Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Looks like you are going to have some pumpkins???
We grew a vine that had 40 from the grey water pit a few years back.
Bloody destroyed the fence they were hanging off

Hrrm, arn't pumpkin leaves hairy? Mine certainly are - those look hairless. Maybe melons? I'm growing a giant pumpkin this year (in my normal garden). Hopefully get it > 100kg.

its actually a land race variety of pumpkin i got from my local seed saver network.

last time i had pumpkin growing the mildew took over it and then went on to take over everything else in the bed. this time i will treat with milk before it reaches that stage.

it will be interesting to see how the fruit goes. this time i wont be using any additives just to see if it can fruit without. not sure what the P and K levels are like but will get an idea by how it fruits if at all.

look what the cat dragged in.

in the space of a day i now have 500L of growbed to add to each tank. i'll be pretty near optimum growbed capacity with the inclusion.

needless to say i'm over the moon.

what a day.

Lucky bugger :-)

Great score BF ......

not bad considering i didn't pay a cent for them. i was willing to pay $25 each for them. goes to show how far doing a little work expirience goes.

it seems i just have the knack for playing this game. i'm having a blast in the process.

ap seems to have ignited a spark in me that was once diminished. i find myself in a traffic jam as happy as can be. never thought i would ever say that. i hate traffic. my point is that ap is good for the body mind and soul. restores the balance. if depression is a disease the ap seems to have cured it. and i haven't even eaten any of the produce yet.

instead of pumping people full of a chemical medication, doctors should be pumping people full of ap setups. of course its not in there interest to do so as they would loose their clients to health. haha.

I like your thinking BF. I too suffered from depression pre AP. I won't say it cured it, but it certainly helps

Bio/Monya - did you garden previously? I think gardening is medicinal. Great for the soul. Maybe this is just a "cool" version of gardening. Not many blokes my age like to get out in the garden on the weekends and plant stuff. I love it.

It helps to be able to share your acheivments (like your awesome score, I am so envious!!) with others. It'd suck to do something great but nobody acknowledge it.

great growbeds, is that 12 of them?

yeah. 12 of them. could have got more but didn't want to be greedy. a work expirience kid wanted to setup a system so i left a few for him. would have grabbed them all otherwise. for now though this should be plenty to keep me going.

the ideal thing about them is they fit into my system perfectly. i will be putting in 2 more fish tanks for a total of 6. i will be using 2 of the troughs and a bath tub for a total of around 700L of growbed.

i just realized i have a problem. with 700L of growbed thats going to take at least 350L to flood. leaving me with 350L of water in the fish tank. now either i can run the troughs on flow through or i could try link the tanks.

this is an idea i have in mind, however i'm not sure of the physics of it. perhaps an engineer can help me out before i go cutting tanks.

what if i linked up 3 tanks with a pipe running from about 3/4 of the way up. i set the pumps in each tank to run 30 on/ 60 off. i stagger each pump so that only 1 pump runs at one time. as the water level in the tank with the pump running lowers, the water flows from the other 2 tanks to refil the tanks.

this is hard to explain but perhaps someone might follow me. i don't believe i have seen this type of setup before.

i will do up a quick sketch to hopefully make it more clear.

3 tanks side by side linked like this.

i reccon it would work BF and having the coneting pipe off the bottom will ensure you always have water in each tank

onething will you need 3 pumps ? can you divert the flow instead or is that too hard to engineer? my thoughts are that this would be more effcient

Cheers

cheers Delgrade.

i'm not sure what you mean by off the bottom. would you mind explaining?

in the long term i would like to have a drain in every tank going into a large sump. this way i can run the whole system with one pump. the probelm is it will be extramly to plumb the tanks as they are burried. i dont want to tank this on any time soon.

for the mean time i will use one of these in every tank. http://www.rockaroundtheblock.com.au/pr ... 83&c=21493

they run at 65watts. Flow at 2.0m: 1680L/hr.

so 6x35w= 240w.

whats the usual wattage of the large stainless steel pumps being used?

BF, the Ebara pumps are 250W