Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Brian
I am sure she will be fine.
Thrombosis following any injury is very common. It can occur at any age and as you are probably already aware can be treated with many common drugs. Including aspirin.
Please give her our best wishes.
I would urge you to relax; but that would be counter productive, Knowing you!
Stick to simple repetitive tasks.
One of the problems with being English is we find it hard to be demonstrative!
A cyber hug! Best wishes! Thinking of you.
God bless!

Titus wrote: "One of the problems with being English is we find it hard to be demonstrative!" Well I beieve you are being quite demonstrative, lol. Thanks

All those exclamation points are pretty demonstrative.

Haha, yup! Hey Chris, just watched yer viddy again, I still love the summary best, "That's it really." I've of course been following your situation with your filters. Is the consensus that K1 bio-media in a MBBF is easier to deal with than net or shade cloth?

Okay, after trying out the air pump on our setup for a few weeks, I can see that I'm up against some similar issues as with fluid piping. The deepest air stones are difficult to keep bubbling once other stones at higher levels are brought online. Will larger supply lines help. I don't know if I'll get to the air pump plumbing today. I am fairly certain the air pump is going outside the greenhouse. It seems prudent to at least bring the main air line in large as possible. Is there a point where the volume carrying capability inside air line becomes less effective? I see others using 1 inch (25 mm.) Gosh, another size PVC pipe with all the associated fittings, sigh.

Yep, you may need to raise the stones or add gate valves, just like the water flow. I had to use a 3" main on my blower, 1" should be fine on yours.

Coach wrote: "Yep, you may need to raise the stones or add gate valves, just like the water flow. I had to use a 3" main on my blower, 1" should be fine on yours."
alright then, I'll start a plan for the air. Thanks

I was pretty shocked when we built our first air manifold for the 1000 gallon tanks and then drilled holes in the pavers and dropped the thing in the tank and turned the air on. The manifold tilted sideways, with all air coming out of the diffuser closest to the top, and little or no air coming out of the others.

They are now remanifolded(closer together) and then we added more weight and raised them slightly to 40"depth.

Same thing with my MT. I have 2 IBC's, one which the dirty water from filters drains into, then another mbbr that cleans and removes ammonia/nitrites. This then is dumped into my 55 gallon tank that feeds the Dutch buckets. I have another IBC in the same area with a green water FT with koi to see if they breed. I added a valve on the FT, then a ball valve on the last IBC(mbbr), but didn't put one on the middle (MT) tank. After a few days I noticed the MT tank not getting enough air. Adjusting the ball valve on the last(mbbr) tank helped, but when I had enough air in the MT, then the mbbr was starving for air. Solution was easy, and what I thought about doing when we did the original plumbing- add a ball valve at the MT tank, then adjust that down, and then everything works great.

Like water takes the path of least resistant down, air takes the path up. I didn't consider it either, as the only air lines I had ever run were for a compressor and my small AP system.

I hope, of course that I make it through a couple of these new system setups without needing to go completely back to the drawing board phase. If I do, which seems likely, secondly I hope I can salvage bits and pieces for the retries.

The last time I had this much "project" on the kitchen table, was two wives ago. Then it was a Kawasaki 250 Enduro engine. I wonder...

The big(expensive)g can be salvaged pretty easily. Use a die grinder to cut a piece out of the pipe, and then chisel out rest. Kind of pain staking, but not hard, and worth it, especially where you live. I had several hundred dollars worth that I could have salvaged, but since I get them wholesale and since my time right now is more precious then my $$, I just took a picture and tossed them.

Yesterday was one hot mother chucker. I never did check the thermometer, but it was about as hot as a human can stand for more than a minute or two in the direct Sun. Oh wait, it was that hot while I worked Friday installing WiFi at a local motel and that place was surrounded by asphalt. Damn I am not looking forward to Monday. Please God, bring on the afternoon clouds New Mexico Summers are known for.

I went out yesterday morning and picked flowers for my wife to help her enjoy some of the beauty from our flower gardens.

By the time I got a chance to start deploying what feels like a hundred plumbing pieces on the kitchen table, it was late afternoon. Luckily I had a cat nap, lunch, and possibly another cap nap, before I got out and started figuring, measuring, cutting, positioning and finally gluing PVC fittings. well, one fitting!




Perhaps it is just this one aspect of the plumbing which is complicated. I finally got all but one fitting glued on the first valve from the SLO. I left one unglued, for when I need to take this apart. Still it worried me that if this first fitting ever comes off it can drain the fish pond down to the level of the SLO outlet, which is 8" or ~200 mm below the overflow. It would not be catastrophic I suppose. It is still a good four hundred gallons though.
I can't wait to see what kind of flow I get into the RFF.
Leveling the brown barrel meant I had to bust a few more limestone rocks out from under the drum, of course, like things could go any other way around here. I've now got two cleanouts at the very lowest places in these two barrels I possibly could. I'm wondering if couldn't connect them together and pipe them out to the dirt garden. Thus when I want to clean either one I flip open some valves and add a little pressure via a tee in which ever tank I'm cleaning and blast the goop on out. I know... sounds sort of like a dream. Wake up Brian Wake up!!
My goal today before I head to town to check on my wife is to get all the pipes from the SLO to the Sump working and see what happens. Perhaps I'll even turn on the pump! I don't know if I'll have time for that. It would be cool though,

Sunday plumbing madness. Outflows to inflows, it's a complete circut!!

I haven't got the guts in either barrel yet. Holy crapoli, it was quite an effort just getting water to flow through them. And it finally did flow!!

I've only got the one bell siphon built out of four needed. Hopefully this was the worst fiberglass job and the other which look a heck of a lot better won't leak at all. I did get to fool around with flows for the siphon. On the first try it didn't break. No biggie, I'm certain the whole thing will be different when the media is in and all four are online.

Here's the money shot

I know there are still a lot of things which can go wrong and there is a lot of tweaking in my future, but this one even without knowing anything about aquaponics I spent many a night worrying over. Was it going to flow like I imagined? Why did I imagine it would? What the heck do I know about it? Not much. Just lucky, I guess.


Oh boy I just noticed I hadn't got the siphon break on the SLO. Whoops. Well I won't leave the pump on as it really isn't doing anything with no filters setup

Yeah...water!

I need to try a larger bell on the siphon. It runs pretty slow. Oh man I can wait to get media in