Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I just caught my hubs watching aquaponics videos. Maybe I've infected him!

Ugh, I can imagine! I made the last three moves with my compost (hubs, looking somewhat resigned: "Really? We're taking the dirt?") and plants all in tow (poor things have been transplanted so many times they don't know what they're supposed to do -- although the blueberries actually set fruit this year, so maybe they'll forgive me this once more).

This time I was just too tired to face it all again, so I left behind the chickens and coop (landlady wanted them and we had to extend when our loan got delayed, so we worked out a trade), a bunch of the plants, a full bin of nicely composted yard debris and chicken coop cleanings, half a pile of composted horse manure, and a 75-gal tub of gorgeous potting soil made from all of the above plus vermiculite and worm castings...

I did drag along my 50-ish gallons of worms, though. And I'd be really upset about the 75-gal tub now, if it had been sturdy enough to hold water.

I've made up for it all, though. We've been in the new place for a month today, and my new herd of goats (four of them) are already making great progress on clearing their first assigned strip of property; the new flock of chickens are in their outdoor coop already, and my greenhouse will start going up any day now. I am SO READY for this "living in one place for the rest of my life" lifestyle I keep hearing about; not wasting any time digging in!

Hmmmm PVC.

I also love the stuff.

Did you know you can cut 90mm stomm drain pipe with scissors?

My favourite effort would have to be my fishing lure (sure it's on topic, it's a fish extracting device )...





[edit - So proud ]

Here's a tip for the must remember book...

I got stuck on this one and it can be really difficult to repair once everything is siliconed in place.


When making a media guard for around your siphon, make all the holes in the bottom and make stacks of them. The holes you make in the top dont come into play at the important pat when you are trying to get your siphon to stop. Too few holes mean the water drains until it finds an equilibrium with the water coming in.

The result is your siphon either wont stop, or stops and then starts again as the water inside the bell sloshes back into the local space within the media screen. If there isnt enough easy flow, this inflow can restart your siphon as the depth increases locally within the media guard.

Lots of holes down low where it counts.

And if you make the holes round and use clay balls, the holes will get blocked nicely. Cut slots instead of holes if using ball shaped media. Slots also work fine for other media.

The slots are far easier to cut if you happen to have a chop saw or radial arm saw (or one that does both.) Drilling tons of holes in a pipe gets very tedious fast!!!! I actually make my gravel guards out of really heavy duty polypropylene food dehydrator screen and stitch it into a circle with a ziptie. Only problem with the polypropylene is that it doesn't survive sun very well so you must keep it covered and protected from the sun, inverted plant pot usually works well to cover it though.

TC, do you cut sideways or lengthways?

And make the space big enough for your hand to fit in between the stand pipe/bell siphon and the media guard to pull out the stray media that falls in between. Not a matter of if, its a matter of when.

Sideways, But don't cut all the way through! Sideways because that is the proper way to use the radial arm or chop saw.

I suppose if I had a table saw or table mounted router cutting slits the long way might be reasonable but I don't have those tools.

But as I said, I usually use the mesh to make my gravel guards and 6" pipe gets $$$$ so I haven't actually been cutting slits in pipes for this.

I made my two latest blue barrels with a media screen siliconed onto the side consisting of half a 90mm length of PVC cut lengthways.

I cant get anything out that falls in, and I have a plastic [cup] stuffed in as a makeshift bell because I planted strawberries in it and couldnt find bits thin enough to make it siphon based flood and drain

so +1 on decent diameter media screens

I'm now making an external siphon, but that only solves the siphon part, but still fails on the getting media, and roots, and dead things out part.

I ended up using gutter guard on my last ones because I made a mess of the cuts (done by hand) and made my slots too big for my media.

I wonder if I could convince mrs bullwinkle to look the other way while I did something absurdly dangerous with a circular saw mounted upside down and some really, really, thick gloves.



"Gutter guard" being a coarse (maybe 8mm holes) plastic mesh to keep leaves out of your house's gutters.

I know. I learned it on your blog.


Duly noted. Thank you!


I love zipties almost as much as I love PVC. Or maybe even AS much. At our local farm and garden store they have giant zip ties that are like 3 feet long, and as thick as my pinkie finger. I want some, SO bad. I have no idea what I'd do with them.


Also noted. Here's a tip back to all of you: Use Evernote. Evernote is awesome for remembering things you don't want to forget, or keeping track of documents you don't want to lose, or pretty much anything else you can think of, and it's all accessible from your computer, phone, the Web, etc. (And it's free) I now have an Evernote folder for aquaponics with different notes in it on different topics -- plumbing, siphons, chemistry, materials, fish, useful links... I can stick snippets of messages in them, or photos/diagrams, or whatever else I want to, and then later when I think, "what was that someone said about media guards?" I can just pop the term into the Evernote search and it will bring up everything I've ever put into it that mentions media guards.


ACK! Nononono! It will just grab you by the really, really, thick gloves and pull the rest of you in. Which would really screw up the water chemistry of your system, if you splattered in the wrong direction.

Yeah Bully, I'm missing part of a finger... And it hurt like hell. Cause I tried to to something stupid with a saw.
I'm telling MrsBW to keep two eyes on you.

Very good Geek2Nurse, Wise words!

If you must use a circular saw for the project. Clamp the pipe down somehow.
Set the blade to an appropriate depth so as not to cut too far into the pipe. Use a metal/plastic cutting blade so as not to shatter the pipe. Wear appropriate safety gear! Have mrs bullwinkle standing by with phone just in case.
Then cut slits in the pipe. Perhaps practice on some scrap pieces to figure out how best to do it.

In reality I'm actually pretty keen on safety.

I've had a few different occasions where something has gone wrong and safety gear saved me. The last one was when a 2$ hole saw decided it would rather be in lots of little bits instead of one big bit, and put a big divot in my safety glasses.

Nothing like being able to see the divot in the safety glasses to convince some one of the benefit of safety equipment eh?

Sorry for the Hijack.