Allan put in the first 3 layers of the 'tank'. We then placed a layer of crusher dust in the bottom to ensure a flat, level surface. As Allan is a mobile saw miller, hardwood is a material that we often have handy at home to use.


We had our little slaves ;-) carry buckets of crusher dust to put into the bottom of the 'tank'.


We then used carpet underlay in the base to provide a soft and surface which would prevent any rocks etc from damaging the plast tank liner


Tank ready for the liner. Oh we also put another row of timber to make the tank
3m long, 1m wide and 600mm high, which makes the 'tank' about 1500 litres


In goes the black plastic liner and we start to fill the tank with water from our dam,( which has been pumped to a water tank and allowed to settle before use). This is our 'trial' Aquaponics setup. Many people simply make their setups from what ever waterproof items they may have, from an aquarium fish tank, to blue barrels to the more elaborate pre-fabricated specifically designed tanks and grow beds for Aquaponics systems. We are using materials that we have at hand, the only purchase thus far has been the black plastic and the seedlings to go into the grow beds.


Allan also put a 'capping' of hardwood around the top of the tank simply to make it look nicer. We also used hardwood 5"x2" to box in the area under the house for presentation purposes only. On the wall behind you can see that Allan has made 3 brackets, this is where we intend to put the first of our grow beds, more like a window box which has easy access from the deck above to the kitchen.


Window box is in place. The window box is about 2m long, 50cm wide and 35cm deep. We have also lined the window box with black plastic to make it waterproof and added 10mm gravel. There are products available for mediums in grow beds. The most commonly used seems to be expandable clay, which is around $35 for 45L.


We had a pump from an old water feature, which we have put in the back right hand corner in the 'tank' that pumps the water up to the top grow bed, along a black polypipe with holes in it, the water then runs to the bottom of the grow bed, which then falls back into a 100mm pipe, that has drain, plug and smaller pipe in it for the water to then fall back down into the tank. As the water falls it produces oxygen that then goes into the tank...


Once we have the system setup we can continue to build the verandah
We also have another grow bed 2m long, 1m wide, 30cm deep that will go across the top of the tank.

This is the rough version of the bottom grow bed.
If you look closely you can see our redclaw crayfish 'tanks' in the bottom of the tank.
I have kept a few females and male crayfish inside in a heated tank to encourage breeding. At night they all try to escape to go and join their friends outside in the colder tank ;-)




This is the lower grow bed now in and prettied up ;-)
Water is pumped from the 'tank' up to the top grow bed. The water from the top water bed falls down the pipe into the bottom grow bed. In the bottom grow bed, there is another pipe and the water then falls back into the fish tank. It's a continous cycle. At the moment, we are using a pond pump and an aerator for the tank. We will be installing a bilge pump that runs off a battery and solar panel shortly so that the whole system is self sufficient.


We have now planted up the bottom grow bed and all of the plumbing is in.
In the top grow bed, we have strawberries, different varieties of lettuce, spring onions, shallots, chives, coriander, oregano, sweet basil, baby carrots, mint (in a slotted pot), varities of tomatoes, wong bok (cabbage), capsicum, parsley, baby spinach and rhubarb.

In the bottom grow bed, we have tomatoes, strawberries, lettuce, corn, baby carrots, zucchini seedlings, squash seedlings, oregano, brown onions, rhubarb, spinach and oregano. At the moment, we are trialing which veggies will grow best in the system for us. 

Using PVC pipe is much more expensive that just using black polypipe and you could save A LOT of money by opting for the black poly instead. As an example, you can buy a 20m roll of black poly from places like Big W for about $20. Whereas the PVC pipe is about $20 for 6m and the PVC fittings are also more expensive than those for smaller polypipe.

Allan is now very happy! On Saturday 8th August, 2009 we drove down to Yandina and purchased just over 100 Silver Perch fingerlings. So far all have survived (touch wood). It will be about a year before the fish grow out enough for us to eat them all up. At the moment we have setup a kind of filter system in the tank and grow beds only to clear the water up. Even though we spent a lot of time washing the river gravel for the bottom grow bed before putting it in, you can't clean it all and as the water falls from the grow bed directly into the fish tank, we had no way of siffering the water until it ran clean.

At the moment, the tank water is merky, but hopefully it will clear up in a few days. I can't see my crayfish at the bottom at all at the moment.

Warning to the unanitiated, Aquaponics is very addictive! Our weekend project of building the system has now taken us about 3 weeks and both Allan and I are a tad obsessed with researching Aquaponics, fish & crays and fascinated by how it all works. We are very enthused about the concept of producing our own fruit, vegetables, fish and crays and being more self-sufficient here on our small farm. The only things really that we eat which can't be grown in the system are potatoes and pumpkin etc. We do already have an 'orchard' in our paddocks with fruit trees which are watered by our grey water from our septic system. There is no way I'll ever eat an Alpaca (although Allan constantly tries to convince me otherwise)... so we will still need to buy beef/pork/lamb. We have chickens for our eggs, but for someone who use to be a vegetarian, I can't see myself out there cutting off the chook heads and plucking them, so we will also still need to buy chicken to eat ;-) We plan to put in a worm farm under the bottom grow bed (to the left of the water tank) shortly as well for extra feed for the 'stock' in the tank.

Even our chickens think that the Aquaponics is a good idea (bloody things) stealing the fishy and crays water!

For those interested, this is our trial for the redclaw, we purchased these containers at Big W, then spent way too much time drilling holes through them for water flow. The pipe on the right hand side is to feed the crays when they're in the tanky.

Crayfish "tank" feed pipes sticking up in the large tank

To be continued.....