Learn about Aquaponics 🐟 🍓🍅 with my "Backyard Aquaponics for Beginners" Guide for only US$19.95. You can see the guide in action on my website, ► www.bitsouttheback.com/aquaponics-guide Or, buy directly here, ► bit.ly/AquaponicsBeginnersGuide Don't forget to click the subscribe button if you enjoyed the video, bit.ly/Subscribe2Rob & share the clip around if you think it may help others too.👍 Cheers all & have a top one. 🐟 🌱🍅 Rob
Greetings from the Philippines, Mr. Bob! I have been watching your videos for some time now. It is really educational and I have learned a lot from you. I am an SHS student and my research covers aquaponic systems based on the information I have gathered from you. And this coming summer vacation, I will start my own aquaponic garden on our lawn. You've been really helpful and your lessons come with no charge, really love it! I will soon buy your Aquaponic Beginner's Guide.
@@RobsAquaponics Yup, well be using tilapia! With your videos, I am fascinated and I want to boost the confidence of the farmers in my community. And glad to hear from my research teachers that they would be supporting my project. Thanks a lot, Mr. Bob, you're such a cool guy. Hope to see more of your videos, mate.
A great way I've found to lower the ph is to have more growth beds than necessary. I cultivate more bacteria and just siphon over and over. It's incremental, but the nitrfying bacteria lower ph by themselves.if they outnumber the waste, the ph will trend downward
thanks Rob, the acid answer was good, luckily getting it to acid is only a waiting game, as long as you don't add too much lime or too much water all at once it should never PH rise again.
Cheers Shane. I think I've only had to lower it twice really. Both times was due to me stuffing up & having tanks drain due to my mistakes & lack of backups. Hope all's well down south mate.
Hi mate. 😁 You can get a translated captions for most of my videos by pressing on the setting icon & selecting the language you want. dhanyavaad aur aapaka saptaah mangalamay ho. धन्यवाद और आपका सप्ताह मंगलमय हो। (google translate)
As always Rob, love your videos! I've been gone a while so I have some catching up to do. That beard is looking gnarly as ever though, so envious. Take care.
Hi Rob, I only add 1-2ml at a time to my 1300Lt system at the filter before going to sump, Less is best! My rain water has been a bit unreliable with PH laterly.
Gday Rob i found it interesting the ph of your tap water where you live . I'm in logan and last time i checked mine was around 7.5. lately tho luckily havent had to top up as the tap water has had alot of extras in it due to all the wet weather
I've found that after large amounts of rain & flooding the pH generally goes a bit higher but not by much. The water definitely smells more "spicy" with the extra additives though. We're less than 15km from the treatment plant at Mt Crosby as well so that might have something to do with our higher levels. Hope the system is doing well mate. 👍👍
Rob i know i ask before about water use i forgot. Im using 400 litres a day and i feel bad like its alot. My pond is 24 000 litres and 20 vertical towers and 4 large beds 1metre but 2.4metres .
Hi Karim. That sounds about right for the amount of towers & beds with that size pond. A lot would be lost to evaporation I would thing if you have sprayers at the top of the towers. Our system is 1600L & I'm adding about 200-300L a week at the movement if that helps at all.
Thanks so much for answering my question . Rob just one more question- the pump you are using is it a submersible pond pump like you use in the aquaponics system?
It's a wet/dry submersible pond pump Cisca. 👍 I try to buy them whenever I can in case they may come in handy for a different use down the track. Cheers. 😁
Hi Rob, thanks for all this great information. I have a question for you. Do you use tap water conditioner? Do you happen to know what these products do to nutrients/nitrates/ammonia levels in an aquaponics system? Just concerned on keeping the fish/plants and bacteria safe. Thanks again.
Hey Smashley. I use ascorbic acid to dissipate chloramines & chlorine from the water so that it's ready to use in a matter of minutes in an emergency. Sodium thiosulfate is another product that's used in aquaculture a bit. Both of these products will have ammonium or ammonia as a by-product depending on the pH of the water. Generally speaking, above pH 7 it will be ammonia & under it will be ammonium. Was just working on that section for a publication I'm working on. 😉 Hope that helps some mate.
Off topic but could you put snails or catfish into your fish tank/filter tanks to help remove waste/clean the tanks like in a home aquarium or is that bad for a aquaponics system?
Many folks do Jared to help keep the algae under control. I found that the snails would get stuck in the pipework so was happy when they all died off. I have a feeling that the low water pH was not to their liking & it affected their shell development.
I have seen folks say they're going to use them but am not sure how they went to tell you the truth. Might be an idea to suss out a few aqua forums or FB groups & ask around. I know some will repurpose them as up-flow filters using media like we do in our moving bed bioreactors. Hope that helps some.
@@RobsAquaponics Fantastic. Thanks mate. Really appreciate your content. I built my first chop and flip following you and am now about to setup a 15m x 4m space utilizing DWC and media.
G'day Rob. For those that live in a colder enviroment i know we can keep koi, trout and char. However the filtering wont work in the cold (the bacteria the system needs). Is there a way to get around this? Im planning to build my aquaponics in an not insulated poop cellar in my sheephouse so heating it would be a pain during the winter months. which is about 4 months. Got any good ideas for me? Ive been playing with the idea about compost heating. Hope to hear from you. Much love from Norway.
Hey Tone. Do you have any idea how far the temperature will drop in the cellar? Do the sheep help keep the temperature up at all? The biological filtration should work fine if the water is warm enough for the fish as the bacteria will also live in the same environment as the fish in the wild.
@@honeyy79 You could run pipes through the ground. The ground at 1m should be the avg annual temp so you can use it to warm the water in winter and cool it in summer.
@@honeyy79 That might be a bit low for most bacteria & the trout I think. You might need to add some supplemental heating to keep them going through the cooler months.
Hi can you put different species of fish in the same fish tank I live in the states and I wanted to use Channel cat, bluegill, crappie, maybe striped bass, and if I can walleye
Hi Golden Queen. I asked folks to help you out in the last live stream but forgot to come back & post the response here as we don't have most of those fish here in Austtralia. Catfish will pretty much go smaller fish so it might be a good idea to have them in a tank separately if you're planning to have different sized fish in there. The others should be OK from what one bloke said.
Thank you very much I almost have everything that I need to build aquaponics system I have the equipment to start it off grid the only thing I need now or my fish tanks and my grow beds I will be getting those next month
Hi, my mixture of piped water and rainwater, my Ph was 9.8. Living in Ghana some things are gard to get, I used distilled vinegars. 20ltr bucket took 40ml to drop it to 6.5. I have 6000ltr fish tank. I brought my water down to 6.6. My cat fish are fine, top up with rain water jumped to 7.3, added distilled vinegar to a 300lt tank, brought that down to about 5.8, before pumping it into fish tank, fish still fine. Ph 6.9 Does anyone else use distilled vinegar in their fish/aquaponic's system.
@@RobsAquaponics Hi Rob, Like I said I'm just getting started, I jumped in at the 4 ft level instead of 3ft. I wanted to get my fish going first, I did got the green water to clear, my Ph levels about 7.2. I'm trying to get a water sampling kit, which is like looking for rocking horse poo in Ghana, nobody want to help or tell you where to go.. I've got a guy from water works said he will help me test my water for ammonia and Nitrates, let you know the out come. A guy from min fisheries, said I should drain my water off, I started to, I topped up with mixture of ph 8.2 water used distilled vinegar brought it way down, pumped it in, mixing all the time, fish doing well. I've use the water out of the fish tank on my seedlings and there grown good. I've asked other doing catfish about problems MUM s the word. It look like my fish have worms, theres some little bits of white floating around, I saw something like a white piece string, a quick look on YT, yep its worm. Yet to find out what to use to give them. send you feed back on the water samples as soon as I get the results. Thank you
@@ukghconst I just did a consultation with a chap that had worm infested fish Peter. A mate in the aquaculture game suggested that Levamisole Hydrochloride treatment will do the trick at treating them. Might be best to look up "levamisole for fish dosage aquaculture" & see what you can find. I have seen various dosage rates so don't want to suggest any in case they are incorrect. Hope that helps a little.
@@RobsAquaponics hi Rob, sorry long delay, that's how things go here, People push for time, yet they don't stick to time, can't wait 5 seconds. Yet be 3 hrs late for meetings or weeks late on deliveries. Anyway I took my water sample Ammonia level was 24.6ppm. They didn't do the nitrate tests, why ?? These are cat fish, nothing wrong with them in that mix, they were alert, swam fast, gobbled the food. I have replaced the water, my tap and rain water Ph level was 9.3, we added a bottle and a half into a IBC cube, this brought Ph level down to 6.4. The fish enjoyed the re filling. I cannot find any water testing kits here, so I'm going import them myself. One problem we have is getting cash out of the country. Have you done any video of water flow rates? Thanks again.
@@ukghconst I have mentioned the fish tank water exchange rates a bit. Generally speaking, the total volume of the FT through the biofilter once an hour works for hardy fish but I like to recommend 1.5 times an hour for folks just treating out with no experience. Is that the info you're after?
Cheers Rob, lovely start to the day over here in UK, with a lovely aquaponics Q&A! 😀
Thanks Craig. Hope the info comes in handy at some point mate.
Learn about Aquaponics 🐟 🍓🍅 with my "Backyard Aquaponics for Beginners" Guide for only US$19.95.
You can see the guide in action on my website,
► www.bitsouttheback.com/aquaponics-guide
Or, buy directly here,
► bit.ly/AquaponicsBeginnersGuide
Don't forget to click the subscribe button if you enjoyed the video,
bit.ly/Subscribe2Rob
& share the clip around if you think it may help others too.👍
Cheers all & have a top one. 🐟 🌱🍅
Rob
Long time fan. I enjoy your videos. Thanks for sharing your knowledge
Hi Chuck. I'm glad you're enjoying them & hope they give you a few decent ideas to play with as well. 👍
Cheers mate.
Greetings from the Philippines, Mr. Bob! I have been watching your videos for some time now. It is really educational and I have learned a lot from you. I am an SHS student and my research covers aquaponic systems based on the information I have gathered from you. And this coming summer vacation, I will start my own aquaponic garden on our lawn. You've been really helpful and your lessons come with no charge, really love it! I will soon buy your Aquaponic Beginner's Guide.
That's great to hear Yossef. 👍👍
Will you be using tilapia?
Hope the build goes smoothly mate.
@@RobsAquaponics Yup, well be using tilapia! With your videos, I am fascinated and I want to boost the confidence of the farmers in my community. And glad to hear from my research teachers that they would be supporting my project. Thanks a lot, Mr. Bob, you're such a cool guy. Hope to see more of your videos, mate.
Rob mate you definitely don’t talk to much. Great info mate 👍
Cheers Sammy. 🍻
good idea
A great way I've found to lower the ph is to have more growth beds than necessary. I cultivate more bacteria and just siphon over and over. It's incremental, but the nitrfying bacteria lower ph by themselves.if they outnumber the waste, the ph will trend downward
Time is the method I generally recommend. Knowing how to manually lower it can come in handy during an emergency though.
Cheers mate & have a top one.
Thanks for answering questions Rob!
No problem mate. 👍
thanks Rob, the acid answer was good, luckily getting it to acid is only a waiting game, as long as you don't add too much lime or too much water all at once it should never PH rise again.
Cheers Shane. I think I've only had to lower it twice really. Both times was due to me stuffing up & having tanks drain due to my mistakes & lack of backups.
Hope all's well down south mate.
Sir I am Indian state of Telangana Hyderabad English language problem little bit small. Under standing.super.sir
Hi mate. 😁 You can get a translated captions for most of my videos by pressing on the setting icon & selecting the language you want.
dhanyavaad aur aapaka saptaah mangalamay ho.
धन्यवाद और आपका सप्ताह मंगलमय हो।
(google translate)
As always Rob, love your videos! I've been gone a while so I have some catching up to do. That beard is looking gnarly as ever though, so envious. Take care.
🤣 Cheers Alex.
Have a top one mate.
Hi Rob, I only add 1-2ml at a time to my 1300Lt system at the filter before going to sump, Less is best! My rain water has been a bit unreliable with PH laterly.
Hey buddy just let you know I'm still alive and watching hope everything going well for you the pump is a good idea talk to later
Hey GM & all's well here thanks.
Cheers & take it easy mate.
Lovely video! Have a wonderful week!
Thanks Jennifer & same to you.
Cheers.
Also thanks for saying my name correctly that doesn't happen very often 🙂
Oiiii unless I do a TAFE course on Aquaponics...it's all too complicated too me!! I love watching your videos for your setups though!! Cheers!!
I have recently started on a publication that may come in handy Upanadam. 😉
Gday Rob i found it interesting the ph of your tap water where you live . I'm in logan and last time i checked mine was around 7.5. lately tho luckily havent had to top up as the tap water has had alot of extras in it due to all the wet weather
I've found that after large amounts of rain & flooding the pH generally goes a bit higher but not by much. The water definitely smells more "spicy" with the extra additives though.
We're less than 15km from the treatment plant at Mt Crosby as well so that might have something to do with our higher levels.
Hope the system is doing well mate. 👍👍
Great video Rob 🥰 Blessings Gerowyn
Thank Gerowyn. 😁 Hope you folks are doing well.
Rob i know i ask before about water use i forgot. Im using 400 litres a day and i feel bad like its alot. My pond is 24 000 litres and 20 vertical towers and 4 large beds 1metre but 2.4metres .
Hi Karim. That sounds about right for the amount of towers & beds with that size pond. A lot would be lost to evaporation I would thing if you have sprayers at the top of the towers.
Our system is 1600L & I'm adding about 200-300L a week at the movement if that helps at all.
Thanks Rob!
Cheers mate. 😁🍻
Thanks so much for answering my question . Rob just one more question- the pump you are using is it a submersible pond pump like you use in the aquaponics system?
It's a wet/dry submersible pond pump Cisca. 👍
I try to buy them whenever I can in case they may come in handy for a different use down the track.
Cheers. 😁
Hi Rob, thanks for all this great information. I have a question for you. Do you use tap water conditioner? Do you happen to know what these products do to nutrients/nitrates/ammonia levels in an aquaponics system? Just concerned on keeping the fish/plants and bacteria safe. Thanks again.
Hey Smashley. I use ascorbic acid to dissipate chloramines & chlorine from the water so that it's ready to use in a matter of minutes in an emergency.
Sodium thiosulfate is another product that's used in aquaculture a bit. Both of these products will have ammonium or ammonia as a by-product depending on the pH of the water. Generally speaking, above pH 7 it will be ammonia & under it will be ammonium.
Was just working on that section for a publication I'm working on. 😉
Hope that helps some mate.
Off topic but could you put snails or catfish into your fish tank/filter tanks to help remove waste/clean the tanks like in a home aquarium or is that bad for a aquaponics system?
Many folks do Jared to help keep the algae under control. I found that the snails would get stuck in the pipework so was happy when they all died off. I have a feeling that the low water pH was not to their liking & it affected their shell development.
Great info! Thank you.
Cheers Shams. :)
You coming to the hangout this weekend?
www.youtube.com/@RobsAquaponics/membership
Gday Rob, im building a 6 bed system and im wondering if you have tried to use an old sand filter from the pool as a solids filter?
I have seen folks say they're going to use them but am not sure how they went to tell you the truth. Might be an idea to suss out a few aqua forums or FB groups & ask around.
I know some will repurpose them as up-flow filters using media like we do in our moving bed bioreactors.
Hope that helps some.
@@RobsAquaponics Fantastic. Thanks mate. Really appreciate your content. I built my first chop and flip following you and am now about to setup a 15m x 4m space utilizing DWC and media.
Great video thanks for sharing
Thanks for watching Mate.
G'day Rob. For those that live in a colder enviroment i know we can keep koi, trout and char. However the filtering wont work in the cold (the bacteria the system needs). Is there a way to get around this? Im planning to build my aquaponics in an not insulated poop cellar in my sheephouse so heating it would be a pain during the winter months. which is about 4 months. Got any good ideas for me? Ive been playing with the idea about compost heating. Hope to hear from you. Much love from Norway.
Hey Tone. Do you have any idea how far the temperature will drop in the cellar? Do the sheep help keep the temperature up at all?
The biological filtration should work fine if the water is warm enough for the fish as the bacteria will also live in the same environment as the fish in the wild.
@@RobsAquaponics There is no heat. It will be the same as the outside temp. That can be all from - 25 to 30+ c.
@@honeyy79 You could run pipes through the ground. The ground at 1m should be the avg annual temp so you can use it to warm the water in winter and cool it in summer.
@@russellpenney5216 My sheephouse is built on a rock and is made of concrete 😊
@@honeyy79 That might be a bit low for most bacteria & the trout I think. You might need to add some supplemental heating to keep them going through the cooler months.
Hi can you put different species of fish in the same fish tank I live in the states and I wanted to use Channel cat, bluegill, crappie, maybe striped bass, and if I can walleye
Hi Golden Queen. I asked folks to help you out in the last live stream but forgot to come back & post the response here as we don't have most of those fish here in Austtralia. Catfish will pretty much go smaller fish so it might be a good idea to have them in a tank separately if you're planning to have different sized fish in there.
The others should be OK from what one bloke said.
Thank you very much I almost have everything that I need to build aquaponics system I have the equipment to start it off grid the only thing I need now or my fish tanks and my grow beds I will be getting those next month
@@goldenqueen6007 Nice one. 👍 Hope the build goes smoothly for you.
Hi, my mixture of piped water and rainwater, my Ph was 9.8.
Living in Ghana some things are gard to get, I used distilled vinegars.
20ltr bucket took 40ml to drop it to 6.5.
I have 6000ltr fish tank.
I brought my water down to 6.6.
My cat fish are fine, top up with rain water jumped to 7.3, added distilled vinegar to a 300lt tank, brought that down to about 5.8, before pumping it into fish tank, fish still fine. Ph 6.9
Does anyone else use distilled vinegar in their fish/aquaponic's system.
I think you're the first ive read of that uses it for that volume of system Peter. Did you find it affected the bacteria/nitrification cycle at all?
@@RobsAquaponics Hi Rob,
Like I said I'm just getting started, I jumped in at the 4 ft level instead of 3ft.
I wanted to get my fish going first, I did got the green water to clear, my Ph levels about 7.2.
I'm trying to get a water sampling kit, which is like looking for rocking horse poo in Ghana, nobody want to help or tell you where to go..
I've got a guy from water works said he will help me test my water for ammonia and Nitrates, let you know the out come.
A guy from min fisheries, said I should drain my water off, I started to, I topped up with mixture of ph 8.2 water used distilled vinegar brought it way down, pumped it in, mixing all the time, fish doing well.
I've use the water out of the fish tank on my seedlings and there grown good.
I've asked other doing catfish about problems MUM s the word.
It look like my fish have worms, theres some little bits of white floating around, I saw something like a white piece string, a quick look on YT, yep its worm.
Yet to find out what to use to give them.
send you feed back on the water samples as soon as I get the results.
Thank you
@@ukghconst I just did a consultation with a chap that had worm infested fish Peter. A mate in the aquaculture game suggested that Levamisole Hydrochloride treatment will do the trick at treating them. Might be best to look up "levamisole for fish dosage aquaculture" & see what you can find. I have seen various dosage rates so don't want to suggest any in case they are incorrect.
Hope that helps a little.
@@RobsAquaponics hi Rob, sorry long delay, that's how things go here, People push for time, yet they don't stick to time, can't wait 5 seconds. Yet be 3 hrs late for meetings or weeks late on deliveries.
Anyway I took my water sample Ammonia level was 24.6ppm. They didn't do the nitrate tests, why ??
These are cat fish, nothing wrong with them in that mix, they were alert, swam fast, gobbled the food.
I have replaced the water, my tap and rain water Ph level was 9.3, we added a bottle and a half into a IBC cube, this brought Ph level down to 6.4.
The fish enjoyed the re filling.
I cannot find any water testing kits here, so I'm going import them myself.
One problem we have is getting cash out of the country.
Have you done any video of water flow rates?
Thanks again.
@@ukghconst I have mentioned the fish tank water exchange rates a bit. Generally speaking, the total volume of the FT through the biofilter once an hour works for hardy fish but I like to recommend 1.5 times an hour for folks just treating out with no experience.
Is that the info you're after?
2022 ❣❣❣❣
😁😁👍👍😁😁🌺
Like
Cheers Ramone. 😁🍻