Pond Boss Forums AQUATIC VEGETATION Balance of plants in the environment Keith's Aquaponic Experiments

Thanks Keith. I was thinking I may not need to add much iron or any at all as my makeup water has about 2.5 ppm in it. How much iron do the plants need?

Ph and alkalinity is very high. Never had a problem with low ph with the fish. But never say never. Actually I was more concerned about lowering the ph to about 7.0 as a concession to the plants, fish, and bacteria.

I'm too lazy to do the media. Also like the additional water as a safety net for the fish with raft culture.

i had big plans this weekend to get some cleanup done, and harvest a bunch of tilapia,and figure out how many crayfish i had..cleaned out all the hides, and found i only had 7 "adult" marmokrebs left in the pool.. i put at least 40 in that were over 3" long, thinking they'd grow out! i've fed hundreds of 1" long crayfish to the pool and watched them get hammered..
i wanted to catch 30 or so tilapia.. who'da thought that catching fish in an 8' kiddie pool could be such a pita! so, i only caught 15;

i brought them down to the local bait shop for cleaning, they normally do all the yellow perch and walleye, it was quite the spectacle bringing in tilapia! i brought home 10.2lbs of skinless fillets, froze a 3 bags of about 2lbs each, and decided to smoke some, i used cherry and maple, with a 1 bag of tea for the smoke... after brining the fillets in sugar and salt, i dried them off, seasoned with salt, pepper and sumac flower, topped with a slice of lemon, hot smoked for 15 minutes

Very nice fish if you took in 15 fish to be cleaned and brought back 10.2 lbs. How did they taste???

One more thing, a friend of mine told me he has been trying out lava rock as a growing medium with good success. Have you ever tried it? He said its a lot cheaper than those clay balls.

tasted great.. my wife wants the next batch just fried in butter, garlic and a little lemon juice.. it's a very mild fish and takes on other flavors very nicely

harvested 15 fish on sunday, 13 tilapia and 2 yellow perch (that got stuck in the net) i used 2 nets instead of the crowding net this time, it was a little bit easier, but still a pita..
i scaled, gutted, removed heads and fins, put 4 bags in the new (used) freezer, and set 3 bags aside for family..
baked 2 stuffed with dill and basil (from the aquaponic system) a pat of butter and a wedge of lemon.. a little salt and pepper, it was perfect in about 35 minutes at 375
the tilapia has to be the most "mild" fish i've ever eaten.. takes on whatever flavors you use very nicely..
i still prefer yellow perch, because to me,, they're a bit "sweeter"..
i have a lot of work to do before i finish harvesting and re-stock, but now that i have a freezer, i have somewhere to put the fish.. i think i'm officially at my goal of 1 meal of fish a week for me and the wife, from the basement
the camera was dead so no pics this time..

Well done Keith, sounds awesome! I really like your self sustaining approach here. Now if you could just grow a lemon tree on the aqua ponic system and make butter from the goats that manage your landscaping...does goat milk even yield butter?

thanks tj!
yeah, you can get butter from goat milk.. or better yet, mozzarella!
talked to my brother and he's thinking of getting a couple pigs and chickens.. maybe even a cow or two.. just gotta talk him into a greenhouse for a big aquaponic system! ha

Keith,

I cleaned about 50 large tilapia a few weeks ago from my outdoor aquaponics system. Dipped the fillets in egg and then a commercial lemon pepper bread crumb mix and baked them. I can honestly say I've never had such good fish. Reminded me of flounder when I lived on the east coast. A nice flakey white meat that didn't have a fishy slimy taste to it.

Had some imported tilapia once. Yuk!

yeah, the home grown tilapia that i've tried so far has been excellent.. and they grow so freakin fast it's tempting to stick with them and add a little heat in the basement for winter, but right now i'd like to gain some knowledge (first hand) of some other species..

the tilapia are trying to keep me from getting the upper hand.. this morning when i was lighting my systems up, i found 8 or so tilapia fry in my sump tank.. harvesting some them must have gotten the rest of them "in the mood"????
now that i think about it, it was about the same time last year that i found some tilapia fry in the sump.. just as things started cooling down...
i should keep records and correlate some data! but i look at computers/spreadsheets all day for work..
i've got i think 4 or 5 bluegills, and probaly 80+ yellow perch that must be getting the majority of the fry, so that plan works fairly well.. i was hoping to grow marmokrebs out in the pool, as well as feed the perch with them, but after the last harvest i found that even the large crays were being eaten, there were only 6 or 7 of the 4" crays left out of the 50+ i put in! so the krebs are going to be pretty much just a supplemental fish food..
ordered another bag of aquamax to pick up this friday (5d05) that i mix with the aquamax dense (5d09 i think)..

Good stuff Keith.

I have acess to redclaws if i want them. They raise them within 20 minutes from me.

May put some in my raft tanks next summer. A guy on my board if directors keeps them in his raft tanks and claims they live in plant roots and feed on dead roots. If I got it right he doesn't feed them.

took some pic's yesterday when i saw it was time to do some cleanup
growbed 1 is mostly mixed carrots, but in the back i have a few asparagus

asparagus needed some room! raised the lights after the pic

harvested the carrots for dinner today

growbed 2 is basil, finally got some rosemary to sprout, and my future dil's jade cuttings


rosemary behind the basil

jades were just cuttings we stuck in the gravel, there's a little hydroton in there too from the "early days" of my system

growbed 3 is chives (garlic and regular) a single fennel i finally got to sprout, and swiss chard

a little outta hand with the swiss chard

then there's the single tote system with 5 tilapia that i grew out from fry
this one has more basil, dill, thyme and some struggling oregano


i feed the tilapia aquamax 5d09, but supplement with duckweed raised in the crayfish tanks

and can't forget to show the main fish tank..i've got 15-20 tilapia left and probably 80 or so yp.. and 4 or 5 bg



i the pool gets fed duckweed too

oh,, can't forget this..
carrots for dinner today, basil got turned into 5 cups of pesto, some is being used to marinate some pork, and the rest is in the fridge.. i've made quite a bit of pesto in the last month!

started getting some nitrite readings after heavy feeds, so decided to harvest, i wanted to harvest all the tilapia, i was doing pretty good for a while, but after getting the majority, i had to catch some yp
i took all 5 tilapia from the single tote system first

then started catching tilapia in the pool

then i decided to catch a bunch of yp

results!!! tilapia on the left, yp on the right

the better half got me a vac pac machine so i'll be gathering spices from the outside garden (where i have a $%^$# groundhog destroying my sunflowers that are supposed to support my cuke's, and broccoli plants), and sealing up meal sized portions
sunflower/cuke area


all the broccoli leaves were chewed up

my nemesis lives under the porch next door, nobody lives in the house, the owner has been working on it since we moved in 8 years ago, borrowed my son's pellet gun

You can also maybe find where it's crossing under the fence and set a conibear 110.

yeah, i added some fencing where he was getting under, but i caught the little pest (biting my toungue) climbing the fence!
the pellet gun is sighted in and ready..
so today i picked a bunch of herbs from the garden (inside and out) and rinsed them, and picked up some lemons from the farmers market
staged spices, and started up the seal a meal.. it works ok, but i'd like something with more power
clockwise from top left, marjoram, sage, oregano, pineapple sage and rosemary

clockwise from top left again; basil, lemons, dill and thyme

tilapia

the rest of the tilapia

i had a total of 100 fillets, 70yp, and 30 tilapia
6 bags of tilapia with 5 fillets and various spices, and 7 bags of 10 fillets with spices
here's the yp ready for the freezer

If you are able to shoot it, make sure it's dead before you try to pick it up. Those suckers will bite.....

Dang, those packages look great!!!!

Well done Keith...you are really onto something here. Have you considered fishing for the tilapia or YP with a little ice rig out of your tanks? Feeling the tug and having a little battle before filleting would make the entire process complete!

i thought of trying to fish a couple out, and even tried it with a little zebco rod and real... i was too worried about putting a hole in the tank to spend much time with it.. i caught one of the groundhogs that's been a bane to my garden, the neighbor who's porch they live under let me use his havahart trap.. took him a couple miles out of town and released (the groundhog, not the neighbor.. hehe) trap is reset, cuz you know where there's one groundhog, there are more
after i released the gh, i went up to the bait shop and bought 5 dozen minnows (emerald shiners) to feed to the fish that are still left in the pool, they've been pretty shy since the last roundup