Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

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I needed to find a use for a shallow portion of an IBC.. a "SIDE" section, about 250mm deep..

I decided to sit it atop the rain-water tank, but wanted to avoid building a frame to contain the wobbly form..

Realising that one only need to stop the sides from bowing out and drooping and allowing the contents, to spill, I decided to try something..

How often do you drive past a junk collection and see old shower doors being thrown away.. "Waste-Not-Want-Not" being my motto, I had a couple if lengths of the glass framing aluminum..


So, I got the idea of using the bladder corners as pillars, as you would with a brick fence..
I made the rounded corner a few Cm higher than the actual desired side height.

I cut the glass-frames to suit the appropriate length..
The concept is that there is a cut into the corner-column, and you fit the rail to one end and simply bend the tab back at the other end to lock the rail into position..


The difficult side to deal with was the irregular shape at the TOP.. I covered this by cutting nicks in the side, the depth of the rail , and simply allowed the indent to sit INSIDE the rail..
The alternative is to heat the top edge and allow it to flatten

Finally, I pulled it all apart, and after wetting the rails out, drizzled some GORILLA glue into the rails and refitted them..

Were I doing it again, I would wait until the glue starts to foam, prior to fitting them in position, so as to minimise the drips... and for what it's worth, the Gorilla Glue sticks greatly to HDPE, leading one to thinking is Poly-Urethane paint might be a good base for painting IBC bladders....
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Nice idea on the reusing the frame.

I like the idea of reusing the frame, question is will it hold for long time ? keep us posted, would love ot know

brilliant system. Would you elaborate on the pressure switch use?
Brian

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Some one, or rather MANY have said...
"... but never assume you won't want to expand.."

Enter Peakhurst Phase TWO..





It's funny how this phase follows at the request of the bride, who originally had said "..and what is that monstrosity that your building..? "
Now that she can see how good it is to have stuff growing at acceptable heights, she wants MORE..

I had a change of heart and originally planned the Duck-Weed bed to be deep.. But WHY -- It needs NO depth.. Good indeed, that it's high atop the Rain-Water tanks - Gets more sunlight.. but deep was a waste..

Coincidentally, I found a local "Gummie" throwing out an IBC cage, and I grabbed it thinking that will go well with the deeper bed.. That Gummie had one of the first AP set ups in Sydney, but lost interest and sold off MOST of it.. the cage was a remnant.. Some may have known him - Steve at Carlton

Also coincidentally there was a left-over shallow IBC tank top section, that would do nicely with the Duck-Weed..

So the deep bed has become a Deep-Water Raft bed, nicely caged by the old IBC frame, and covered with bird netting, which I am sure will keep some of the pesky flying critters from laying their ravenous offspring on the various lettuce that have just started to grow.. (Looking most sad ATM...)

I used Aluminium Coated Polystyrene, so that the Aluminium will reflect heat and enhance the growing light for the plants .. as another BYAPer said -
"..and it should not get wet, and so should not pose a metal contamination problem.."

We will see how the new plants go..

We are having a change of heart about the whole AP concept, having been disheartened by poor experience with Carrots and Beetroot..
Carrots grow awkwardly in the clay balls and the BeetRoot seems to be getting insufficient light to really grow good product.. ( between houses )

I tried burying a shopping bag in the clay balls, and filling with vermiculite, so as to give a "Soft" medium for carrots, but the vermiculite seems to be retaining far too much water and the carrots are rotting off..
Back to the drawing board..

I'm thinking of using the Clay-GB's to grow some Hoan Ngoc shrubs..
https://www.google.com.au/search?q=hoan+Ngoc&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rnWzVLKSGcHQmwXCmYDABw&ved=0CC8QsAQ&biw=1237&bih=918

I see your question BOSS, and sorry - I did not spot it, and so, did not respond..

Pressure switches from Dish-Washers are designed to work with only a few inches of water..
Almost ANY pressure switch will work and all you have to do is to connect an Air-Line from it to a small "Diving Bell" that you bury in the media..
You can simply raise and lower it in the media, and thus get it to change over at the desired "FULL" point..
The ones that I have are tri-level and as such could be used to activate an over-fill alarm as well as normal switching.. Many dish washers have multi-level switching, as they need to activate "Flood Alarms"

Pressure switches from washing machines, are generally suited for DEEP use and would be very good on Sump-Tanks eg.. top up / Low alarms

I'm still using the clumsy practice of time clocks to simply flood beds every half hour, but do have the stainless "Ball-Valves" fitted to operate each bed independently..
This I will soon have to do, as the new inclusions mean that the Sump Tank, has now only marginally enough water, whereas with the control valves , I could fill faster and sequence them to make better use of the Sump capacity..

I would love to convince myself that I need to learn how to program an Arduino (?) so that such could control the dual feeder that I'm building, and sequence the control valves on demand, using the water-level sensors.. just simply set a frequency and let the computer work out which to flood..
( I would like the flooded beds of Duck-Weed and vegies (raft) to be continually cycling )..

AP can be very time consuming.. but enjoyable ..

( just a comment on water level (Pressostat) switches... Some of them are more 'electronic' and not suitable for simple switching actions.. good ones generally have simple spade connectors, where the electronic ones have fine wires and electronics type plugs.. eg. the fisher-paykel ones are no good..
I think they act to vary an oscillator frequency and the incremental level is determined digitally )

The Silvers are growing well in one FT and the other has now got Salmon growing there in...
Naturally, the concern is that the water temperature , but so far, the highest that I've got to is 26.5C and mostly at less than 25C.. Using the Air Supply from a pump in the AirConditioned house seems to help hold the temperature down, but to be honest, I can't easily prove it to be so..
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thank you for that description of the switches. Sometimes I get ambitious and think I can remember everything I learned in college electronics and implemented in my electronics repair shop some twenty years ago, harhar. When we get older we tell ourselves we are the sum of our experiences, which may be true, but remembering even the hard learned lessons sometimes is a challenge. I used to build all sorts of stuff from the immense bone yard from ten years in the electronics service shop, which is why I asked. I can't think of anything more satisfying (technologically) than repurposing parts from one device to another. Thank you for the inspiration. I'm now on the hunt for dishwashers and washing machine.

Brian

Oh how true.. my biggest problem is Attention Span.. There are SOOO many jobs needing to be done, and spending time on "TOYS" quickly sees me wandering to urgent stuff whose priorities continually change..

At least with the pressure switch and electric-ball-valves, you can rough up a simple system without smarts, such that as one bed flood, it's level switch locks out other beds..

It's likely the way that I will go as it's part way KISS..
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indeed I have an Ardunio UNO sitting right here next to me in one of the drawers of my desk I've fooled around with it a few times when our children come to visit, they have the attention span thingy to play with. One son is an electrician and he has loads of experience building remote systems such as a telescope in a out building for a handicapped client. That system used relays and end sensors. Yes, I like the idea of KISS. I am naive, I know this, but part of my plan for retirement is to have a Aquaponics system I can enjoy with just enough maintenance to keep it relaxing,
Brian

Plus 27...

9weeks and six days to my official retirement.... IF people will let me..
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When you retire you will wonder how you ever had enough time to go to work....

My wife just retired at the beginning of January, I'm planning on at least two more years, providing my health holds out. I love my job luckily

Good to hear the salmon are ok with these recent hot days, what measures are you planning to take if we get a run of super hot days like happened a couple of times last summer ?

quite creative that idea

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As for pumping cold air, that thought came from a scientist type saying that pumping HOT air will help heat that AP system..
I thought that if that statement was true, then pumping COOL air could NOT help heat the system, and thus cool to a small degree..
I ran a small "personal Fan" blowing on the Air Pump.. this caused it to run cool..
I pump from the air conditionad room, and ran the output through a coil of copper pipe to help remove and compression heat..
I ran that output via garden hose gotten in air-conditioning Lin insulation, to the system..

ALL I can be certain of, is that I was not heating the water with hot air....

The bride, having been bitten by the bug, has agreed on another complete system, but that will have to wait for a different project..
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Unfortunately I replaced the turbocharger in my Jeep diesel a couple Summers ago. They use a device called a intercooler. It is basically a radiator with air instead of coolant. The simple system cools the super hot air which was heated as it passes over the turbocharger before it goes back into the intake manifold