A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

howdy from ohio

Hi,

I'm keith, from northeast ohio (about 30 miles from cleveland on lake erie)

started an ap system outside 2 years ago, moved into the basement that fall..

just ordered gravel for my expansion.. 3 yards delivered wednesday

i have yellow perch, bluegill, local crayfish, one marmokreb, rosy red minnows, glass shrimp, scuds, daphnia and greenwater cultures

0 members like this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jonathan Hall on April 2, 2012 at 1:04pm

Hey Keith,

Sounds like you have quite the Aquatic zoo going on there. Where is the expansion going to go? Basement still or going outdoors?

Working on an outdoor set up myself currently down in Southeast Ohio.

Best of luck with the upgrades.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on April 2, 2012 at 3:21pm

Cool.

Please tell us more about how you raise your local crayfish in your system and how it's been going for you.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Marc Bryan on April 2, 2012 at 3:49pm

Where at in Northeast? I grew up in Eastlake and my dad currently lives 2 minutes from VASJ. I live in Greensboro, NC now but its nice to hear Im not the only one originally from "greaselake" doing something as cool as aquaponics.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Keith Rowan on April 3, 2012 at 2:44pm

i'm in fairport harbor, about 15 minutes from eastlake (lived there for a while)

the expansion is going in the basement, gets too cold to try to keep anything going over winter without a greenhouse (we rent our house)

the local crays went into the swimming pool after the water aged for a few weeks, with some rosy red minnows..there are quite a few pvc hide's in the pool, but i think more crays than hides.. i definitely need to find some more hides, but with enough room, they do ok, i've got probably 3 dozen in an 8' pool

i've added a couple caps of iodide (usually for salt water tanks, but good for the crays too, at half the recommended marine tank dosage)

to feed, i put cuttings from the gb (swiss chard leaves, brocholi leaves etc) into pvc pipe offcuts to keep them on the bottom for the crays, but they really love raw frozen peas, they do ok with carrots.. i've seen several pairs mating, and when i move stuff around, i'll search for any berried females and put them in tanks by themselves..

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on April 3, 2012 at 7:03pm

Thanks Keith,

It is really good to hear about how people can use local native species instead of going to crazy lengths to import something from another continent because that is what they are used to hearing about (think red claw.)

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Keith Rowan on June 3, 2012 at 12:06pm

i've taken a bunch of pic's over the last few weeks..

picked up "about" 120 yp, and 10 Blue tilapia, got the yp in the pool, and tilapia in two 55 gal glass tanks for now.. the plan was to decommission my barrel system yesterday, and replace with a single tote system, but my pool with three 1/2 tote growbeds experienced a "HSM" - when i got home from work on wednesday or thursday i noticed that one growbed was crooked, a quick inspection showed that the milk crates i was using to support the gb's were failing, so yesterday i replaced them all with masonry blocks, hopefully today i can get started on at least taking down the old system.. pics to come this week for sure

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on June 3, 2012 at 1:47pm

Ah yes, plastic milk crates are not a good option for supporting heavy grow beds, especially outdoors where most plastics become brittle with age and sun.