Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My system is up and running.

It's a F&D on a 15 minutes timer every hour with a 950l/h submersible pump.
fish are 5x goldies (for now) in 200L tub.
grow beds are 2x 50L plastic tubs filled with perlite and river stones on top to hold it down. the auto siphons are just loops of clear pipe which run into a larger pvc pipe that angles down into the water to cut down on noise. note how the siphons face each other - it makes the water churn real good and gives me some extra DO. lots of bubbles come blowing out the bottom of the pipe.
So far i have only put in 4x tomato bushes, i plan to add 5x strawberries provided it doesn't all crash.
It's been more then 24 hours and fish are doing well, no signs of them becoming floaters. plants have perked up after initally drooping.

I precycled my system without fish/plants for 9 days - i provided additional ammonia ala natural style. I noticed the water took on a slightly green tinge after 9 days, this could be the beginings of the pea soup stag? i'm hoping the tomatoes are hungry enough feeders to take out enough nitrate to keep this to a minimum.

Total cost so far - $160 and probably 8 hours of my time.

Coming along nicely Timmy, just keep the FT covered as much as possible from the sun and the algae shouldn't be a problem and make sure the flakes are out of the sun as much as possible also

well i think the lack of sun might be what's saving it. as you can see it's down the side of my unit between the wall, fence and the table it's sitting under it get's no sun. should be good for the plants though, they get a nice dose of sun in the afternoon and the higher the tomatoes go the more sun they will get.

the flakes don't stay there heh, i just gave the fish their first feed and they didn't hesitate to suck down everything i gave them.

Good...just reeling off all the wrong things I did when I started

Another thing to watch Timmy is the clear tubing...... some sorts of that clear tubing become brittle and crack fairly quickly when exposed to sunlight.... other types aren't so bad.... but all of them tend to grow algae inside them with sun exposure...

i guess i'll just have to watch it and see - it's proven helpful in finding blockages though.

The clear tubing will definitely fill with algae fairly quickly. Because the clear tubing I use from the pump to the tank is straight - I was able to thread it through a piece of 25mm poly, which does the trick.

will the algae block the pipe or just coat it though? i wouldn't have thought it would block it?

May not block entirely, buyt will significantly reduce the flow. You will get sick of removing it to clear the algae - believe me.

Maybe just wrap it in black plastic or paint it.

Or maybe if you want the best of both worlds just paint the side that gets the sun, leaving the other side for viewing blockages.

Or just use some polypipe cut lengthwise so you can clip it on/clip it off.

I will improve on the plumbing after a while anyway i think.

this was just a quick and easy setup for my first go. Provided this one works well enough my next one will be a lot better

As a proof of concept Timmy, this is just fine.... got all the principles down pat.... good job.

yeah i just had the clear stuff on hand so i used it - the pvc fittings to do what i wanted to do were like $30, may as well save that for #2

Ah, a true APer in the making....

Designing #2 before #1 has even finished cycling