Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Went " shopping" today at my in-laws' building site and rescued a pile of helpful stuff from their skip bin!

You can do the same thing by beveling the edges of the pipe and then soaping it up. Looking good BTW.

So close I can almost taste the finish line!

Today I did the dry fit for the outside plumbing from the FTs to the GBs.

Once these are glued etc there's nothing stopping me from starting to cycle the system! Obviously I need gravel - but in the interim I have some bio balls I will use to start building a beneficial bacteria colony.




I will use sleeper off cuts from my in-laws' building site to build a more stable and solid pipe support than the current bucket tower!



Each 50mm inlet to the GBs will have one of these 50mm ball valves to allow me a bit of extra control.

looking good. The "finish" line is close

Yay for skip shopping!

Looking really good Sophia, I hope you are giving yourself a massive pat on the back for the work you've done (lol, now I'm picturing a giant disembodied hand whacking a tiny person off their feet). It looks great, you're almost there!

Awesome job!

Thanks Azira!

Illness has set me back a bit this weekend. Baby and I are both sick.

I got some small things done on the AP system - but it's annoying to be incapacitated this close to the finish line.

Only good thing to happen today: I worked out that empty grow beds make excellent play pens and I was able to keep our sick and clingy baby close while I worked....

She's pretty cute. Even when she's sick.

Aww, what a sweetie, boogers and all, hehe. I hope you both start feeling better soon, what awful timing! It always adds insult to injury when it's nice weather and you feel like garbage, too.

Get well xox

Merry Christmas everyone!

Just one question from me today: should I fill up FT#1 and start water cycling through the system or wait until I have the Scoria delivered?

I probably won't get scoria until the end of January - but I was thinking that if I fill up FT#1 from the hose then at least the water has a few weeks to cycle, aerate and get rid of chlorine...

Thoughts?

I also have some bio balls I can throw in the STs to start a beneficial bacteria colony going...

Merry Christmas! My thoughts are that filling without media should be fine. The only consideration would be that it's best to be able to disconnect the growbed so you can thoroughly rinse the scoria when you get it. If you can't do this you will get lots of sand, silt etc in the fishtank.


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Christmas is over, time for an update...
bump

Lol Skeggley - keeping me on point!

So today's jobs were:

(1) Partially empty the overflowing sump tanks into FT#2 because we have more rain expected and I want to use my system to harvest as much lovely rainwater as possible.

(2) Install PVC pipe cross brace into FT#2 so that we can at least turn the pump on and get water circulating (FT#2 will have to be filled for this as May warp without the brace)

(3) Install Lexan viewing window into FT#1

Results?

(1) I discovered that one of the outlets on the bottom of FT#2 has a terrible leak. All the water disappeared and ran out of the shed under the back wall. Will have to fix this by redoing the cap on the outlet with some of the Sikaflex I bought for the Lexan window as Teflon plumbers tape is evidently not cutting it.

(2) Bolts I have are too long - hubby has had to run back to B for me.

(3) Seeing the Lexan panel in the flesh it looks MASSIVE and I am now concerned about not being able to install it on a perfectly flush surface.

As you can see from first photo below, there will be one groove running through the Centre of the short edge....

It's not a huge groove but as the Lexan will be installed on the inside of the tank this groove is going to act like a ridge holding the Lexan away from the rest of the tank.

I'm convinced it would be safer to cut the Lexan so I just end up with a thin narrow slit window.

Thoughts?

If it was me, I would not try to make a seal across that ridge as it is. If you could apply a suitable amount of controlled heat to flatten it to be in the same plane as the rest of the wall then it might work. Otherwise a shorter vertical dimension to avoid the ridge would be a much safer option for keeping the water in IMO.

Ok so next question is: How does one cut a Lexan sheet?

I have a circular saw, a jig saw, an angle grinder and a circular cutter.

could you make 2 horizontal windows above and below the ridge?

With great care! You dont want to shatter it. Do you have a laser cutter handy? How thick is it? I think you need to avoid hard repeated shocks to it when cutting, so a fine toothed jigsaw perhaps... but I reckon it would be best to test on pieces that don't matter first.

Alternative method might be a deep score with a sharp box cutter knife, then support the edge and snap... but a test before committing would be best!