Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This entire post is going to be rambling, so bare with me.

I know a lot of people love the Rio brand of water pumps, but I just had my Rio 800 die on me within a month! I contacted the seller and he basically told me to get bent, so now I'm on the hunt for a new pump.
I pulled all my lettuce and fed it to the bunny before it died, and I'm starting over. There's a Grow-N-Brew hydro/brewing shop just down the road from me and they carry Rio pumps, I've been contemplating buying an 800 there and then returning my "bad" one. That's pretty shady, so I haven't actually done it yet and am pumpless.

Before the death of my system, three of my wife's best friends had seen it and were very impressed. The funny thing to me is that all of them (separately) said "Oh like at Epcot," to which I replied "yeah, just like "The Land" at Epcot. One of them even asked me to help her setup a system for her and her kids. Equally funny is that ALL of them asked, upon walking into my workshop (the middle floor:): "Are you growing 'pot'?" lol.

As another side note, my wife and I were watching Iron Chef last night and they were using real wasabi bulbs(what's the correct term for that? is it just root?). Alton Brown went on a small tangent on how expensive real wasabi is and how hard it is to grow. I told my wife of Janet's experience, and how AP is basically the only practical way of growing it around here, and she's ready to start a wasabi/koi AP system(she still has issue with the thought of eating our own fish).

As for my goldfish/feeders, my first batch of 14 are all gone/dead, and I have 3 decent-sized GF and one cray in my tank that are still surviving; but I'm seeing black spots on one of the GF. I haven't investigated the spots yet, but I'm wondering if you folks know what that could be... I'm assuming it can't be a good thing.

OK, I'm done with the rambling for now

Well, the wasabi is starting to suffer. My sunroom has been heating up quickly now that we've gotten some warm spring days. The wasabi wilts when the water goes over 85F, and doesn't appreciate the warm air either. If you're going to do wasabi, I suggest unheated water (or minimally heated in the winter), and a way to shade/cool it. I think what it's coming down to is that tilapia (very warm water) is not a good combo with wasabi (cool shady mountain streams). I've dropped the temperature on the heaters, but I don't think the wasabi will make it into summer. Koi and wasabi sounds like a better combo.

I don't know what black spots on a fish would be.

as for ur rio 800, i have two rio 1100 pumps and i have had no problem, they pumped through chemical nutes, me pouring sand into the tank everything didn't skip a beat, i wouldn't quit on the rio just yet cause at least with my experience they work good. on another note everyone who sees my setup asks if im growing pot too and if i try and explaine it to someone they gimme the raised eyebrow and say growing tomatos righhht.

what exactly is the problem with it? have you pulled it apart?

i found that with my submercible i had a few problems initially.

One was the built in filter (coarse weave stuff) was getting blocked farr to quickly. easy fix, remove it!

second problem was when i had fed the fish a bit (quite a bit) of silverbeet without removing the stalks. some of the stringy bits got wrapped around the impeller shaft. easy fix, don't feed stringy bits.

take it apart on a clean bench, and memorize the assembly, there are only a few parts anyway! just make sure you don't loose the little rubber bearing that slip on the end of the shaft.

let us know how you go.

If I had a dollar for everyone who asked me if I had started to grow dope, I would be able to retire. I even had a real estate agent ask me the other day what was in the greenhouse, and I said, Mrihuana, you want some? The look on her face was priceless, until I started reeling off prices for pounds and ounces and she thought for a minyute I was serious ROFL

Mine is way out in the open - yet the odd person still says that to me.

Regarding pumps - they are obviously a bit variable. I have one here that I bought off ebay that was meant to pump 4500 litres an hour - yet pumps less than 1000 litres at vertually no head. Have been meaning to send it back - but might just write the whole thing off to experience (not to buy these on ebay). By the time I pay the postage back - without any guarantee they are going to replace it - I am probably just throwing good money after bad

You are a wicked man, Monya! I love it!!