Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I think your lady friend may have been suggesting something in pic 2

Looking good PS.

The trouble with so many filtration discussions is that there are so many solutions floating around and people get stuck on one and then defend their choice because they have chosen to personally identify with their choice. Added to that many people may have experience with aquarium fish, hydroponics and/or aquaculture but the requirements in AP can be quite different as can the pros and cons of the different solutions/components.

On another note...I don't want to worry you because I'm sure they will be fine but with your frames adding more screws as you have done isn't such a massive increase in strength. First putting screws through a piece of wood cross grain into a piece of wood by the end grain is the weakest way you can use a screw or nail. Second even is the threads of the screws hold in the end grain because the screw is straight up and down it is not very good at resisting any lateral (sideways) load/force.

As you have it the screws are kind of just acting like pins to position the studs along the top and bottom plates rather than truly fixing them in place.

At better way to make up frames as you have is to skew nail or screw. First the thread bites into the cross grain of both pieces holding them together with greater strength and second the angled position/alignment of the screws secures each joint much more firmly.

Also its probably not necessary since your studs are so short (ie your frames are not very tall) but adding a little bit of sheet or diagonal bracing will help the frames resist any sideways forces.

Jay, thats wise advise and I will follow up on that. She would probably say she is telling me to stop screwing off or something to that affect but I'll go with my interpretation.

Stuart....filtering....good way of putting it, personally identifying with their choice... like a proud parent of a bad kid. hahaha Trail and error and debug is the story of my life as a computer nerd. It seems like the filtration is easy to modify as needed compared to other system components at least. I notice with the Matala that it comes in different grades for particle size. I imagine if you used it for koi without AP you would want a smaller particle size. Where for AP I assume the larger size would be better. But once I do some more reading on that product I'm sure I'll find the answers here.

Framing....Appreciate the tip, really you're saying I should go in at an angle into the grain if I am forced to screw into the cut end of the beam? Come to think of it I don't think I've ever really set any screws or nails at angles to wood grain. I think its based on a fear that I will split the wood along the grain or drive the pointed end out of the side. We had a conversation earlier about the basic differences between nails and screws for that matter.

About sideways force there will be sheet plywood added so that part is coming. As for strength, I have not done the math yet to sort out the volume of water it will hold but I imagine doing the math, will provoke me to consider brackets (Coach mentioned this) in the corners. I have yet to build anything in my life from wood that lived outdoors for more then a few years before moving. This being the first home that we actually own I hope to watch this wood DWC slowly rot over many years if all goes well.

Still haven't water tested it yet, but its in.





I also installed a new gutter over the media beds after another major rain storm on Sunday.



The gutter is not attached to AP, it is only to keep the roof nasties out.

Stuart, I was thinking about all the post I've read from you about supports and foundations and caving sump tanks etc and if the noticeable flaw was the direction of my screws I think I'm in good shape so far at least.

However, because everyone else likes to argue with your guidance... For the sake of argument I thought (meanwhile out moving bricks around the yard) I'm going to ask Stuart if he would agree that less screws would not be more structurally sound provided that I agree that considering the grain and cut of the wood when setting screws in the future and to not fear setting a screw at a 45 degree angle.

I'm afraid to go water test this bed now.... that liner was much thinner and more rigid then the normal EDPM liners I've seen in youtube videos like the one I posted on page 7 of this thread. I'm almost thinking I purchased something more like builders plastic sold as EDPM on ebay. I hope my next post is a not a bad one, none of these smiley faces show a grown man crying over an AP failure. lol

The gutter is a great idea. you may still have a problem during very heavy rains. Like you know, Florida monsoons kick up quickly and can dump a lot of water in a short time. In these scenarios, gutters aren't going to contain all the water, and you're going to get a lot of roof run-off. If it's metal roof, I'm thinking "no worriies". If it's shingles, it could be an issue. Not sure. Certainly better in GB's then FT. I'll try and get by to check things out when I'm down your way. Looks like a nice DWC bed. Put water in it and see if it leaks. You may as well find out sooner. Good luck.

I thought water was the material of choice for weighing down the liner while fitting it. I would be more worried about the concrete bricks abrading the liner.

Ron is right about water being the proper method, I took a bit of risk by introducing something abrasive to the liner.

I used bricks to allow for adjustments, we have more left over liner then what we actually used for our DWC. They screwed up my order and sent me twice the width. I was very careful with those bricks though especially since this liner seemed more like rigid plastic then anything rubber like what I see in videos online. It makes you wonder how anyone could get river rock (and a peacock) to work in a bed made of the thin stuff without a tear. The bricks also allowed me to make some pretty fancy folds because I could adjust things in a dry environment.

So we filled it up.



And we realized that one side was slightly off level, so we drained the bed and adjusted the cement footings under the problem area. Since the bed was empty and tested it was time to add the bulkhead fittings.

When it came time to cut the holes for the bulkhead fittings I realized I had to drill for quite a while before it wore through the liner. That was when its stretching properties showed. Once the pilot hole is in, run the drill in reverse was a helpful tip where ever I read that. No snags nice and smooth perfect circle.



The plumbing doesn't go anywhere yet and has no glue, I just wanted to see how well the seel holds up as is but I will eventually add glue at least on the input side even if it continues to hold through testing.



So far everything is holding water, I'm going to see if the water level mysteriously changes over night but it seems everything went as plan. I did some touch up sanding around the screws and edges and will re-stain those areas later tonight.

Looking good! I put my bulk head in and sandwiched the liner without cutting it. Then marked it and removed bulk head and carefully cut it with razor knife.

Chris the roof has typical (US construction) asphalt shingles. I read one suggestion that placing corrugated roof panels over the collection area is one method of using roof top rain water collection with AP systems without fear of oil based leaching harming the fish. Otherwise you need either a metal roof top or maybe those cool Spanish tile roofs.

I see people using rain water collection systems in soil gardens all the time though, so I assume those "nasties" don't hurt the plants. Its the fish and I assume the tar and resin inside the asphalt in question.

Ron also touched on this almost a month ago when we talked about his rain barrels that look like a stairway to his under ground sump layer and pirate treasure next to the ship from the Goonies movie... and the bat mobile is probably in a near by layer that he also dug some how.

Digging is really the only way to get more space in Southern California. Besides, where else would you park the bat mobile. It fits right in next to the bat boat and the bat jet. The city of Chula Vista has ordinances against parking boats on the street.

Chula Vista taught Hollywood everything they know. Here in Florida we have sink holes that can swallow building foundations, I kept thinking I was going to end up on the news for actually creating one. I can see the tagline "local resident claims a pirate told him to do it" ...hey you get bored while digging. In your case you could have hit gold with some luck.

I still have the same water level this morning, I was so happy I considered going for a swim in it, and then quickly changed my mind, its chilly. Its funny I built that thing all along doubting it, but hanging on to the proof and testing of Ryan Charlie Muz Chris and others. I hoped it would eventually work, but I did not expect it to work without at least some minor issues. I did realize something that maybe important though. I made mistake during my research on the liner.

Somewhere along the way of pricing out EPDM liners, I made the mistake of purchasing 20 mil HDPE liner. This would explain why my material was rigid (plastic) and not rubbery. Although this was accidental on my part, the outstanding news is HDPE is safe for AP. The same company sells the EPDM that I intended to purchase for nearly twice the price.

Lesson learned? From what I can tell it seems like nearly any kind of liner can work (just make sure its fish safe) especially after seeing what Muz pulled off. DWC beds are flat and smooth, if I had rocks in a pond I might want some rubber material to absorb some of those edges.

So DWC aside for a while, I picked up 2 large (55 Gal/208 liters, 36"/914mm Height, 24"/609mm Diameter) blue barrels to make some filters. The first one will be an RFF. I will be using uniseals instead of bulkheads for this part because of the cylinder shape.

During my research I ran across some interesting ideas about RFF. I read a few times they weren't needed if you are only running media beds don't bother complicating things. So we are really doing this for the DWC.

Some people even made the argument that the heavy solids contained valuable nutrients and was the very point of AP. Ryan mentioned bottling it to sell it, joking I think but absolutely resuse the waste. And if Ryan endorsed RFF waste I bet people would drink it lol. But in many simple media bed systems those heavy solids at best land on a pad near the water outlets on the grow beds because there is no RFF.

I saw sizes ranging from small buckets up to very long tube shapes. And even some with additional cone shaped material added to lengthen the inner bucket.

image taken from this video



The idea of additional height is for the sake of having a more time for gravity to sink those solids. I assume it would also help in high flow or high pressure situations so the bottom gunk isn't stirred up to the top as much.

Anyway I have a lot of extra liner left over and I believe this idea makes most use of the way an RFF works from my understanding as a newb.

I think all of this is fine and nothing new so far except maybe that long material is a bit strange, but here is where I'm going to take this project into uncharted AP waters....

I want to suspend my timer based indexing valve pump inside the RFF to feed the media beds from this point in the system. The DWC Sump FT all will otherwise be like any other RFF system with constant flow. I suspect this idea will meet some criticism but I'm open to it.


Warning: if you are trying to learn from me this part is probably a bad idea

Why not just plumb the outflow of the RFF to the DWC or to a physical filter(shade cloth, matala, bird netting, etc) and then the DWC? The RFF will be hard to plumb with the indexing valve. The outflow is on the outside of the stilling well and you usually don't have a lot of room between that and the outside of the RFF. Then again, why clean the water going to your media beds?