Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Growbeds and NFT pipe for the green house.

Have looked at all the Pics and searched on half barrel grow beds and NFT pipes here, and looked through the barrelponics fourm, found nice pics of them all, the barrelponics manuel, etc.......

so, FT SLO over flow into half barrel GB's, Affnan Bell siphon in GB's to sump, sump pump to NFT pipe/back to FT for adjustment, NFT pipe back to FT.

using the 5th pic of TC's post

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... 11&start=0

I want to run the 4" NTF pipe right across the front of the green house laying in the crook of the rafter brace and then back to the other end of the GH, right behind the brace a little lower, and then at a slight angle down, back over to a corner of the FT.

I remember reading somewhere that on the NFT pipes, that if the water gets too hot, that they don't work, so i am worred that with the pipe mounted right by the front windows (3"), will be to hot for them or the plants, (onions lettuce, and small foot print plants), in the summer there will be shade cloth over the outside of the GH, so that will help some. and if it don't get too hot, it should help with the FT water temp.... if that is just too close to the window, i can hang them 6" futher away (9") and sill do the same thing, the first pipe will not be supported in the crook of the rafter brace though....... Is there a DYI NFT pipe guide any where....? it looks simple enough, but there are always tricks that would be good to know, to start with........

I am not quite sure how to get the SLO overflow pipeing, to go over the edge of the FT, then down into the GB, to work, and then not continuing siphoning out the FT after that, if there is a prob...??? maybe i just don't understand

I would like to grow duck weed in the sump, but i can't do that if the sump barrel is on its side under the GB's in the shade, where it really needs to go for space reasons. I could put it in the dirt area to the right of the GB's, and eather, stand it up and dig it in a little to get the level right, or lay it on it's side and cut the top off and that would give more surface area to grow DW on, but take up a lot of the dirt bed area. Or what can be done with the sump tank in the shade.....?

on other news, my water temps have been 80F to 81F I wish the Tilapia would breed......

when i got them, most of them were very white all over, some have gotten darker and some now have red on their tails and fins, and a couple also have red on their heads, and are quite pretty, compared to when i first got them.....

I have not been able to sex the Tilpia, so i have not trimed the top lip off the males. i guess i need a magnifying glass to be able to really indentify what sex they are. i prob stressed them out some, while trying to sex them.....

So 2 days after that, i found 3 tilapia that looked like they had their tails chewed on and were ragged, So I did the 6ppt Salt treatment in 4gal water, and then after 30 min, dumped that into about 40Gal of water in a barrel , then added another 2oz of salt the next morn....

one died yesterday , the other 2 will prob be ok.........

I added more 3" PVC Pipe and fittings to the cage for even more hideing places........

about the time i found the 3 sick tilpia, the ammo slowly spiked up to 1.0 over 2 days, and slowly came back down to 0 yesterday, and the nitrite came up to 0.25 and has stayed there
i quit feeding when the ammo started up, and fed them some yesterday morn and they were hungry
ammo was 0 last night so fed them a good bit more, and was 0 this morn, and fed them a lot more hand fulls and the cat fish eat it all..... while the tilipia ate some, but not quite all this time......

all this made me think that one of the catfish died, and never floated

I back flushed the drain on day 2, and none came up......

on another note, I've found a whole LOT of water flea's living among the duck weed and koi kandy, Freaked me out at first, than did a little research, and found that they are prob Daphnia and / or one of the other Cladocera variations, ie: Fry Food...!!! Now i really really wish the Tilipia would breed......

RS

Hi All

I have been looking into doing a SLO into the 1/2 barrel GH grow beds, but how to get it over the tank wall, vs through the wall as shown in the SLO pic's was the challange, so i found the DYI Overflow Box
http://www.melevsreef.com/acrylics/overflow.html

and combined that with a SLO input using all PVC pipe

the red stand pipe would be 4", the center overflow pipe at 3", and the over the wall siphen pipe at 2" to 1 1/2"

it could be down sized to be:

the red stand pipe at 3", the center overflow pipe at 2", and the over the wall siphen pipe at 1" for the 1

what do you guys think, will this work.....?

RS

It will work, but will require maintenance.
It WILL get air in it, that will build up after time.
IMHO they're more trouble than they're worth.
You can't see the air buildup, and if you use clear pipe, then algae builds up until you can't see.
I've seen a couple of ppl say they work well, and a lot of ppl who say they're a nightmare.
If you truly can't penetrate the tank, then it's your only option, then yes it will work.
If you can penetrate, then do. it's simply not worth the pain.
I drilled 32mm holes into my 600litre glass aquarium through 12mm glass, to avoid using a 'no holes overflow' there's heaps of info on them on the forum if you search.

Thanks Kuda, after all the reading i have done on this fourm, i had still missed the No Holes Overflow thread...

TC's SLO/NHO design is much easyer to build than mine

I need to use a No Holes Overflow on the inside of the green house as the FT wall is 6" concrete and there are no through holes left to use..... and once again, i wish i had found this forum before i built the FT and GH...... I would have built in a lot more features........

On the outside of the GH, i have 2 2" overflows, set to overflow at 1" below the lip of the FT, and will use one of these adapted as a SLO, into the outside GB's when i get around to building them in the spring......

I use a standard water bridge on my Fry barrels to return the water to the biofilter, and need to add the check valve /suck tube to them, as i have to reset them about every 3 mo or so....... but it is easy to tell when they are about to stop working, as the water level in the fry barrel will slowly rise higher than the water level in the biofilter....

Hey RS where in N TX are you? I'm in South Central Oklahoma about 12 miles east of Ardmore on Hwy. 70
I'm now in the planning stage of my 30X96 greenhouse and getting ready to purchase the GH film, mine will be of wooden construction using the plans from a book called "Secrets of a successful greenhouse and business" by T.M. Taylor. Sure like your set-up, looks like you may have used polycarbonate for your glazing material. Let us know about your waterproofing for your cement. I was thinking the same thing for my tanks except going the "Ferro " cement direction and using the same type of concrete sealer.. Very Nice Set-Up you have!!

Doug,

I am on the dallas - ellis county line 1/2 mile east of I35

I used these 2 products to epoxy seal the concrete and epoxy paint it white

http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories ... ete-Sealer

http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories ... s-1-Gallon

i used 8mm twin wall polycarbonate for the glazing material

http://www.gothicarchgreenhouses.com/multiwall_pc.htm

for where you are located i would have chosen the 8mm or 10mm triple wall polycarbonate for more insulation

and do your larger size GH design like mine based on the Solar Green house book by Rodale Press, so that the north wall and roof are solid & insulated, or even in embedded in the side of a hill, and only the south wall and roof is polycarbonate.

RS

Thanks for the link RS I pulled up and printed for future reference.
I would like to go with the polycarbonate but too much $$ right now. My plan is to start the greenhouse make some money on bedding plants ect. then slide into the AP way of life. I would like to use the Chift Pist AP with the sump as large as the fish tank, and one pump. I have 77 acres to play on and the location of the GH is on top of a hill, so I will use gravity to the growbeds then to sump then back to tank..
Looking forward to more pics plz. Take care,
Doug

Doug,

if you have a south facing hill that you can dig into the side of, and embed a green house into, you have so much more heat retention, when it is cold.....

The New Alchemy Institute is where i got my first inspiration for doing a green house with Aquaponics back in 1994, i only wish i had a Hill on this property to dig into.......

The New Alchemy Institute
http://nature.my.cape.com/greencenter/newalchemy.html

this is the solar greenhouse book
http://www.wikio.com/books/solar-greenh ... 142,b.html

another good one
http://www.wikio.com/books/the-earth-sh ... 341,b.html

then cascade the grow beds down the side of the hill, and have a large pond at the bottom of the hill for the sump.......

RS

I'm curious, could you not rig up an air lift pump to get flow up over the side of the fish tank to send it to grow beds?

The No holes overflows can and do work but I've also had them fail regularly too. You do really need to check them often.

Or actually my first thought was to simply plumb off one of the barrels in the system to feed grow beds.

You mention wanting to grow duckweed in a sump tank. I doubt you are going to be very happy with that. I found duckweed can be hard to grow in any container where the water level fluctuates too much or where the water gets stirred up much. It will be likely that much will simply stick to the sides above the water and much will get stirred up and sucked through the pump. Duckweed actually likes ammonia better than nitrate so growing it after the grow beds might not be terribly effective. Duckweed is fine with shade especially in hot weather/climates. I've tried various methods of growing duckweed and have had challenges with most. Biggest problem being that it grows best where there is ammonia but solids building up in a fairly still tank is not a good thing, gets really gross. I think if I were to make a concerted effort to grow duckweed, I would want to send fish tank water through a swirl filter to remove the solids and send the water after the swirl filter to shallow constant height pools for the duckweed to grow in before sending the water through another minimal filter back to the system. Duckweed is a very effective ammonia sink. If you have some relatively still surface areas in your fish tank where the tialpia can't get at it, a floating raft like you were talking about as a feeding ring might be the perfect place to grow some duckweed though it could also escape and be kinda a mess throughout the system. You may find that unless you can keep the winter temps quite warm, you may only have enough excess nutrients to grow extra duckweed in the summer so the duckweed might be more appropriate for the outdoor expansion anyway.

So how is everything else going?

TCL,

yes, i thought of using a air lift pump, but that is active, i think that the airlift pump would overflow the GB and empty the FT down till it could not pump any more, if something bad happened, where a SLO is passive, and can only work when water is pumped back into the FT

thought of comming off one of the bio filter barrels too, but the piping over to the GB would be in the way of everything. where if i go over the tank edge in the west corner, than the piping is shortest lenght, and direct to the GB, + I would like this NHO/SLO to suck solids out as a seperate system from the biofilter as well,

when i build this, i will install a check valve / suck tube, on it..... i also need to install them on the current water bridge's i have going......

i would like to use a Air lift pump from the sump back to the FT, but i cant see that working with the water level changing so much.....
still not sure how to utilze the Sump....? maybe that is a good spot for mussles.....?

i have 2 small plastic kiddie pools 1' or so deep, that i will rig up outside for the duck weed/koi kandy and slowly flow the water through them from one of the biofilter barrels and back to the FT......

there is quite a lot of duck weed/koi kandy in the FT now, and the lone escape tilapia keeps it thinned out some, but has never gotten it all, some of it will get in the cage net and then the other tilapia eat some of it too.....

when i had the ammo and nitrite spike a few weeks ago, one of the small catfish had died, and i later found the bones in the pump strainer, after i had done some back flushing and pulling hard on the bottom drain only, to clear it.....

about then is when the water was pea soup green, then millions of water fleas showed up amoung the duck weed/koi kandy, and now the water is crystal clear again.
then a few days ago i saw a few mossy larvae in the barrels with the water fleas, so i put a gold fish in each barrel, and in 24 hrs there were no mossy larvae or water fleas left in the barrels so i removed the gold fish, and had to reinterduce some water fleas from another barrel. these Goldfish were also eating very small snail's and cleaned them out too........

I have 8 5gal water bottles, with algae cultures growing in them in various stages of green'ness, and a cupple more bottles with water fleas in the green water.
I have rigged up a DYI 2L Yeast CO2 reactor, with a air line to a air stone into the bottom of one of the algae bottles and bubbling away, and will rig up some more for the other 7 algae bottles when when i get some more 2L soda bottles

i would like to harvest some of the Yeast when the reactor quit's producing CO2 in 2 to 5 weeks, to feed water fleas and to feed Fry, using the yeast, egg yolk, flour recipe

i also have other yeast cultures going, to put CO2 in the green house air......

i have a 4' x 4' x 1" pink insulation raft with 62 holes, floating in the west corner of the FT and will make another one for the east corner soon. There are 2 kinds of lettuce, Kale, and onions sprouted nicely on it, in perlite filled cups

the nabor billy goat came over 2 weeks + ago, and in the process of rounding him up in the stall, till his owners could come get him, he butted me 3 times in a row on my shin, and that 3rd time really hurt, and put a big knott on it, and got all swollen up, so i have been takeing it easy and staying off it, which put a kink in my GB, NHO/SLO building plans..... it is doing better now, but still darn sore..........

RS

Be very careful with the perlite. That stuff is way too good at escaping and can play all sorts of havoc clogging pipes and such (it would also probably not be very good for pumps.) See it generally floats but some of it will sink and it gets crushed up and blocks screens. I'll never buy the stuff again and I fear I can never get rid of it either.

As to your dead catfish (not sure the cause of death of yours) my first catfish death was by pump suction. It was of course my smallest one that was able to get under the bottom drain that got sucked up against the pump intake, now I have a better grill over the pump intake to keep fish further away.

Hi all here is a pitcure update to my GH projects

wqa

Flood and Drain....!!!!!

Getting the NO Holes Overflow and the Affin (sp) Bell Siphon to working was great fun