Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Just an update....

Vertical beds have been online for a month now and doing great.

Growth has been great but not fully shown in this photo as I've been harvesting sage, basil and parsely as they grow:


The system also got hit very hard yesterday with the heat. Early last week I had a shipment of Blue Yabbies and Mussels come from Aquablue. These added more of a biological load than I would have liked on the system (as it included another person's order roughly equal in numbers to mine), but it was fine through the cooler weather. Unfortunately yesterday the water temp went to the mid 30's plus and I started to sufffer losses! My only option was to mock up an emergency system, for the larger more valuable blues, under the house where temps usually peak at mid 20's. So this is what I built in a rush:


It’s a pair for 3ft tanks and 10L trickle filter. I knew there'd be no biological activity from the filter, so have been focussing on blasting loads of O2 into the system (stones, skimmer, 2x pumps, etc, etc) and salted to 2ppt gradually through the evening. Temp started at 27C and has dropped 1C today. Most yabbies that were not too far gone have bounced back though I probably lost close to 50%.

The basic system is a 1600lph powerhead in the left tank. This pumps to the trickle filter on the top left (expanded clay is the media). It then gravity drains to the right tank and the back to the left tank via a 50mm water bridge. Theres a 400lph air pump running a stone and sponge filter in each tanks and a 150lph air pump running a cheepy old skimmer I had from my marine aquarium days (not that its doing anything more than aeration). Being dark under the house I geared up and old 2x4ft light unit.

24 hours on its actually running really well so I'm going to keep it running as an aquarium rather than AP system for the time being. Note the olive cutting in the filter, so it is still technically AP

Interesting that I suffered no losses from yabbies that I already had in the system. I guess either my original lot were already toughened up, the new lot were still suffering form shipping stress, the blue variety are less hardy or a bit of all.

Hiya Aaron
System is looking good.

A couple of question, How far into the growing media are the feed lines set and does this position have any baring on the flow rate or moisture of the media?

Have you thought of adding GBs on another row above your Yabby tanks. These could then feed back into the FT via the same type of strainer sock?

Cheers
VM

Hey VM,

The feed lines simply trickle onto the media at the top (see the black lines next to orange rope hangers).

I am finding the lines (which are 4 or 6mm irrigation lines) can get their flow restricted some with gunk build-up even though I have the small sponge filter on the pump, and I need to use a thin piece of wire to clean them periodically.

Also because the lines are long (about 1m each once they exit the 13mm pipe) flow is restricted a lot anyhow and there's little more than a trickle. Its enough that just about all of the media stays damp.

Next time I would run the 13mm poly pipe tight to the GBs and just have short pieces of 6mm from there (say under 10cm so they are east to clean)

Flow rate I'm not sure of but it really is just a tiny trickle. At a guess I'd say maybe 1-3lph. The plus is that with flow that that little the vertical beds would have to be 100% choked to cause flooding. The beds can handle more at this stage, but the line and pump pressure just won’t allow it.

I am planning on adding a few more GBs. They can't go above the yabby tanks as there is not enough headroom and it is heavily shaded with 2x layers of 50% shade clothe, but once I clear some space on the other side of the glasshouse I may add more.

Cheers,

AJ