Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Here are a few pictures of a system we built in 2013 which has been thriving ever since. Pretty basic, but functional. The passive greenhouse addition was built specifically to house the system. In consideration of non-US viewers, I've refrained from using my preferred 17th century American colonial-era measurement system (pecks, armslengths, drams, gallons, hogsheads, hatfuls, leagues, pinches, fortnights, and heaping egg cups).

There have been a lot of little additions and modifications to the system since it was built, but the pics are from back before all that. The setup is a little clearer that way. The next system will be very different, in large part due to the wealth of knowledge I've shamelessly stolen from this forum.

Fish tank: 625 L
Sump tank: 625 L
Grow beds: 1550 L (40%= 620 L)

I've just done a Facebook page showing it in action:
https://www.facebook.com/fred.dixon.14224



All the distribution lines have clean-out fittings everywhere and are 3/4 inch, for the profoundly scientific reason that a 12 gauge nylon shotgun cleaning brush mounted on an electrician's fish tape is a snug fit.

Thanks for looking!

-- Fred

A perch, gill and footslug of neatness (for us metric people these are of the non fish variety).
Looks good Fred.

I wish I knew what those mean.Hogsheads sounds fun

The system looks exellent! & is that a morgage lifter?

Thanks! That tomato's a "Trip-L-Crop". A pretty reliable variety for me.

By the way, I can make the entire superior American system easy for you guys. There are only two simple rules to remember: 1) No measurement ever has any relationship whatsoever to any other one, and 2) the number 10 has absolutely nothing to do with anything. See? Easy.

For example, it takes 3 & 6/10ths bushels to fill one hogshead, which therefore equals 5458 dabs, give or take.

so funny. Great to see your system, coupled with a brillant sense of humour (translated as humor )

Thanks Asitis! I always appreciate someone who has tackled the immense task of making himself bilingual

If thats simple i would love to see a system if you tried

Yes thanks that explains everything

Glad I could be helpful. It always feel good when I can do my patriotic duty and help all you foreigners understand how much more sensible everything is here in America.

My favorite example of that (and I'm REALLY not making this one up) relates to the matter of concrete. Here in the most powerful nation on earth, we measure concrete in 'yards', a unit which quite logically measures 27 cubic feet (we also use another 'yard', of course, which is 3 lineal feet or 36 inches, which is also a masterpiece of elegance and orderliness, I'm sure you'll agree. But I won't think about those sorts of 'yards' right now, because I might confuse myself.). But back to concrete 'yards'... 27 is a nice convenient round number, handy for doing quick mental calculations while staring into a massive hole in the earth that you're planning to fill with concrete. That must be why they chose that number.

This also explains why all Americans are geniuses. It's not possible to build a woodshed here unless you can multiply 6 1/4 by 27 in your head in ten seconds while you're on the phone with the concrete guy.

Well, by "simple" I mean that, as someone who's been fairly stupid for sixty years, I've gotten pretty adept at designing and building things that aren't likely to confuse me at some point. Hence, I allowed myself to concentrate on math just long enough to figure out how big the beds should be so they'd hold all the media plus all the fish tank water. Then I put away the abacus.

Likewise, the standpipes in the beds are idiot simple. A little pipe in a big pipe, with saw cuts in the big pipe at 1/2 inch intervals to let the water through, and the little pipe having what I like to call "big holes" near the top to keep water from ever overflowing anywhere, while "little holes" near the bottom let the water drain slowly out of the beds.

The timer running the pump, though, is truly an idiot's "dream come true". It has two pairs of little adjustment dials. One pair controls "on time" and one pair controls "off time". Each pair consists of a dial with positions marked with letters, for choosing a general time range, and another dial for fine tuning within that range (it's just marked "min" and "max", with an area for guessing in between). With the first dial, you select anything from "A" (1 second to 10 seconds) through "Z" ( 100 years to the Second Coming of Christ), and then fiddle around with the second dial until you're deliriously happy.

That timer runs a 12 volt DC bilge pump made for ocean-going yachts. It's rated at 3700 gallons per hour (no, I don't feel like converting that right now). My careful calculations led me to conclude that that equals "a hell of a lot of water". What with the resistance of the plumbing and such, some tweaking of ball valves scattered around the distribution lines, and fiddling around with those little dials, I've got things set so all the fish tank water turns over in about six minutes every hour, and the beds fill to within about an inch of the media's surface.

So, yeah, pretty simple! Everything (water pump, aeration pumps, grow lights, etc.) is 12 VDC and runs on a battery bank and a couple of solar panels, so I don't even have to remember to pay the electric bill

Over here in the 3rd world,we've never needed to go as high as 27.This might explain why I can't get hold of any concrete

abacus?. I had to copy & paste that because it was to difficult to spell .

The one thing all of us foreigners want to know is; what's it like to be an american?.I might join the caravan so I can live in paradise too

As odd as it may seem, absolutely nobody over here has the slightest idea how to answer that question. You might think, after walking around being an American 24/7, for several decades, some sort of vague, murky notion might have developed somewhere in the recesses of my addled brain. Nope.

Luckily, though, we've recently adopted the habit of electing highly enlightened, stable geniuses to high office, so hopefully they'll be able to sort that out for us.

Ironically enough, this topic arises on one of our most revered American holidays, Thanksgiving, when we celebrate and re-enact an early incident from our history. In 1620, a couple of boatloads of British religious zealots (I'm not sure how to convert "boatloads" into "cubic meters", exactly. Please forgive me) landed on a rocky patch of American coastline approximately 1000 miles (1609.34 KM) off course from where they were trying to get to. To add to their troubles, they had apparently forgotten to pack along enough tea, scones, and Yorkshire pudding, and were soon starving to death. Friendly natives took pity on them and taught them how to eat turkeys and maize, and enough of them survived to not only perpetuate a remembrance of the event, but to also begin to methodically annihilate those friendly natives.

So, as a natural-born inhabitant of a nation that was created in a state of utter confusion, I'm afraid I can't answer your question.

Well played, good sir.

That is the best explanation of modern American history I’ve ever read! My wife and I almost spat out our coffee we were laughing so loud.

And a happy Thanksgiving to all of you in the land of the math geniuses. I’m sure the turkeys were not quite as excited though :-)


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Remove America from the above and replace with Australia and change the year, pretty much identical

I can't comment on any of that because of the freedom of speech we have over here.