Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yeah, he's got that guilty look on his face . Good catch Rob!

I have had a couple rough weeks. I think I posted a while back about the 55 gal tank in my fish room cracking and draining all that water plus another 30 gallons of top up water onto the floor... Then last week I had a ten gallon saltwater tank with just one clown in it that was getting beat up at my work tank so I brought him home... I saw the water level getting low so I turned on the top off valve and went about whatever I was working on until I woke up the following morning and heard my water still running and thought it should have finished making more top off water over night... Then it hit me... I ran 30+ gallons of RO water through the 10 gal salty tank making it not so salty anymore...killed the clown...

Now yesterday I came in the fish room and realized a breaker had popped so I reset it and moved a heater to a different power strip to reduce the load and stop it from resetting. I realized while the power strip had been off the air pump had flooded due to siphoning water out of the tank. So I unplug the air pump and decide it will just go without because I didn't want to find another pump at the time.

Tonight I come to feed the fish and my 75 gal is 3/4 empty.. immediately thought it must have cracked so I ran out and filled my 200 IBC in the greenhouse and tossed a couple heaters in it and got water running back through the NOT-NFT to feed the water to the 200 IBC so I could move the tilapia to the greenhouse even though water isn't as was as I would like for moving the tilapia out there..
Come back inside and start siphoning water from the 75 into a bucket to transport tilapia in when I hear gurgle gurgle... Dropped the water level below the sponge filter position and it started sucking air..
Well duh.... I had left the air lines laying on the floor so it siphoned all the water out.

At least I don't think the 75 is cracked now... Refilling it as much as I can with the water I have on hand, will hold off moving them to the greenhouse a little longer..

That reminds me that I need to move my pump above waterline since I reconfigured last night to get better air in my MBBR.

I am right there with you on mistakes. Sad thing is, all of my favorite koi are the ones who suffer.....I dislike the remaining herd entirely...

Greenhouse is progressing. Early treat tomatoes are ripe. Continuing to harvest cherry toms from my year plus old plant. Pulled the first few jalapenos that have ripened.





I need to rip out a lot of stuff out of my DWC and start over because it is all bolting and we have everything that is in the DWC also ready for harvest in the hoop house so going to start feeding it all to the chickens since the stuff in the hoop house is nicer.

Should have two more IBC tanks coming in the next week or two. My buddy that I got one of my existing tanks from is bringing me a couple more when he comes to pick up the 200+ tilapia I have set aside for him right now.

I am debating if I should connect those two tanks in to my existing system or just have a second outdoors system. I haven't decided if I'm going to put a small hoop house up for the tanks to be in outside the greenhouse or what I'm going to do for winter...

I started digging some dirt out of a spot I had dug in the field a couple years ago because I need dirt to build up a driveway I am building to be able to pull in to my field so I don't have to drive my truck and trailers through the yard all the time. I have always thought some day I might hire someone to dig me a pond, but as I was digging tonight it hit me that I don't really need to dig deep ponds... I could get away with digging shallower ponds by hand and just put liners in them. So I might do that. The hole I have dug right now is as big as the IBC tanks I have fish in..
So maybe I'll just dig several more holes to enlarge my fish operation

my wife bought me a new fish tank last night... it's 700+ gallons.. it's galvanized, but I figure I can always put a liner in it... the catch is the only type of fish I'm allowed to grow in it for the next couple of years is homo sapien of the Samus family. Oh well... eventually it will make a nice fish tank once the boy outgrows it as a swimming pool and we need to upgrade to a larger pool... the pool I bought him last year a mouse got in the tote I put it in and chewed a hole through it. I tried duct taping it on both sides but it leaked so we decided to go for something a bit sturdier that will last a bit longer.

Sweet present. I know that'll make all of you happy for a long time. A round fish tank seems a really smart move too, I'm sick of corners collecting debris and we have a lot of corners in ours.
P.S. Sorry about that crack about Trump. I know I need to leave that crap out. I feel sad I did it. Again sorry, man.
Brian

My Facebook reminded me of a few old pictures... This was my garden in 2011... It was in a 3ft x 4ft wooden box on casters so I could move it around at the house I was renting.. it was kind of a wicking bed before I knew what a wicking bed was because I lined the box with plastic so it wouldn't rot the wood out then poked holes so it didn't hold too much water. It grew tomatoes ok but they got too big for cages and I didn't know anything about trellising or pruning yet. It got too heavy to move around with the 2 inch casters I used.



This was my garden in 2012 at a different house I was renting. It grew pretty awesome but we went away for fourth of July weekend came back and was overrun with weeds.

I have two more 330 gallon IBC tanks in my possession. Now I just need time to figure out what I want to do with them. I might just set them up with a filter barrel or two and maybe an outside dwc bed to try and grow lettuce in the warmer weather. I have some 1" PVC that I could set up hoops to cover with shade cloth temporarily if I need to. I don't want to do anything permanent with them until I decide if I am going to buy the high tunnel from my buddy because if I buy that then I will either set it up as one tunnel about 65-70 ft long, or two tunnels 40 ft long. Haven't decided yet. Either way I will end up setting up a larger aquaculture area with possibly some grow beds to help with filtration. But I want to get these tanks running in the meanwhile because I will need to thin out my tilapia as they get bigger, and I need to separate my bluegills and catfish before the cats get big enough to eat the gills.

I was up on the roof yesterday cleaning gutters so I took an updated picture of the greenhouse/garden
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Too bad those two trees (magnolias?) Are in the way so I can't get a good pic of the garden. Need to get the drone out for some new pics since I started mowing more of the field.


I built a new feeder for the tilapia in the greenhouse. I will test it for a few days and if all goes well I will order parts to build a couple more. I really like web4debs latest feeder he built when he finished the geodesic dome system but I decided metal working was a skill I don't possess that I didn't need to learn right now so I went with something I know... PVC. The back portion contains an Arduino nano and stepper motor that drives an auger bit and the hopper on top I can put a longer section of 3" PVC to have more food capacity once I know that it will work reliably so I can start feeding multiple times a day instead of once a day that I've been feeding.

Looking real good

I ended up ordering a 3D printer this morning... so hopefully I'll have it by the weekend and it won't be terribly hard to put together and calibrate and figure out how to use it... then I have a few things I've been thinking of printing to try out... one of which will be another style of feeder that should look a little nicer I hope.

Have a few dive related items I want to print and a few greenhouse / hoop house / garden related items I've thought of to print... so we'll see how that all goes!

lookslike a nice greenhouse! May need to lift some of your design once I decide to push the spend button for an out-building style greenhouse rather than the lean-to I have right now.
=)

Damnit. I'm filling my two new IBC tanks up to wash them out and go in the greenhouse to discover two major problems... I had just refilled my sump tank last night and it was completely empty again. And my tilapia tank was half empty. My smallest bed with hydroton was overflowing because the tomato plant roots had completely clogged the drain, and there was enough crap built up around the outlet of the tilapia tank to the second smallest bed that it sealed the drain and created a siphon and was working on siphoning the tilapia tank out. Luckily I caught that with hopefully no losses.

I'm going to probably rip out all of my tomato plants in the greenhouse soon because the garden is producing so I want to clean the greenhouse beds out and get tomato suckers restarted for winter plants fairly soon so they aren't so huge by the time winter rolls around but still large enough to be producing through winter.