Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You could also take and cut the bottom off a plastic pop bottle (20 oz size or whatever fits - leave the cap on) and just pop that over the standpipe and reducer. Usually works pretty well, has thin walls and is cheap. It might float up before the siphon forms (mine did) but the neat thing is you can see the siphon action. Here's a video that someone did and it gives you the idea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwdU4vPRkH8

Have you tried using a coupling instead of the reducer? It would be same height but smaller diameter.

Thanks for the ideas. I'll try those out

Quick update:

Just tested the water after adding about 300mL worm tea leachate yesterday.

Ammonia is now 0.5ppm
Nitrite is now 0.5ppm
Nitrate still sitting at 0ppm

pH has dropped to 8

And before anyone berates me about how evil worm leachate is - yes. I know. Stupidly I researched it after I added it. I assumed the leachate was "worm tea" and I read a lot about how beneficial worm tea is in hydroponics and Aquaponics...

Hopefully my system will not suffer because of the amount I have added. I won't be adding any more.

I only put vegetable scraps in my worm farm, and the tap stays open 24/7 and drains into a bucket so it's not fulminating in the worm farm creating an anaerobic stew...fingers crossed.

Moral of the story: don't add shit to your system unless you 100% know what it is.

300ml wont be a problem at all.

Wow, never knew about the risk of worm leachate.

Just tried this and it worked beautifully! Emptied my grow bed to an inch off totally empty.

However I had to duct tape two soda bottles together to get the height I needed. (My growbeds are deep)

Is duct tape going to leach nasty chemicals into my system?

Probably, that glue is nasty stuff.

Ok well tomorrow I'll have to figure out some alternative like silicon.

I probably will go to Bunnings and get proper PVC pipe for 3/4 of the bells... But it's very cool to have a see-through bell for the kids to see

Hooray!

I got a positive Nitrate reading today!



pH is somewhere between 7.8 and 8
Ammonia is hovering at 0.5
Nitrites are somewhere between 0.5 and 1
(WHAT DO YOU THINK THE READING IS?)

Looks like that Bio Starter worked

Well... I'm not going to start celebrating yet but if we have "cycled" already it's pretty amazing given we only started 3-4 days ago.

Perhaps worm leachate is not so evil after all...

I added more pee this morning and I will test again tomorrow.

Sounds like the cycling is going pretty well, you're right to be cautious about it though

You might be able to find the tall narrow version of water bottles. We have these but you have to look harder. I'm glad you and the kids enjoyed being able to see what was happening inside the siphon, they are really cool

Ok. Far out! I am SO sick of shoveling gravel!

But it is DONE.

Four growbeds adequately filled with scoria to spare!

looking good! what are you going to plant?

where did you get the black taps from?