Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Martin, it’s surprising how quickly time passes by but it’s great to hear from you again, all,is going good here,apart from a minor hic up where Tilapia fry made there way into two of the three troughs and basically removed ever vestige of roots before I discovered them. So I drained one trough taking the opportunity to clean it at the same time and removed the fish, the second trough then got pumped into the first to save water with the last little bit dumped to waste so I could clean the trough.
The lettuce I had then was all transplanted into one trough with a hope they would recover,but it wasn’t to be,because we are in the rainy season with stupidly high humidity which stresses the plant,plus they had no roots which stresses them, Pythium took hold and I had no option but to dump everything and start again and that’s where we are today, iam having a change around crop wise and I have worked out away to expand my grow area within the greenhouse so there’s plenty to do but not much growing of any size.
I will get some pics done and update again.
Scotty I finished that small system and it is was running lovely, they were told they needed rain protection at a minimum for the trough, to do it properly the entire system. So while they were making up there mind what to do, a dog jumped in the trough literally tearing everything apart, then to make matters worse we had some terrible storms which without cover the system suffered more damage, I haven’t heard from since then, I spoke to them after the dog incident but no contact since,which is a shame really.

Great to hear you're still out there Andreas . Too bad about all the damage but glad to hear it was working well before that. Thanks for the reply

Shame.... hope that stuff is being used and not just sitting going to waste..

It would as it was a nice little system that should have produced well, the Koi I purchased for them were lovely little fish and actually they did me a favour as I piggy backed there order with my own and was given a good price per fish, they gave me buy 10 get two free, so far I have bought 140...lol.
Anyway there has been no contact with them for quite a while so I should imagine it’s just sat there, the customer was more academic than hands which was apparent when I built it, the final part was training the guy that was to run it and all seemed ok, maybe I will give them a curtesy call,it wouldn’t hurt.

I see this problem time and time again, especially with organisations or groups. An AP system needs someone to take ownership of it and stay with it. Often one person will be the motivator and instigator, they get a system organised, planned set up and running and everything is great, but if that one person leaves it all becomes too hard until another person steps up and becomes the main responsible person. I've seen it happen with a few school systems, one teacher will be the main instigator and there will be a great system set up and running, but when they leave often it can all turn to poo..

Hi Andy,
Sorry about the crop loss but it sounds like you're already in recovery mode. Good going mate.
Looking forward to those photos you mentioned.
Martin.

Hi Andreas, are you still running your mineralization tanks as vortex mineralizers or have you switched to something else and if so, how is your latest version setup? I'm trying to decide between a vortex or just using one of my SUF tanks as a combo aerated swirl & mbbr then switching the air off for the outflow with the MBBR portion working as a SUF and filtering the outflow.

They have been back in touch after killing all,of the Koi they had, there having a company in to build a protective structure as the dog that jumped literally tore the liner to shreds in an effort to get out, anyways once this is completed they asked if I would go back and refinish the system,liner, fish etc and get it running again,so iam just waiting for the call.

This time the MT is just with a half inch line into the base with a drilled tube to add bubbles, I first used air stones but the drilled tube gave a slightly higher O2 level and mixing,so I went with it, in hindsight I wish I had built the tank as the Vortex brewer as before,if it wasn’t so much work I would be tempted to redo it.

Vortex brewer? I need to go back in your thread Andy and read up on that, but it sounds badarse.


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Thanks

I am building it as a vortex mineralizer. I haven't got the air pump yet and am still getting the air lines ready.

Got the RFF setup and tried to plumb it back to the pipe going into the two SUFs and discovered that there was too much backpressure so the RFF would backup and overflow, I'll be switching that to enter the top of the SUFs. I also need a smaller pump going to the RFF or I need to bleed off part of the feed (not wild about bleeding off part of the feed because it will just chop up the solids and feed them back through the SUFs. Kind of a pain but learned some things I hadn't given much thought to.

FYI - I plumbed the RFF off the bottom of the two SUFs where the solids collect. I think I've figured out a way to automate the cleaning of the SUF's using the RFF and a slow draining reservoir to take their level down something like this -

1. Turn off main pump going to fish tank. Some flow from fish tank would continue feeding SUF's but the reduced flow allows the SUF to drain completely once the RFF pump goes on.
2. Turn on pump to RFF that's connected to the SUF bottom drains
3. Aerate SUF - (at about the same time as the step 2 - water level needs to be below outflow so a bunch of solids don't flow out though)
4. Continue pumping until SUF's are nearly empty then turn main pump back on.
5. Turn off air
6. Turn off pump to RFF and allow solids to settle.

The reservoir tank just holds outflow from the RFF in the volume of the SUF tanks plus some extra until the cycle is done and then the water is fed back into the SUFs using a pump or just a slow gravity feed

You're done - and of course you'd transfer the solids from the RFF to the mineralizer later.

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What's the great big pipe with the two black tubes about? Is it part of the dutch bucket system or part of the air system for the DWC or is it something else? The post that's on this page at 1:43 am - http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=16235&hilit=andreas+mineralizer&start=2025

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Brian - the vortex mineralizer pics are located here - http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=16235&hilit=andreas+mineralizer&start=1650

His new mineralizer that's not the vortex version is located here - http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=16235&hilit=andreas+mineralizer&start=1995

Hey Scotty, I haven't been around for ages, care to jog my memory about what an SUF is?

Martin.

Hi Martin ,

SUF stands for Static Upflow Filter. System water comes in from below and passes up through a layer of floating media (K1 for example) to get to the outflow. Solids are filtered out before the water leaves the filter, either by settling or by being trapped by the media. It works like a 3D sieve and as more solids get trapped it will trap finer particles. You clean these by using aeration or some other form of agitation to release the solids from the media and then drain them out. Hope that's not too confusing but let me know and I'll see if I can do better.

Thank you so much Scotty for those links. It is really great to go back through Andy's build as there is so much information in his thread it can be overwhelming.
Brian