Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Can you buy a half-bucket of shells and soak them for a week. Monitor the pH in the bucket and see how high it goes.

At $0.10 a pound I could probably buy a few bucket fulls. If I have a chance to get over there again any time soon.

Driving home tonight I found on the curb a set of drawers and some other random wood from a water bed some one was throwing out. Now I'm wondering if I should use some of those parts for framing up grow beds or sump beds. Hummmmmm

I know old drawers can make good worm bins.

Hooked up a plastic bin as a temporary GB so we can get a little cycling going for the big pond/tank. It has the gravel/perlite that had been in the other system troughs and what had been in the bed on top of the flush tank of the barrel pee ponics (I took the river rock/perlite out of that top bed and now have washed shell up there to see what having an entire grow bed of it will do with the system pH) So anyway, that media from the other system should help kick start the process in the pond/tank system.

I have the liner now but it was rather rainy today so I didn't attempt to line anything. I figure rainy days are good for washing media and playing with siphons which I did.

Well, having difficulty with the siphon for that temp GB so will have to tweak it some more when I have a chance.

Got a bulkhead fitting installed on the pond/tank and had an impulse to re-design a little bit so that I can have something of an in-line sump between the first two GBs and the tank.

The new idea is a sump walk. Basically where the walkway is I did a quick frame out and put a liner in. Then I need to work out some way to cover to keep extra run off and debris from what will be the walkway above it from getting into the system. Then probably using some blocks along with the pallets put the grow beds back in place. My intent is that the Grow beds will be over the edge of the sump and I can line up the drains to drain into the sump.

after work tonight I had time to install the bulkhead fitting on the new sump/walk tank.

Hopefully I get a chance to do a little more on the system this week but the schedule is getting full.

Some pictures of fittings through the liner as well as the frame for the sump/walk tank.

You're certainly not mucking around TCL..... nice progress

nope, no muck, too sandy here.

Spent some time working on the walkway for over the sump.

Ordered 6 ton of media. 3 ton 1/2" brown river rock and 3 ton washed shell to be delivered in one load with no divider. Planed delivery tomorrow. Also lots of rain forecast for tomorrow evening!!! Perhaps nature will do much of my gravel washing for me.

Sorry, no such luck ther TC...just washes it off the top and down onto the gravel below

What you could do, is keep scraping off the top layer as it gets washed

...or wash it laborously - like a true BYAPer

Funny how that works huh? About all I can say is it is a good thing that the river rock is really easy to wash and the shell is really just as easy (though there seems to be no way to clean it enough to avoid the white cloudy water in the system.)

Took delivery of six ton of shell and river rock this morning. Sitting on ground cloth getting rained on tonight.

Spent some time working on the sump/walk today.

Hopefully I can get the first two grow beds up on supports, lined and plumbed in the next couple days.

Then to finish washing the shell and rock and fill the beds.

Here are some pics.

Looking really great TC! How much volume will 6 tons fill up?