Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Might be all you need so you don't suck any fish in.

you can also glue it and then add holes on the sides

Remember the amount of water going in (the pipe size and LPH) will need to fit through those holes

I pulled some grow beds out to the backyard to soak & wash my media (growstones) in, and used it as an opportunity to test my media guards and bell siphons. The growstones floated and ended up raising my media guard just enough to allow some media to get underneath it, which was a pain to deal with. I wanted to retain the ability to rotate the media guard to cut off roots that had found their way through the slits, but I decided to forgo that and ended up securing the media guards with silicone to prevent them from getting lifted again. Since I was using the beds to wash the media, I ended up doing a dance for the last handful of days to get all the media washed and the media guards attached, letting the silicone dry, etc... finally at the end of the line for all this and I should have everything up and running (and be able to start cycling) this weekend!

Attached are some photos... thanks for the help so far, this has turned out to be more complex, time-consuming, and expensive than planned...

And the current state of the grow room... everything is a bit scattered around at the moment but it's coming together quickly now

pretty exciting

I guess there are others with clay balls that have this issue ?
I used a pipe cape on the flat surface of the IBC (upside down so the media guard fits in) which holds it in place and is also easily removed. But that wouldn't work for the curved surface of the Blue barrel as you have experienced.

Is your fish tank going under your beds?

The fish tank will be standing upright on the little wooden table below the leftmost barrel in the last photo. The sump tanks will go underneath.

Good idea with the pipe cap - I'm sure it could be done in the barrel but it's too late to try

Finally got it up and running... have one of my growbeds turned off because the bulkhead fitting is leaking, but with the other 3 running everything seems to be working just as expected. Got some organizing / cleanup to do but as of now I'm officially cycling!

Here's a short 2 min video walking through the running system: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzedB8d ... e=youtu.be

nice work - are you cycling with fish or with fish emulsion or Pee?

Bit late now but I would have made the SLO outlet at the growbed side of the fish tank so you didn't have that long pipe sticking out.

Love the design though.

Got some lights?

Fishless cycling, using ammonium chloride, specifically this: http://www.amazon.com/DrTims-Aquatics-A ... m+chloride

I wanted to do it at the GB side but I didn't have much room over there, and was concerned about making sure I had the same pipe length to every GB outlet so I'd get even distribution of flow without having to do too much tuning with valves. If I redid it I'd figure out how to do it on the GB side though because it's a bit of a pain to work around in this small space. Not too terrible though, just need a step ladder.

Putting together the lights now. A friend is letting me use a t5 ballast with 8 slots, so I need to go pick that up this week and see where that gets me.