Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'll gladly take all the credit for OBO's logical comments ! hehe

They loose logical-ness the later in the evening it gets

If the solids building up among the roots in the pipes does become a problem, then just add another trickle type box before the water goes to the pipes. That filter box would need to be more like a header tank filled with media that has holes or a manifold leading out to all the pipes. Shouldn't be too hard to do, just a bit of re-arranging. If you wanted to, this pre pipe filter could even support several large plants depending on how large and where you put it.

Once you get a fair bit of the algae dieing and decomposing within a gravel bed, it seems to reduce the algae problem in the future. It's like some chemical given off by the dead algae or the bacteria decomposing it may be inhibiting the future growth of algae.

Thanks for the comments. I think at best i'll run a small quick change gauze on each feed inlet and just wing it, there doesn't seem to be any gunk building up in the pipes and the pre filter box in the tank seems to be going ok.

I guess there will be much more to learn at the Tafe course this month.
Good luck with your systems.

I think it's a nice looking, simple and effective system

You will notice the gunk buildup as the system matures after a year or two, and so as the roots grow longer out of the pots and into the pipe they will trap all of the solids. You wont notice it for a while but it will come. You could very easily use something like a blue barrel as a pre-NFT filter somewhere down the track.

+1