Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I finished plumbing the drains, I dug out the area for the sump to drop it low enough for the drains to get to it. I have most of the supply line plumbed but I need to pick up a couple shutoff valves because I decided to permanently plumb the wicking bed then add a shutoff so it doesn't get filled all the time but we can just open the valve as needed. I also decided to plumb an additional drain near the door so we could just open a valve and get water to use outdoors for planters and such. I need a couple more lengths of 2 inch pic to finish plumbing the supply but I reached a point where I am kind of going to run in to a problem...

The fish tank my trout are in currently is a smaller IBC and had the top cut off already, so it is about 200 gallons for the height. The other fish tank is a 330 IBC so it is quite a bit taller. The height of the 330 will be good for supplying water to the beds, but the smaller tank is down too low to run it as gravity feed to the beds then pump back to the tanks from the sump. I need to raise the smaller fish tank to the height of the bigger tank, that will allow me to raise the filters up higher to be able to gravity feed the beds I hope. So before I can go much farther I need to get the larger tank temporarily plumbed directly to the grow beds, then I need to move the gravel and plants from the temp bed to the new beds and try to move whatever plants I can from the temp bed as well, then I can get rid of the top of the IBC grow bed, move the trout in to the larger tank (of course taking that opportunity to measure them and get average weights), move the pump to the new sump and then drain the current fish tank and move the filter out of the way, build a stand for the small fish tank and two filters to sit on to get them to the right height, then add them back in to the mix.

The amount of time it is going to take me to do that all by myself I will need to wait until next weekend, so I've taken it about as far as I can this weekend. I'm still waiting on my lettuce rafts that were supposed to be here Friday which they are saying Monday now, so that will allow me to move lettuce in to the rafts when I take the existing bed down.

You are working hard Rininger!

help me out please... here is the problem I posted about before. Currently the filter and smaller IBC sit lower than the larger IBC outlet height. I can't gravity flow from the filter to the growbeds currently, so I need to raise the filter height. If I revise the filter so the inlet lines come in the bottom of the barrel and water goes up in the mid pipe then will I need to raise the height of the smaller IBC too? Or will I be OK since the pipe will come in the bottom of the barrel, will the smaller IBC tank stay the height it is currently, or will it overflow if the filter is raised up?



do I need to raise both the filter and the tank like this?

Looks like you need to raise them both or the water will flow back into the 200 gallon tank from the filter.

that is what I was afraid of... so that means it is going to be a major overhaul to move on to the next step. So the outlet of the tanks still needs to be above the outlet of the filter... I sure hope that doesn't mean I have to raise both tanks due to the height of the grow beds... I might need to pick up a laser level to check it before I get too carried away.

I haven't been on here much this week. I received my lettuce rafts Monday. I cut one of them down on Tuesday to get it to fit in the bed, I have to cut the other two down yet. I picked up the rest of my plumbing supplies so I should be able to finish plumbing the drains and return line, but I need to pick up some more lumber to build my raised platform for the fish tank / filters this weekend. It is supposed to be near 50F Saturday so I was really looking forward to getting some work done until my wife told me last night there is a family get together at her parents Saturday... 4 hours of road time plus however long we spend there... so much for getting any work done Saturday. With that in mind I'm not sure if I'll be able to get my platform built and rearrange my fish tanks this weekend or not. I really want two consecutive days to be able to work on it in case I can't get it done in one day... debating now about taking tomorrow off to get an extra day to work in the greenhouse.

My tilapia have been getting busy lately... I'm up to 3 for sure, possibly a fourth with eggs in it's mouth. The first one will probably be hatching eggs either tomorrow or the following day (Friday or Saturday). Last night I spent some time working on organizing my fry tanks... still not done yet but it's starting to look more like a fish room..


On top of that I got an email from Lakeway Tilapia that they are preparing to ship my Tilapia on Monday as it looks like the weather will be decent. And I'm supposed to have replacement tilapia coming from tampa aquaculture that were supposed to have shipped monday but I didn't get a tracking confirmation email so I don't know if they shipped them or not. Going to have a bunch of tilapia pretty soon... need to get my act together quickly and start figuring out a plan for grading fish, selling fish, culling fish etc. because I'll probably have far more than I can keep up with soon.

getting closer...

small bed of hydroton... found this for $28 per 1.75 cu ft... not sure if that is an OK price or not, but figured I would just use it for the smallest bed and try other things in the other beds for now.


dirt wicking bed... picked up a yard of really nice topsoil for $25, more expensive than it could have been but the other places around the area keep their topsoil outdoors so its frozen... so I paid more for stuff that is stored in a barn so it's not frozen.. I have enough left to probably fill another raised bed in the garden.


cut the lettuce rafts down to size so they fit in the bed now.


I also temp hooked up the larger IBC to fill the beds from. I need to move the plants from the bed to the new beds, move the gravel from the existing bed to fill the gravel bed, remove the existing bed, move the fish in to the bigger tank, move the small tank and filter out of the way, build a platform to raise the small tank and filter, move the small tank and filter back in, hook them up to the drain, move the pump to the new sump, plumb the return line to the two fish tanks and then I'll be ready to go! That is a lot of work to be done and it all has to be done in one shot to keep from having everything shut down for too long or having ammonia issues from having the fish in the new tank without running the water through the grow beds for very long... I feel like I really need two consecutive days to work on it to make sure it gets done but might not happen this weekend because we have family commitments tomorrow so I'm not sure if I will start on this Sunday or not. I may start it sunday and then just call in and take monday off in case of emergency that I don't get it finished sunday.

Looking great. I like the way you tackle issues.

Heeh, just like me.
In for dime in for a dollar!

I always begin some new project and end up totally committed (like in no way back) and working into the night to finish.
All the while my loving wife is swearing like a sailor at me.

Bless her, she just always thinks I'm working myself too hard.

Besides, the 3 older of our 4 kids think I'm completely off the rockers too.
The little one, 3 years old thinks I'm GOD and her mom believes she should have been a boy 'cause she's just as bonkers as me.

What to do, we only act out of love....

I fought a similar issue when i began ro add phase 2.0. I used the outlet of the IBC tank as a means to flow water into my swirl filter. It is all gravity fed to the sump where it is then jits the pump and part (currently) goes to a grow bed and the overflow is returned to the fish tank to start the circuit again. I have set the height of the fish tank water line approx 3" higher than the water line of the swirl filter so it will flow (via gravity) to the sump.

Once I get my bed(s) online, ill try and get my bed(s) overflow to return gravity as well.

Dont know if given idea to tackle problem, but can try to give better representation if needed......

When the power goes out , excess water drains into the sump tank and puts back 20ish gallons, but have a reserve of 50+ so not worried about losing water as everything tries to equalize to stop glow via gravity.

Adam

I woke up at 6am yesterday and got started on the greenhouse before daylight. I took as many plants as I could out of my test growbed and planted them in the DWC rafts and a few in the dirt wicking bed and a couple in the hydroton bed so I could sample different medias to see what we like best for each plant type. Then I shoveled the gravel out of the temporary bed in to the new gravel bed. Once that was finished I removed the temporary test bed and by then it was about 8am so I figured that was enough, if the neighbors didn't like me too bad so I got the saw and air nailer out and built the platform to raise the small fish tank and filters up. I drained the filter and started the stop watch to see how long the system was shut down before I got it running again because I had moved the air stones to the big tank but there was no filtration for a while (ended up being about 3 hours that it took me from the time I shut the system down until water was circulating again). When I moved the filter I found a small shriveled up trout that had jumped out must be after I set the filter in place a few weeks ago it somehow managed to jump out the side of the tank. So I'm down to 24 out of 26 trout now... not bad, the only two I've lost both jumped out of the tank. I started draining the fish tank while I started netting the trout and moving them to the larger tank.

jumper...


I measured and weighed a few of the trout as I was moving them. Many of them are in the 10-11" range and weigh between 12-13 ounces, but the biggest one managed to escape me until I had the tank almost completely drained. The biggest one was weighing in at about 16 oz (1 lb... about 450ish grams). I'm a bit surprised that they already weigh that much... I see people post that they have 500-600gram trout and I expect them to be a lot bigger than that... I'm hoping mine will be much larger by the time I process them (I may have to net them again and move some of the smaller ones back in to the smaller tank to give more room for them to grow).

It might not have been the best idea to drain 230 gallons on to the floor of my greenhouse... made for a wet muddy mess for most of the day before it finally absorbed in to the ground, but I got the tank out of the way and moved the stand in... it was too high so I had to move it and dig out part of it to drop it down / level it a bit. Got the small tank on top of it and started filling it back up so it could warm up in the nice warm sun (it was about 70F in the greenhouse by mid afternoon). I finished plumbing the return line and temp hooked up the drain from the big fish tank to feed the grow beds. Got everything running but I need to go back and add my filters back in but figured they would be OK for a few days.

Instead of working on the filters I decided to plant the rest of the beds since it will be warm all week should be able to germinate seeds. So I marked off my beds for square foot planting and gathered seeds and got everything planted. We will need to start some more stuff for the garden in seed trays later but hoping it will germinate these seeds this week and they'll stay warm enough in the greenhouse now to start growing early.

dirt wicking bed


gravel bed


DWC raft bed


small tank / stand


hydroton bed


one more bed to fill... this will be lava rock but I need to pick it up still.

Images not coming up for me

I will try posting them on another site tomorrow. I normally post on one site and copy the link to here instead of having to resize images but I'm running out of storage on there so I posted them to a different forum, maybe they don't allow you to see images without being a member so I'll post them to thenormal forum or resize them for here if it still doesn't work.

They weren't showing up for me before but they are now. Looking good!

I think I posted previously about my tilapia brooding eggs. Originally I had one that I moved and she spit her eggs out then didn't pick them back up so was a lost brood. I put her back in the main tank and noticed later that the smallest female had eggs, then a day or two later noticed that first female had eggs again, then a few days later noticed a third female had eggs, and thought a couple days later that maybe a fourth female had eggs. So I was counting the days until they hatched and Friday I noticed the small female was eating so upon closer look noticed she no longer had eggs... either she swallowed them or they hatched and the other fish ate them. So I decided to try and capture the other females that had eggs to move them to their own tanks.

The first female I went after was the original one that had eggs who was brooding her second brood. I got her pretty easy and moved her to her own tank, then went after the next female and she spit her eggs out before I could catch her. So I siphoned out the eggs and put them in the egg brooder/hatcher. I looked for the fourth one I thought had eggs but didn't see any others so I took each fish out one by one to check them before putting them all back in the tank. Then I decided since I had the brooder going I would strip the first female that I had moved to another tank. I caught her and opened her mouth and shook her and to my surprise little tiny tilapia fell out of her mouth, they had already hatched but were not free swimming yet. So I put them in the brooder for a couple of days and put the female back in the main tank. My numbers were not great, I think she had about 34 fry that I put in to the brooder, after a couple of days when I turned them loose in to the tank there are only about 10 that are still alive the rest disappeared. The other female I managed to get eggs from the eggs are still in the brooder, they have hatched now but are not free swimming yet so will be another day or two before I release them... this video is from Friday last week.




Last night I noticed another female in the main tank looks HUGE, looking at her jaw and in her mouth she is completely stuffed full of eggs now, so hopefully she will brood them better and in 5 or 6 days I will try and move her and the eggs / fry to another tank before they get released in the main tank. I think I need to get a piece of eggcrate to make a divider in the main tank so they can't swim back and forth from end to end. There are too many fish to try and keep track of what one I am trying to catch and get them in a quick motion trying not to hurt them.

So my experience so far it seems like their first brood is pretty small and may not be viable, may eat them, but then second brood appears bigger and hopefully more successful as they figure things out (or as I figure out when to strip them).