Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

If you dig, plan for the removal of the dirt. Either fill a low spot on your property, or take it to a landfill. Don't plan on people responding to a free dirt add.

Hi everyone,

Things are moving forward. Hole is getting deeper. Had some rain so digging not possible at the moment but hope to have it finished this weekend.

I've ordered a Laguna max-flow 9000 pump which should arrive shortly.

Have been trying to understand what I need for a backup air supply.

Given I have a 3000l tank.

I am guessing that I won't require additional airation when the pump is working?

My tank is out in the weather I was thinking of something like an Oase Aquaoxy either 1000 or 2000 model. Possibly hooked up to a car battery with some sort of relay that triggers when there is no mains power.

Can anyone give me an idea if this is enough/overkill and how long such an airator would run on a car battery?

Any other advice would be much appreciated.

CT

What is the wattage of the air pump, and how many amp hours is the battery? Wattage = amps x volts. So, if it is a 12 watt pump*, that would be one amp. If your battery was 24 amp hours*, then it could run the pump for 24 hours, though you really should not drain a battery of all of it's capacity. So really 12 hours.


*these are random numbers given as an example, your mileage may vary...

Pump is 25w.

There appear to be lots of 60 to 120 ah batteries out there. For example:
http://www.allpurposebatteries.com.au/p ... ucts_id=23

The only other question is does anyone know of a nice way of interfacing the auto switch over? I'm thinking of some sort of plug that holds a relay open and closes it when the power goes. I know that this sort of thing can be made from parts but would be much happier with a bought solution as I don't fancy my 240v wiring skills .

What was the price on your growbeds and FT. Cheers

The ft was $600 gb $300 each

The 120 ah should give you a comfortable 28.8 hours assuming you only wish to deplete the battery a prudent 50%. People will make up the backup relay from a 12 v wall wort. The wiring that you would be responsible for would just be on the safe 12v side, once it is wired up, just plug the wall wort in.

Just a quick update:
Hole is finished and ft is now installed.
gbs arrived and will be installed on the weekend.
I think I'm going with 20mm blue metal for the media.
Have finaly sorted out the pump although it was somewhat of a drama. Ordered it from creative pumps. Arrived damaged and although they were quite happy to replace it they treated it as a warranty and had it replaced from laguna. Thought this was very poor as they also expected me to pay return freight (eventualy they have agread to refund the freight cost, but we shal see).

All that aside I'm getting closer .

Next step is to plumb the system.

I have a couple of questions regarding pipes.
Is 25mm a good size for the siphen? I'm planning a bell siphon design. 40mm to 25mm for the bell. Is that a good size?

What about the drain from the gbs back to the ft? If I have three gbs can I use something like a 50mm main drain? Any advice regarding if there is a magic size for the main drain to prevent issus if multiple siphens trigger at once?

A final question, I have 40mm pipe from the pump, will this be a possible issue or should i drop down a size when feeding into the gbs? Do I just pump straight out of a pipe into the gb or is there some sort of dispersion I should have e.g. a pipe with holes along the length of the gb?

TIA

CT

Some people just let the water pour in, I elected to use PVC with holes in it. I would probably continue to to so in the future.

Hi again,

So my system is sort of in. The FT is in the ground and my three GBs are installed and plumbed.

I have no sump, the 3 GBs drain back to the 3000l FT from which I pump back to them.

I'm having some trouble getting my siphon to stop. I've plumbed the inflow with 25mm poly which appears to be working well.

For my siphons I have 25mm stand pipes with 25 to 32mm adapters on top to help with starting. My bell is a 90mm pvc with cap and the media guard is 100mm.

The plumbing returning to the FT is 25mm poly from my three gbs dropping down to a 32mm main drain back to the FT.

It feels like there is too much back pressure in the return. In fact it was running up hill at one point (which is hopefully corrected). I'm not 100% sure though as I'm blind and have had no one around today to read the spirit level for me. Just feeling it with my hands and trying to figure it out is a bit inaccurate . Will get it checked for sure soon as someone with eyes is around.

The things I've tried to get the siphons to stop so far are:
- add an air intake at the far end of the 32mm main drain.
- Drill more holes in the bells.
- Make sure 32mm main drain is sloping down to ft.

Is 32mm enough for draining 3 gbs? do people just attach each gb using a t and reducer like I have?
Should I use a much bigger drain? I think they are draining too slowly.

I am thinking of expanding my stand pipes to 32mm with 40mm expanders on top.

I have 3 500l GBs so my calculations tell me that roughly 50% of that will be water. So to turn over the 3000l tank once an hour means I need to flood and drain every 15 minutes or so.

Also going to expand my media guards to 150mm or so so I can get my hand down the side to feel water levels.

Sorry for the million questions. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I'll also hopefullly get my wife to take some pictures soon which might help people see what I'm describing .

CT

pics or it didn't happen

CT, try reducing flow to he grow beds. Also make the crenelians at the bottom of the bell larger. I suspect that he bell might also be too large, but I am no good with metric. I went with a 1" standpipe, 1"-2" adapter, 2" PVC riser, 3" bell, and 4"media guard. I have contemplated replacing the media guard I have with plastic hardware netting zip tied into a cylinder.

What I believe could be happening is that the water level never gets low enough to break the siphon. It is entering the bell before it has a chance to break. Larger crenelians would give it more of a chance. A more open media guard would help because it would act less like a regulator, as in it slowly lets a continuous amount of water through. You want lots of water, then very little. Also, the holes in your media guard don't have to go all the way up. The majority of your holes should be on the bottom of it.

Sorry for the long post!

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of posts. Has been a bit crazy around here. Nothing new I guess .

So I did expand to 32mm standpipes. 90mm bells and 120mm media guards.

All is working well now. Beds drain very quickly.

Of course my water is still clearing after the huge dose (about 1.5l) of seasol I added a few weeks back in a fit of eagerness.

I've added 80 80mm silvers about a week ago.

My levels are not too bad as far as I can tell. The nitrites were a bit high to begin with at 2.0. Amonia was 0.25 and nitrates 10.0. PH 8.4.

Over time they are settling (I hope). My PH has drifted down to 8 and actualy read 7.4 this morning which sounded like a quick drop from yesterday with no real explanation. Will see how it reads tomorrow.

Didn't fead yesterday as AM was heading up slightly. Interestingly my nitrites which had been very slowly dropping from above 2 are down to 0.25 today. Possibly not feading I guess.

Amonia is down to below 0.25 and nitrates remain at 10.0.

I've fed the fish again today and will see how that effects the levels.

I'm hoping that all of that means I'm cyced ok.

I did add about 4.5kg of salt to the 3000l ft when I put the fish in because I was advised to due to the high nitrites.

So far so good, no fish deaths.

Groath rates appear to have picked up with the plants as well.

CT

Hmm,
My first big stuffup.
Left the hose running in the ft over night.

This morning no sign of my 80 sp.

Not sure what to do other than wait and see what happens.

From reading other threads some people who have done the same have lost all their fish and others have been fine.

Hope I fall into the latter group .

Something not to do again.

Other than that the system has been going well. Have one gb out of action as I've had to empty them sequencialy and add a more solid base as they were sagging.

Some fibre cement 15mm thick appears to work well.