Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Boss, I have flux pens that I could try adding flux to the solder wick if that might help. I know very little about soldering, I'm learning by doing and have had mixed success so far.

Thanks Mel, OP, Mark & Scotty, I appreciate the feedback. I think it is likely that my temperatures are dropping too low. I finished insulating the ceiling this weekend and put a piece of styrofoam insulation over the top glazing now that the sun has moved farther south and isn't really helping any. I got half of the boards up on that side of the ceiling but it's a bit slow because I had to cut them to size, then take them inside the house and paint them 2-3 coats for good cover and then take them out and put them up. I have the last two pieces of plywood cut and got the last coat of paint on them last night before I went to bed, so depending on how much energy I have tonight after the wife gets home (so I can hand the boy off to her) I might get them put up then my ceiling will be mostly complete (just a small 4-6" strip left to do on the other half of the ceiling to have it fully covered). I still need to pick up plywood for the east and west walls to finish them which I imagine won't help a ton, but every little bit has to help a little.

I think I'm losing heat around my cement block foundation because I didn't get a chance to seal all of the cracks before it got cold. I am planning on picking up a bunch of straw bales and putting them around the base of the greenhouse to help insulate the blocks on the outside. We got about 5 or 6 inches of snow this past weekend and it's not staying warm enough in the greenhouse to melt the snow off of my southern glazing. I took a shop broom to it a couple times yesterday to knock the snow off to allow more light inside.

They just installed one of the new digital electric meters on my house so I decided to see how expensive it would be to run an electric heater out there so I took one of my oil radiator heaters that has a thermostat in it and set it at 40F and left it running in the greenhouse for about 23.5 hours. In that time I used about 62kWh (entire house/greenhouse/everything), whereas my daily average on my bill is 26kWh it says... so that's a big NO for electric heat.

I might be about to the end of my season pretty soon. I think the water temp is getting too cold that the trout are cutting back on eating. I don't have a thermometer in the tank anymore because they broke the glass one I had and I haven't finished my datalogger to install it out there yet... so I'm going off their slowing appetite as a sign that it's getting too cold. I might have to give up and accept that I won't be able to run the greenhouse through the winter this winter, but I'm not ready to give up yet. I need to get the straw bales in place and finish the walls and see how much that helps first because I want to learn as much as I can about the system this winter that way I'll be prepared next winter (if it means I need to install a wood burner/pellet stove in the summer to be prepared for next winter). I have a backup plan if I need to I can move the trout to my tank inside the house, but I really don't want to unless I get to a point that I think I'm going to lose them...btw any idea what the minimum temperature is for trout to live? =)

I moved the large tank heater from my big indoor aquarium out to the trout tank in the greenhouse. I think it is a 400W heater if I remember correctly... I set it at the lowest setting but that is still in the 60's, but I don't think it will actually maintain that temp with it being as cold as it is out there. We're only at 10F outdoors temp right now and it doesn't sound like it is supposed to warm up any time soon.

I had been running the 400W in my 240 aquarium in the house when I had it running as a saltwater tank. I don't recall for sure if it held the temp or not (of course in there I was trying to hit 80F, with the trout I'd be happy maintaining 50F) I had two other heaters in the saltwater tank too as backups so I don't remember for sure if they were just backup or if they were needed to hit the 80F mark.... it won't matter one way or another I guess, it should keep my trout water from getting too cold that the trout stop eating, and shouldn't blow up my electric bill quite as bad as trying to heat the greenhouse. Plus with heating the tank water it should hopefully help the plants grow, and it will heat the greenhouse on its own.

I was a little worried that the trout might break the heater since it is a glass tube and it was not a cheap heater to begin with, so I cut a length of 2" PVC with slots in the bottom of it to allow water flow through the PVC easier that I put vertically in the tank and tied it to a couple of things to keep them from knocking it over. Hopefully that will protect the heater.

Bummer when weather hits before we're ready. On the solder wick not working, I've also tried to salvage it with flux. For me it didn't help at all. A trip to Radio Shack and a new roll of Solder Wick brand and I was back in business. Desoldering isn't the easiest thing to do anyway. I like to have hemostats on hand to remove components after heating them so I can pull whatever it is off once the solder flows. Afterwards I can remove solder from the holes to clean them up for the new component.
If you can get the bales of hay up against the greenhouse thick enough they may give off some heat as well as being insulation. Our Winter so far hasn't been consistently cold and I never got the thermometer in the Koi pond. I do think sealing the hay makes a big difference. Keep the wind off it and try to get the smaller bales at two thick and you should see a difference.
As far as the trout are concerned I think you can let the water get cold, it shouldn't hurt them. Of course you know to keep the bubbler going strong. keeping the plumbing from freezing is probably your main concern and that's a problem. Good luck with it.

I managed to get the last piece of plywood on the ceiling this weekend, and I got most of the east and west walls covered in plastic. I still need to patch in a couple small pieces to finish covering the east and west windows to help insulate them. It was warm enough in there yesterday that the snow/ice was melting off the glass when I was working inside the greenhouse. I went back out there after dark and the couple of little areas where I did not cover the glass entirely the portion not covered was frosted and the rest of the window was not, so I'd say if I finish putting plastic up over the rest of the windows (not the south side) it will help a lot through winter. Now it's brutally cold out last night/today... think we have a high of 10F today.

I had another idea to create a greenhouse within the greenhouse by hanging plastic over my plants to see if it would help retain some heat (it should because I have placed a heater in the fish tank to try and bring the temp up a little bit to get the trout eating again... right now it's not really helping, I'm losing the heat too fast. I think I may end up building a wood box around the fish tank that I can pack with insulation to help retain the heat a bit better, and then I need more plastic because what I had left wasn't enough to drop down to the plants on the lower portion of the growbed, but was at least covering the top of the tomato plants).

I have a couple of 6x8 blue tarps that I am going to hang in there as well. One I think I will hang over the upper glazing that I already blocked off with insulation board, but thinking that the tarp will also be another layer of insulating in case I'm still loosing heat there. The other tarp I am going to hang over the door. I left the plastic from the wall covering the door and just put a slit in the middle of it, so I figured adding a tarp over the door will be one more way of knocking down cold air coming in through the door when I enter and leave (but also just because it's a reused door that isn't perfectly square and I did not finish filling all the cracks before it got too cold for caulk/spray foam to dry, so will help stop any drafts).

I'm really struggling to decide if I am going to take my annual vacation down to my property in TN between Christmas and New Years this year or not. My dad and I have met there every year for the past 8 years since we bought the property, and while we're not really hunting it very heavily right now we usually spend the week working on improving the property so it will be ready for us when we need to hunt it more heavily (and it is already paying off... my grandparents spent the month of November there and did manage to get 2 does, a 5 point, a 10 point and then my dad shot an 8 point on his way back home from Michigan to Florida... so they took 5 off of there this year which was good since my dad didn't get anything here in Michigan this year. My grandpa said he'd shoot a deer and an hour later there would be more deer on the trail so they never even went out to one of the several other blinds we've built the past few years.) Seems like everywhere we cut trails deer show up on the trails within a day or two, but this year they never even left our cabin. All 5 deer were shot out the cabin window (originally the cabin was built as an 8x8 hunting shack, we've just expanded out from there to have a decent little cabin to stay in when we're there, so the original part is still set up as a hunting shack).

I'm struggling to decide if I am going to go or not because of my projects I'm working on... I feel like I have so much to get done that having a week at home without having to work would help me get a long way on them, and also having a 4 month old at home I'm not sure that I want to leave my wife with him alone for a week... but at the same time it would be nice to get away... this will be a tough decision for me until the boy is at least 3 or 4 years old, then I will just take him with me to TN for the week... but until then it's just not a good place for such a little guy.

Yes that does sound like a tough decision. Wow though on the hunting cabin. Very cool and I'm sure it's a huge temptation, especially when it so damn cold up where you are at.

I am going to have to add a filter of some sort to the system when I get around to building the grow beds. It appears my grow bed is pretty much full already after only 4 months and the water level has increased over top of the gravel due to this. On top of that I stuck my gopro in the tank again the other night to test out a new light I bought and the video has a lot of detritus floating through the water... I'm not sure if it is just increased backspatter due to the light being closer to the camera or if it's really that dirty (probably both) but I need a better way of removing solid wastes. The system isn't set up to really remove any right now is why my fish tank water probably looks so bad, it onyl removes what is floating by the pump and just deposits that in the grow bed, so not everything is getting removed since I'm not using a SLO yet (will eventually once I get my sump tank installed and my grow beds and other fish tank plumbed together). It may not be as bad either due to the fact that I'll have a lot more grow bed space to spread the water out in, but I'd rather not have to clean the grow beds every year if I don't have to... so I guess I need to add a filter to my setup.

I have not done any reading on filters for aquaponics yet because up until this point I was hoping I wouldn't have to worry about it, but I think it's time to start looking. I have a few 30 gallon plastic barrels that I can use, the first thing I'm looking in to is what to use as a cheap filter media... it seems like bioballs and that sort of thing would cost a LOT to fill a 30 gallon barrel, even more that I'll probably want to run more than one filter that way I can clean them on a rotation so I always have one running even if I take the other offline to clean it.

I'm thinking that this might change my entire plan for how I'm going to run my system. I was thinking I would have a SLO from the big fish tank to the small fish tank then a SLO from the small fish tank to the grow beds, then from there the grow beds would drain in to a sump and my pump would be in the sump to lift water back to the big fish tank. But to incorporate filtration I think it would be better to have a SLO in each fish tank which goes to filter #1 then from filter #1 it flows through filter #2 then from filter #2 it flows to the growbeds, then from the grow beds it drains to the sump, then the sump will pump back to the fish tanks.

In the sump I think I may take a lesson from my reef tank days and run baffles in it to trap any detritus that may make it's way through the grow beds in the sump tank before they make it to the return pump and gets pumped back in to the fish tanks. Should help keep them cleaner that way.

Does this make sense? Only problem I can see right now is how to get everything the right height... I might need to raise FT2 because it is not as tall as FT1, so my water level in FT1 would be limited by the water level in FT2 and the filter height if I did it this way... then I also need to make sure the filter height is high enough to be able to downhill flow to the grow beds.

I should have noted I may not run all of the grow beds as AP beds, so might not have everything plumbed like I have shown, but if I were to run them all as AP beds then I am thinking I would plumb them like this. I'm thinking that GB3 might be a long run having to go almost 30ft around the greenhouse, so it might just be a dirt bed, or I might still plumb a supply but no drain and have it be a wicking bed. GB4 and GB5 I haven't decided what I'll do yet, they might be dirt, wicking beds, or DWC....

If you just need to get the solids out, you don't need bioballs or filter medium - your media growbeds will keep doing the biological filtration, you only need a filter (or two) to handle mechanical filtration. So that's one thing you don't need to worry about!

First question I have from looking at your sketch: It looks like all your growbeds have at least two drains? Er... why?

Second thing: You also don't need to make both fish tanks the same height. If you're using SLOs they will set the height in your fish tanks; then you can run from the SLOs into (say) radial flow filters, one per fish tank; then you run from the RFFs to a wider distribution pipe that runs out to your growbeds. Growbeds drain to sump, flow from pump in sump splits to deliver to both fish tanks. Or, two smaller pumps in sump, one per FT. Or, split the system in two; add another sump, and have FT1 delivering to half the growbeds and FT2 delivering to the other half (prevents any disease etc in one FT spreading to the other, allows you to run both systems differently to accommodate different types of fish etc etc).

I agree with Mel, but want to add that I do have media in with my bioballs in the Koi tank and K2 in the AP. The K2 wasn't terribly expensive. Look for it on ebay, I bought the smallest package and it nearly filled a 55 gallon barrel. It was less than $70 if I remember correctly. I also use Koral filter media in both biomedia filters as I have a DWC in the AP and don't want large pieces of fish waste in there. For the Koi pond we don't have any associated GBs so it needed filtration.

Unfortunately in my setup some of the FT water can get past the filters and I still need to deal with this.
An air lift on the SLO lets you select the height of the RFF and Biomedia filters. This creates a better gravity flow from the filters to the beds, although my filters feed the ST and get pumped up to the GBs. FYI I still have crap floating around inside our fish pond/tank. It took me too long to realize over the course of a year we went from 45 small trout to 15 huge trout and I kept feeding them like there was 40.

So for removing solids do you just let them settle out in a slow flow system instead? I was thinking the bio media would help trap the solids so they don't just float through to the grow beds instead. I guess one design I've seen that might work would be to have a barrel with an internal pipe that the water inlet pipe goes up in to then detritus would settle out in the bottom and water could flow through an outlet... I think this was an old skimmer design I had seen someplace... can't remember... something like this...





I thought it would be better for safety/overflow reasons... does it just add extra complication to it? I don't need to do it if it isn't going to be beneficial... I tried to approximate the size of the growbeds in that sketch too. GB1 will probably be about 24 inches x 48 inches, GB2 will be about 24 inches x 144 inches, GB3 24 inches x 72 inches and GB4 / GB5 will be whatever looks decent, but probably 24 inches x 36 to 60 inches depending on how much room I have once everything is done while still giving myself nice wide aisles between beds.



I don't know why I thought the fish tanks needed to be the same height... the important thing is that I want to keep the filter up as high as possible to still be able to flow out of that and to the growbeds. The greenhouse is 16ft x 16ft (almost 5x5 meters) so from where I show the filters between fish tanks to the southern growbed is about 10-12ft then 16ft across to GB3, so trying to keep the filter up high enough to be able to have a slight slope across that run. I plan to have my grow beds raised up off the ground a bit to reduce the strain on our backs from bending over to work in the beds. So I need the plumbing up high enough to be able to have the grow beds at a decent height.





K2 is what I was trying to think of, not necessarily bio balls... just some sort of media to slow the flow of the solids through the filter (I had even considered just filling the barrel with gravel, but then it would be heavy/hard to clean... I would think the K2 should be light enough to dump out and rinse with the hose as needed. I wasn't thinking so much as for bio filtration because as Mel said, the grow beds should be plenty for bio filtration... I might buy some of that and test it out in a normal fish tank indoors to see if it does what I'm thinking because I've been struggling with how to filter solids out of my big fish tank as I convert it to fresh water... I have a huge skimmer for my salty tank but it doesn't work with fresh water very well...

That diagram you have there is a radial flow filter! I have a homemade one I built for my system out of a 200 litre (50 gallon) drum; I'm pumping close to 3,000 litres per hour (about 790 gallons) and it works brilliantly. Since you're running from there to media beds, any fine floating solids will have a second chance to be trapped there before reaching your sump, and it definitely won't be enough to clog the beds - I've been running with this filter for months and I have a tiny amount of stuff settled on the bottom of my sump in one spot. I haven't had to clean it out even once.

Having a separate overflow in case your main growbed drain clogs isn't a bad thing, but if your drain is sized appropriately for your water flow then the chance of getting a total clog is probably microscopic. Definitely don't try to have multiple drains/siphons running in one bed at the same time - the most likely outcome from that is either one will never do anything at all, or they'll both drain too slow to trigger the siphon and you'll end up running accidental constant flood.

I knew I had seen that filter someplace ... now I can google radial flow filters to figure out the rest hopefully. Thanks Mel!

Another question - I had never heard of uniseals before coming here... I've always used bulkhead fittings. Is one better than the other for certain types of applications? Do you need thicker material to have a uniseal work properly vs. a bulkhead fitting? I have a water storage trash can that I used for holding RO/DI water for my salty tanks that are very thin plastic that the bulkheads work great on (and the trash can is thin enough that it forms to the bulkhead as I tightened it). I imagine that uniseals wouldn't work on something like that because there just isn't enough surface area for it to seal against... I'm thinking I will order either some bulkhead fittings or some uniseals so I will be able to make at least one filter in the next couple of weeks, but I am getting fairly close to being able to start building my grow beds so I will probably order pond liner and bulkhead fittings/uniseals for grow beds too, so not sure if I should order bulkhead fittings for the filter and uniseals for the grow beds or what works best?

Hey I just saw something really exciting! Today is the winter solstice! Amazing how those sneak up on you! That should be positive for my greenhouse attempts that today is the shortest day so we will start gaining more daylight every day from here out... I'm not sure if that is quite as exciting for y'all down under, but I hate that it's dark here by 5pm this time of year! We still have the worst of winter weather yet to come as we head in to January is usually our coldest/most snow, but more sunlight every day should mean that the greenhouse functions a little better every day even if the weather is cold... it was sunny Sunday and I was happy with how much warmer it felt in the greenhouse than in previous days.

My experience: uniseals are great for plastics the thickness of ibc tanks or poly carbonate barrels. They perform GREAT on flat planes or even surfaces that are irregular without the use of any additional products .

I did get them to work on a brute trash can for a swirl filter, but ended up using silocone to seal/stop leaks.

Also great for saving a bit of space over bulkhead fittings/adapters when makng connections and space is limited.

Usually cheaper than bulkheads.

All my uses are in a low pressure/gravity flow environment.

Adam

Yeah, that's pretty much my experience - uniseals (when you can find someplace that sells the darn things!) are cheaper than bulkhead fittings and work brilliantly on thin / curved surfaces. I used them on my RFF for the 50mm (2") pipes because it would have been pretty close to impossible to get bulkhead fittings that size to seal on the curve; the drum sides are too stiff to flatten around a large bulkhead easily, and even if I'd managed would have messed up the seal around the concrete I used to put a sloped bottom in it. They're easier to put in thin material because pushing the pipe through them forces the back edge of the uniseal outwards, forming the seal. I have seen a bunch of builds using uniseals to install growbed drains/siphons, but frankly I prefer bulkheads there - they're fixed in place and can't be pushed through in some sort of freak accident.

Yay solstice!