Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

it's just an open loop. I'm pumping the fish water in directly in and it just drains back into the fish tank.

For those of you who follow this thread, here's a link to my new greenhouse thread. Enjoy! http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=26307

Planting a few odd-ball things in the greenhouse...

Cool vid, Rob. Be interesting to see how they go.

looks like I'm late to the party but after a few days I've made it through all 40 pages and just wanted to say thanks for the level of detail you've put in to this! I'm hoping to break ground on my little greenhouse any day now (once this Michigan weather decides to stop being so tempermental... snow then melt then snow then melt then rain then just as we think it's going to dry out it snows again but we're going from a snowy weekend this past weekend to next weekend looking like it will be in the 70's so hopefully it will start drying out). Lots of ideas for what I can do once I finally get the thing built from reading through all of this... I'm guessing it will take me all summer to build it and get it enclosed hopefully before snow flies again next winter (and I'm only talking about a little 16x16ft greenhouse, but doing it by myself will take a while).

I'll go start reading on the new greenhouse now =)

A little chat about our fruit fly problem and an update on the vertical towers!

My daughter was spying on me!

building a huge DWC tank out there?

Yup. I guess I forgot to post the video here!

Wow wow wow!!! Awesome quad-copter video, thank your daughter for us

Doing the summer tour! Plenty of cross-reference links within the the video to help fill in some of the details!

During the past couple of months, I've been playing around with my bell siphons. Back in 2012 when I was setting up the geodesic dome, I added a small cup to the breather tube to aid with the stopping of drain cycle. This has been working quite well but I've never liked having the cup as a separate piece since it's a bit annoying to insert bell while holding the cup in place. (Original video: https://youtu.be/4hHRe3KJfoY)

This past summer I invested in a 3D printer for a contract job and started having some fun designing some enhancements for the greenhouse with the revised bell siphon being one of the improvements.

There's really nothing new with the overall functionality, just integrating the cup into the bell housing so it's all one unit. Also, is a small improvement to Afnan cup that is used on the stand pipe to help get it started quicker.

This is a lengthy and detailed video because I wanted to cover all the functioning basics of a bell siphon in action. I also invested in a camera that could shoot at 240 fps so you could see how the siphon starts and stops in slow motion. The siphon break is so fast it can be difficult to see how it operates in real time.

Well done documentary as always Rob!
It's about dawn here in New Mexico. I watched this the first time with the sound low so I didn't hear much of the description. While we're remodeling, our house is a one-room home. I will watch this again after my wife wakes up. Thank you for adding the viewing window and using your new 240fps camera to show what is happening inside a Bell siphon. I'm currently "playing" with our Bell siphons and had a different image in my head about what is happening inside. Thank you again. You have gone to new heights with your aquaponics setup, designs and filming.
I hope that since you have your Bell Siphon designed to a manufacturing grade you do so. Depending on the price of course, I'd buy these. The B B Siphon. Bigelow Bell Siphon. Very cool.

It's not worth the expense to have a mold made to make these so I'm just running them off on the 3D printer for people that want them. This would need a a 2-part mold for the bell, one for the cup, and one for the funnel. Overall, it would be $20-30K just to make the molds!

http://www.BigelowBrook.com/store for a 3D printed version

That is reasonable thinking and a reasonable price too. Thank you Rob.