Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Most of ours arent mono(barra style nets ) but trawl sein nets.

LOL
I agree, I think it would make a great bio filter medium

People here use bird netting for bio-filter media.

Ta Janet , well it seems the little buggers(bacteria) arent too fussy, keep it wet,keep it dark, give them something to hold onto, keep it areated ,and keep em fed. AM ill race you for the nets , only trouble is mine are still on the beach and ive just sold my OKA truck so am between 4bs at the moment !

I am outa funds right now anyways, and I still need to dig the hole for the next 2 IBC's (which is a LOT of work that I dont have time for ) as tyhe netting would go into one of them with redclaw thrown in so it would be a bio filter of sorts (the yabby would do well in that sort of environment)

Theyd love it in there bugger to harvest though! By the way just got water test kit in mail Amm 0 ,Nitrite 2ppm, Nitrate 10 ppm so system nearly cycled, and thats with the biofilter intergrated into the base of the tank with 100mm wide strips of old shade cloth woven through asheet of cyclone fence mesh (the mesh stops the cloth being compacted) and some old white tiles placed on top to keep the light off the bacteria ,gravel filled pots on top ,teh yabbies and the rainbow fish cruise around amongst the pots.

AM, you think the school would mind if you made the students do manual labor instead of detentions.... Get them to do all the dirty work... Of course it is the holidays though... damn.

THere are some willing students who told me last year that they WANT to do all sorts of AP stuff this year, so who knowe
I wont get to the upgrade of my system untill I finish Cheyenne's memorial tho

I'm looking at doing something similar (because I want a big system and I may have to move in a year or so... and gravel can be heavy ).

I was thinking of a two stage filter process:

First something to handle the solids (may actually be a small gravel bed) and then a fluidized bed filter (found a nice DYI design http://www.fishkeepersforum.org/hardwar ... Filter.htm)

which looks like I could scale it up by making it longer or adding more

eame002 look at my virgin or the fluidized filter

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... c&start=75

tim b i would love to see how you got the netting done

Had a couple of ideas about using old fishing net , one was just to pile as much as i could into a suitable container and pump water through.
The other was to get a length of plastic sheet(the type that comes in a roll and is about 2mtrs wide and is folded double on the roll), lay a length of it out and fold it open so its 4mtrs wide, put a couple of layers of fishing net 2mtrs wide and the length of the plastic down on top.Fold the plastic sheet up so thenet is sandwiched between. Glue or staple the long top edges together and glue or staple one end of the sheet together.Think of a tube of toothpaste with the net being the paste.

Next have some poly pipe with a number of holes drilled into it, slide it into the plastic tube youve created parralell with the end.roll the whole lot up and put in a container, pump water in the poly pipe ,it will have to travel all the way through the net filled plastic tube and spiral outwards before it comes out the open end of the tube. Presto a light cheap efficientsingle path biofilter.

If it was sturdy enough you could even do away with a containerif it was well sealed. You could have it rolled up or laying flat.

i don't remember if someone showed me this here or if i just found it but this is like what i did just with a 5gal bucket http://www.skippysstuff.com/minime.htm this is how to build a bigger verson http://www.skippysstuff.com/biofiltr.htm

also i used volcanic rock instead of those foam pads but i was thinking about adding some one the top