Hi Steemit!

For those of you having seen those beautifull inspiring posts about backyard aquaponics, wondering if they should start themselves. Let me tell you about my faillures, two times I tried raising trout and failed horribly.
It's soulcrushing to wake up and find 20 dead fish stearing at you :(
I'm going goldfish for now focussing on plantgrowth

Trout?

trout

delicious
beautiful
water temperature below 24°C/75F
high levels of dissolved oxygen (oxygen pump required)
high protein feed (meaning reliance upon fish oil/meal)

I started three years ago with aquaponics because trout.
Being able to raise them in your backyard, hell yes!
So I'm in belgium, temperate climate summers never reach above 40°C, but if it gets above 30°C we are talking heatwave. Still this is a bit to hot for trout so I dug my fishtank in the ground the first year.

(the tote below is for the pump, the one higher is the fish tank )

All was going good with the trout, nice and cold, well fed. I didn't have good plant growth though.
I had some tomatoes that didn't give me any fruit, some lettuce that didn't grow, basically I got to eat some raddish.
I did harvest some trout :) tasty!
Then my air pump broke and the rest of them died.

If you are going for a fish that needs high levels of oxygen, make sure you have a backup for blackouts and it's better to have two air pumps in case one fails.

The second time this baby just wasn't enough to oxygenate everything
bubbles

Plant Growth

Let's get to the core of aquaponics, combining aquaculture with hydroponics. If you have an aquarium you know there is cleaning involved. These uncivilized fish don't use toilets, they just poop where they eat :O
I don't have any personal experience with hydroponics but you bassically start with clean water and you add all the nutrients plants need carefully measuring everything.

does it work effortlesly?

Combining the two is a match made in heaven right? no more adding nutrients for the plants and no more changing water for the fish since the plants "filter" the water. Not really. The fish mostly discharge ammonia (NH3) plants only take their much needed nitrogen in the form of nitrates (No3). Here's the beauty of aquaponics. Provide:

oxygen
surface area (lots think poreous materials like expanded clay pellets)
water circulation

give it some time... and your stinky ammonia problem disapears turning into nitrates. In backyard aquaponics getting this process going wich takes some weeks for a new system is referred to as cycling. It works by cultivating benificial bacteria on the oxygenated surfaces who perform the task. Search for aquaponics cycling for free guides, there are some details to it like checking ph values.

the real reason I started again
mosquitos
those are mosquito larvae :O fish love them

cycling works great, what doesn't

Your converted fishfeed won't give your plants everything they need! They will certainly cover all nitrogen needs if you have enough fish to plants, probably enough phosphorus too. These are easy to measure with the kit you will need anyway. I use one with drops and color measuring it's cheap.

testlab

the rest of the nutrients it gets tricky, I had signs of potassium deficiency. Just addig industrial n-p-k fertiliser with a high k ratio kinda defeats the purpose of aquaponics and can be harmful to your fish. Do I turn to concentrated forms of potassium going the hydroponics way or the more organic way using things like kelp meal, I even messed around with potash. Fun times.

My Setup Now

welcome to my algae farm
fish and sump
just kidding real goldfish inside I promise

So after the two faillures, I'm kicking back with some goldfish and some leafy greens.
I have a common setup with two growbed (where the plants go) with lava rock, this provides support for the plants and surface area for the bacterial colonies. One fishtank and the water flows down with gravity from the growbeds to the fishtank and end up in one last tank (sump) with the pump to pump it back up to the plants.

plants