Hello,
My name is Jason, and I go by jason_not. My handle pretty much originates from some logic design classes I took many many moons ago.
I am new to aquaponics. For me it's the electro-mechanics of it all. My wife, Stacy, is the real gardener. Having said that, I got a heck of a kick-start: I bought Geek2nurse's house and property and inherited her aquaponics system!
So we started it up last week, it's been dormant for a long time. (had to hack our way into the greenhouse)...
A few questions have begun to form in my head, and I am glad I have a system already built to play with to form them.
By the way she asked me to wave to BullwinkleII, so HI BullwinkleII
!
So one of the first things I noticed on this site is the aquaponics shop doesn't link anywhere. Do you all have a list of sites you prefer to buy parts from? There are a few things I need to acquire: information, a test kit (plus how to use it) and at this point, seals: probably Uniseals.
It's a bit like drinking from the firehose here.
So here's the general design of the system as-is:
the fish tank is an IBC sitting on a couple of steel pallets to give it some height. (ok a lot of height: Geek2nurse is > 6 feet tall, so there might be a bit of bias there...). there is a 3 inch pipe off the top via Tee fitting (open top to prevent siphoning with loss of power, and to act as an overflow preventer). the 3 inch pipe is used to distribute to two media beds. there is also a 1 inch bypass pipe to divert extra water back to the sump as the pump moves a lot more water than will drain into the beds.
Both beds (one running right now) are cut from IBC's: roughly 1/3 height, with bell siphons in the center which discharge directly into the sump. so it's a single loop system.
The pump doesn't have a label, so I will be measuring the electrical current and figuring out at least how many horses it has, and calculating the gph thereafter.
I am considering building an eductor out of pvc pipe just to clear out the gunk at the bottom of the fish tank: starting up the system moved a lot of organic material that had broken down in the system. I am reluctant to just dump the water and start over again.
I am also probably going to build a solids filter on the output of the tank, also to help out.
We have a couple of plants we transplanted from our old house already: A culinary Bay tree volunteer and an elderberry. They seem to be doing ok for the moment.
We do need to get fish, but I thought I'd get the system operating better first, you know fix the leaks etc.
I am also reading Geek2Nurse's ~60 page thread
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=13760 to catch up on her design and thinking about the system and hopefully glean any advice given to her so I don't have to ask you all again
i will also draw up the system and post it here for comment.
Thanks for your time!
--jason
Backyard Aquaponics
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