Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Right, I don't have time to get involved with any of that political crap, either side. People are generally to gulable, and the rest are outright stubborn! absolutely I know the place for biodiesel http://biodiesel.infopop.cc/6/ubb.x?a=cfrm&s=447609751
[url]Right, I don't have time to get involved with any of that political crap, either side. People are generally to gullible for me to bother getting into arguments. Anyway I can talk a blue streak with DIY because I believe what I see works. Saves me from putting my foot in my mouth too. the place for homebrew wind power is: http://www.otherpower.com
I went with a couple friends to a seminar with the Dans up in Colorado sponsored by our local community college LVTI
My whole political statement in a nut shell, "Do it yourowndamnself."

I remember back in high school being part of the amnesty international group. One of the first things we learned was that no major news source was reliable. Pbs was pretty good, though I have seen even pbs distort things for an agenda. Oddly, despite it's biased sounding name, Christian Science Monitor was more unbiased than most.

DWC box is going over the ST, which is what the valve to the left with be for.

Nothing is glued yet, just getting a feel for the layout

I'm happy with the layout so far. I was thinking of keeping the head to a minimum by going under the bottom GBs and even under the boardwalk, but after the mosquito dunk application the water is a little scummy. Going over the door with one inch 15 mm pipe heightens the head to the far GBs by 1 foot (.3 m.) Also I may want strawberry towers over the pond, so there is a line near the ceiling. I'm a little concerned about the water lines being near the fan and roof. The fan will be closed off for Winter and we'll probably have some sort of heater in there for emergencies of sudden temperature drops. All in all I feel good about the progress this weekend. I'm also tending to my wife this weekend, so my time to work is spotty. Now I'll go help our workman who is outside digging and breaking rocks for our bedrooms addition project.

Boss, that greenhouse is awesome! Sorry if I missed some information throughout the thread, but is this attached to your house? That's a dream of mine haha. Very nice layout of tanks, your plumbing looks great/clean too. My only concern is the diameter of your PVC. What size is that? It looks smaller, so I would be concerned about longterm clogging due to biofilm, solids, etc. Will the flow be pre-filtered before going through these lines?

Hmm, how did I manage to get my build update posted on your page CoachChris? Sorry Coach, I'll move it. Thanks SamJ, I hadn't thought of the biofilm building up in the pipes, but yes it has a RFF and large bio-filter from the SLO.

Okay I copied it over to my build page, hoever the delete button isn't visable. Can I get a moderator to delete this off of CoachChris' page now?

Don't worry Boss, I'll just tell everybody I built a system just like your over the weekend.

Delete or keep?

If Boss wants to delete, go ahead. I don't mind. No biggie either way.

I'm confused..lol...

I tried to copy it over to my build page but it didn't work for some reason. Probably the forum saw it as a duplicate. Sorry for the confusion. It doesn't matter to me whether you ditch it or leave it. Thanks coachchris. We've wasted enough ti thinking about it.

No worries Boss. You're getting super close to turning on the water!
I've just been cleaning some things out of the GH. Just miserable the last week or so. Tons of rain, tons of humidity. The feels like temp today was over 115F. So far, I've changed shirts 4 times. After our workout tonight, then shower and #5. A 5 shirt day is too damn hot!

Doing a lot of landscape jobs. Finished an install yesterday and started a new one today. It will be something Boss would like. About 5.5 tons of flagstone laid for a patio. Hoping to finish rock work tomorrow and landscaping on Friday.

Still waiting on my buddy to come over and wire up the back up generator. Then, just waiting on new K1 like mbbr media and I should be ready for Ryan Chapperson's finest Koi. Pretty excited about that. Hopefully, by this time next year, I'll have some koi fry myself.

Still struggling with Nitrites. I've tried cleaning shade cloth filter more often, slowing down flow, increasing retention time, adding phosphoric acid, and praying. So far, none have helped for very long. After a few days of heavy feeding, nitrites will surge from .25-.5 to 1-2. I'll slow down/stop feeding for a day or so, and they'll drop back. Obviously, not ideal for maximizing growth. The fish are certainly getting bigger, and still hoping for first harvest in August/Sept.

I'm confident that adding the K1 media (24 cu ft) should take care of the problem. Then, I'll be able to get back to feeding 4-5 times per day and getting my koi going.

Salt is now right around 2.9ppt, and that is where I'll be keeping it.

Yea Chris maybe the nitrosomonas can't keep up with the load for some reason...I couldn't tell you why. What are you using for biomedia now before you get the k1?

Chris,just thinking out loud now so i may well be well off the mark,but if you have an abundance of Hetrotrophic bacteria over Autotrophic bacteria you could end up with this outcome,the Hetros only consume Ammonia where as the Autos do the complete cycle,you have no back ground ammonia only nitrites,so with an abundance of Hetros and not enough Autos,Hetros will grow five times quicker than the Atuos and take up space required for the Autotrophic bacteria required,this could well be the result.The Hetros require a carbon source for there food so try removing solids quicker,as in cleaning the RFFs more often,an example would the UVI where they cleaned there clarifiers three times a day to get solids out of the system.

All good points. I'm trying to clean filters more often. See if that helps. Still very low ammonia, but nitrites are around 1 again this am after pretty heavy feeding last night.

Sam, I'm using plastic pieces from a C & C machine. I tried them in a bunch of different ways. Loose- they clumped together and clogged outflows. Put in 1 gallon paint strainer bags, that worked well for a while, but I think the centers went anaerobic. Added a bunch of smaller units with qt bags.

My RFF don't seem to be doing a very good job of collecting solids. A lot is getting by into the shade cloth/netting filter. The biggest issue is the side flow drains are collecting the large majority of solids, and they're plumbed directly to the shade cloth/netting filter. The blower suspends and breaks up the solids and doesn't allow the large majority to be removed from the bottom drains.

Yea I think dasboot is right...it would be the nitrobacter that wouldn't be keeping up with the load (hence why the nitrite isn't being converted quickly). Do you add carbon to the system?