Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all , Im new , been reading these forums for a while now & must say theres some brilliant people in here . Ive finally gotten up the nerve ( and pics ) to post my feeble efforts

2 pics are a little test I did to see if I could make this work -
Got a bucket , knicked some bluemetal from under my dads boat , put a hole in the bottom with an old fish filter spout , then just plumbed in a pump & let it rip . The goldfish were loving it the next day

the 3rd pic with the metal rack supporting it ( a friend is a manual arts teacher .. ) is up and running , the plants in the white 30L growbed are showing a little growth after 3 weeks ( they shouldnt be - I didnt cycle the system , just dumped in goldfish & old tank water , put in the mint & basil . Im impatient )

Peppermint goldfish that sounds tasty! I am impressed because you have shown just how simple aquaponics can be, well done. I am sorry you may have been infected with the AP bug for which thereis no cure, just more aquaponics. Hang on and enjoy the ride.

The black pump line running up to the top bed ( 105L , 30 bucks from bunnings ) which is filled with hydrotron & perlite was only just added a couple days ago . heres were it started getting hairy & I gave up and drank beer all weekend instead .

The white bed is draining ok through the autosiphon , although the pump to it is on a timer and sometimes cuts out before it fills enough to spill out , but it kicks in once an hour for 15 minutes anyway

The black line to the top bed is now back down filling the 30L white bed instead , while I sort out the top bed - Its not draining , the autosiphon aint working . woohooo , my first hurdle . Ive adjusted the 40mm drain pipe , which comes down from the autosiphon in the top bed to come back up slightly above the base of the top bed , creating a 'U' and reduced the outlet using the ball valve there ( admittedly the 40mm pipe may be too wide ) . Now to empty all the perlite into my daughters shell pool so I can re-silicon the outer shroud of the autosiphon thats been loose all along

Hopefully over the next few days I'll work out how to get the autosiphon in the top bed working without throwing a fit and smashing the whole thing again . Its 100 litres , so the pump , in the 15 minutes that its on every hour , manages to fill the bed once every time it kick in . Ive forgotten what kind of pump it is , but its pushing uphill from the bottom of the tank 2 metres down . Doesnt matter though - filling the top one once , when I get it working , will flood down into the second GB and that will drain twice for every cycle .

Once working Im thinking I can get Tomatoes / capsicums / something like that in the top , utilising what solid waste there is , then in the secondary GB I'll have a few leaf vegetables that dont need as much nutrients .

Any comments or advice would be greatly appreciated . Ive had heaps of fun reading through all the posts on here , and learnt a great deal , hoping to learn more as I continue posting my jumbled attemts at a working system ...

ah - also , I think the reason that all the posts need to be scrolled sideways to be read is that the graphic/ logo at the top of the pages is too wide

Nice work Boris and welcome to the madness of AP

Thanks for the comments Faye ! Im well impressed with all that youve done with your system , im thinking I need more space in my backyard , heh

Nice work. Good test systems.
I like the growbed with what Hydroton? in the top picture. Very nice.
is that a continuous flow with a sump? CHIFT PIST style?
The pipe with the holes drilled into it spraying into the GB looks good, but you will find it has a higher rate of evaporation. If you place the pipe on the hydroton or slightly below it. This will reduce evaporation dramatically.


Edit: Whoops, I started posting this before your second set of pics and explanations were posted... I have many answers now.
Still recommend burying the pipe from GB1 to GB2 to reduce evap.

Scrolling sideways comment - I don't know the context, but I would assume that the resolution of your screen is ancient, like 640x480. So try increasing it to 1024x768.
If your screen wont handle that OMG you need to upgrade!

Thanks for the warm welcome !

Just got another pic with the digital -
in the back left you can see the new system which is eventually going to be a fingerling tank , seperate from the REAL system Im going to build this year - thats an 8M long wall , once turned into a pond ( glass fronts ? ) it'll hold 10,110 Litres of water and I'll mount GBs on the wall in similar fasion to the rack Ive already got . The wine barrel will be lined with pond liner and raised above the waterline on the far right with maybe a dwarf apple tree or something .

I'll have to coat the wall with something , maybe bondcrete , so that the lime doesnt leech out of the render and into the water .
no thoughts of heating the damn thing yet ( mind you , its about 38 degrees and muggy as hell here right now ) .
probably throw in some strawberry towers to keep my daughter happy too

thanks for the advice KudaPucat , I'll go take another shot to show what Ive just done to the pesky drain pipe - it aint working

heres the drain pipe from the top GB , which Ive mangled to turn back up, curve around & then drain down . Its working a bit better , but ive taken the pump line off it & just run it straight to the secondary bed . ive got a feeling that the reason the top one isnt creating suction is either a) pump aint fast enough , or b) the outer pipe of the autosiphon is really loose , the silicon job 2 weeks ago was pretty dodgy .

So Im about to empty all the media out into a container and re-do the silicon job . Once the silicons set I'll fill it straight away and put the old eheim canister filter to work , full of active carbon to get out that stinky silicon smell quick .

If I cant get the autosiphon wirking , ill just run a second pump to the top bed , with a few small holes drilled into the bottom of the bed and long airline tubing running back down to the tank ,and it can just gravity drain in the hour that the pumps turned off .

I really wanna crack this autosiphon thing though , Id rather just be running one pump

man that clothesline has to go, creeping into some serious AP space there.
Welcome to the forum and enjoy the ride.

Oh definitely go 1 pump if you can...
I don't quite get where your autosiphon is...
But, they can be touchy to get right.
best to use flexible hose, rather than pvc and elbow fittings.
also make the end of the flexible loop as vertical as possible.
Set the point to siphon,(the top of the loop) to considerably lowere than where you want the siphon to start as you will require a certain about of head to start it
for my 350m siphons I need about 2 inches of head.
Please ask more questions... siphons are hard to advise upon without heaps of knowledge.

There is an autosiphon thread here that you may find useful

Perhaps he could hang aerial pumpkins from it TT... less destruction and more innovation. :-)

Welcome to the forum Boris..... quick question....

I've got a good length of very large diameter pipe like your bottom growbed that I'd thought of trying to use but couldn't figure how to cap it (cheaply) in a way that would hold the pressure of the hydroton and water....

Looks like you've just siliconed some perspex.... can you give us a run down of what you used and how you did it? Any problems??

Welcome, Boris!

KudaPucat - I tried the hose idea before getting the GB up there - I was using normal black irrigation pipe and for some reason it was filling faster than it was draining . I dont know what I was doing wrong , I adjusted the height of the loop and all , trying to get it right . Admittedly at that stage it was all set up ad-hock and the pump was only pushing up 1 metre instead of two , but no matter what I did it was filling and overflowing faster than draining , so I assumed my pump was so damn good that I needed 40mm pipe . Ive decided to gut the thing tomorrow and replace all the pipe with 25mm , see if that works .

RupertofOZ - I capped the ends of the pipe using 3mm or so acrylics , leftover from my old marine tank lid ( yeah , my last disaster hobby ) , mountains of silicon both sides of the acrylic end caps , which were cut to size with a jigsaw then a file . After a couple days with the GB filled with hydrotron & water , the up / down motion of the hydrotron & expansion of the sides made a little leak along one side of the seal on one of the pieces of acrylic . In my eagerness to fix the problem I just drilled a hole on the Outside of the pipe / body and Outside the front of the acrylic end , and whacked a big fat screw in there as a stopper , to stop the acrylic from pushing out .
Silly me - the acrylic wasnt pushing out , it was seperating because of the expansion in the centre of the GB , it was getting wider as it was filling , so all I did was go to Bunnings ( MAN I am sick of going to bunnings ) and grab some threaded pipe clam things , the little rings with a screw on them to tighten them , I needed 2 for each end cause I couldnt find any big enough .

with a hoop of pipe clampy thing on each side , about 1/6th the way in on each end , its stopped ANY movement at all , the only result now is that as it fills , the medium wants to jump out and over the edge , but thats my fault for setting the autosiphon too high

sorry for the convoluted reply , Im still in "holiday mode"