Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

as above, would be interested to know how you did your pot mounts in the tower.

they look good.

The pot mounts in the tower, this was the process.

For the pots I used cheap cool drink cups I got from our local plastics shop.
For the holes in the cups I first tried a drill but it took to long and didn't do a nice job.
I fired up the soldering iron and melted an array of holes around the bottom of the cups.
I was really glad to have made an extractor fan at the point, the fumes coming off the melting plastic were a bit hectic.
The advantage with melting the holes is that it leaves a nice reinforced ridge around each hole.

For the mold/swage for the mount holes, I duct taped the holes of one of the cups an filled it with quick-set cement, I cast a piece of pipe in the middle as a handle. After a few uses the cement around the edge was crumbling so I added a layer of epoxy steel to seal it.


So with the equipment made I set to the task of building the towers.
1st was to do a test on an off-cut of pipe, I used the 110mm UG piping.
I bent some soft wire half way around the pot then opened it a bit around the pipe to get the cut length in the pipe.
I heated the pipe on either side of the cut with a heat gun till it was pliable. Then I used the mold to swage the shape of the pot. I used a wet hand towel to cool the pipe and hold the shape.


I decided that the most efficient spacing would be 200mm apart. I was going to use an angle grinder to cut the slots but opted to use the table saw with the blade set down. It allowed for a nice consistent flow in the work without the fine white powder that the angle grinder makes. It cant be good to breath that in. It also goes everywhere.



So that's my story hope it helps.

Hi,

Any suggestions to get rid of aphids?

Cobus

Hi was researching the same problem when a bunch of lady bugs moved in and chowed them all problem solved.

The guys 'n gals say you can make a spray from garlic, olive oil and chilli then spray that on. But I'm not sure if this works.

Thanks for the excellent tower pot mount explanation.

Do you know if you get a 70mm net pot?

I see Effast do a 75mm strainer pot ZVD stock code

Ah well, I was just thinking if they do and we have then locally I could interchange them.

looks good

Thanks dude

Hey there,

Well it's been 5 years since my last update...
Life got heavy but the system is sill going well.

The fish are huge, they bred in the tanks and the small fry got all the way through the system.
One grew up in the swirl filter, some live in the pipes.
The deep water culture is full of fish
Some even got into the sump and grew up there.

I threw 5 earthworms into each grow bed and now most plants you pull have worms in the roots.

As far as the plants go, when I started out I planted everything but I found that we didn't use it.
the basil bush got huge and you only make a few bowls of pesto then, well the bush got huge then died and dropped seeds everywhere and the keep sprouting every year.

The herbs took up lots of space and we use only a very little bit so I moved those into the garden.
So now we grow what we actually use. Tomatoes, onion, green pepper, spinach and chives.

And there are some weed bushes growing, personal use is legal here now. I want to try my hand at making some CBD oil.

I'll take some pics. I see photobucket has done something to a chunk of the pics
Dunno if there is a fix to get them back

Welcome back

Just resize your pics and upload them