Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well, here it is.... almost

It's been quite a while in the planning stages, mostly because I've spent so much time reading these (and other) forums learning as much as I can. The 'bones' are there, just have to finish some plumbing and get the gravel in. As you can see, I used blue barrels as bases for the yellow 1/2 barrel GB's as it was the cheapest and easiest option. I am fortunate to have a plentiful supply of barrels as I have a contact with an importer that repackages the contents for retail and always has barrels to dispose of. The blue barrels contained liquid soaps, and the yellow barrels contained lime juice concentrate for human consumption.

The only concern I have at the moment is that foam you see in the blue sump barrel. I thought I had washed it out thoroughly but I get that foam you see in the picture when a GB drains. What you see is as much as it gets to, and then quickly dissipates. It wasn't happening for the first few days, perhaps some residual soap has leached out of the barrel into the water? ...there's a slight green tinge appearing in the FT so it doesn't seem to be toxic to vegetation at least.

Two of the four 1/2 bbl are plumbed up, and now that the bell siphons are working well (one week continuously without a hitch) I'll make up the other two. I'll be adding another two GB's in the next week or two.

I'm planning on stocking lightly until I get some more GB volume. I want to get yabbies and silvers, maybe a dozen or so of each, and increase stocking of silvers as the veggies demand more nutrients. Ideally I'd like to build some sort of multi-storey structure to provide more floor area and stock more yabbies (I like yabbies ) but I have no idea how to do that at this stage, or how feeding multiple levels would work.

This is a 'proof of concept' system (i.e. a 'prove to the missus that it does actually work' system ) hopefully it will be expanded in the future. My dream is a 5,000 lt FT based system with enough GBs to supply most if not all our fish, yabbies, and veggies throug.... but that is waaaaaay down the track at this stage.

Without further ado, the obligatory photos

Gab, I'm concerned that the barrels will twist and distort under the weight of both water and gravel... especially when they warm on a hot day...

And that applies to both the half barrel growbeds... and the upright barrels...

Agreed

The bubbles dont look too bad, just give it a bit to settle.

You have definately got the basics of it runing right though

The pipe coming from the ibc is that an overflow or chift pist style

I was also worried about it so I put a piece of 17mm ply over one of the beds and loaded it up with 150kg. I left it for 2 days, one of which went over 40 degrees, and it stayed up OK with no signs of deforming.

The IBC is the fish tank, and that pipe is an overflow (it's a CHIFT PIST system). The blue barrel lying horizontally is the sump. the pump is running at 1000lpm at that head. The overflow is only 32mm because I happened to have a skin fitting already and thought I'd try it before spending the $$ on a bigger one. Seems to be working OK.

Yes does the pipe inside the tank go right to the bottom a photo would be nice for newbees

Not at the moment but it will, via a tee, next week. I'll post detailed photos as soon as the system is finally set up.