Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello, G'day,

I will be moving into my new house WITH A YARD in a month or so and I am very interested in aquaponics for both me and for perhaps a small income on the side.

The forum here is wonderful and has a lot of great ideas and information. I have been looking at it mostly in between calls at work so I have not been able to peruse in depth but I have one question for you all..

On the timer systems for flood and drain, are you wiring the timers to valves to release the water? I know nothing of electrical or plumbing so this will be a HUGE learning curve for me.

I look forward to chatting with all of you!!

Chaos

HI Chaos, welcome to the forum

Welcome Chaos!

The pump plugs into the timer, the timer has an outlet on it to plug in whatever device you want (lamps, whatever). The timer works like a clock and usually there are pins on it that you pull up or push down to set whether the thing is on or off at that time of the day. The cheapest ones are at home improvement stores and run about $20, make sure to look for ones that have intervals of 15 minutes (not limited to just 7 settings per day or whatever) so you can set the pump to be on 15 minutes then off for say 45 minutes. There aren't any timers that cheap that can do intervals less than 15 minutes.

HTH!

I just spent 89.00 on my timer. A bit more than I wanted to spend but it runs for 5 minute cycles at 45 minute intervals. Just simple flood and drain back to the fish tank. Just hooked it all up today and system is cycling for the first time. I prolly will cut back on the intervals after I run the system in for awhile. Every day is a turn on the learning curve, but these guy's here are extremly helpful. My system pik's here... more soon http://groups.msn.com/Aquaponics/shoebox.msnw

"If you don't learn something new every day, it's been a wasted day"

Oh I get it...so you are just turning the pump on and off. Ok that makes more sense. So the fish tank itself has an air pump or something that moves water so the fish have O2 and then it drains and floods a couple of times an hour.

Got it!!

I was having nightmares of valves opening and closing incorrectly and trying to figure out all the mechanics of that.

Whe!!

Well founded fears about trying to automate valves

Start yourself a system thread telling everyone where you plan to build your system. What kind of plants and fish you want. Ideas for designs. And people will flood you with all kinds of other info for different designs until your head spins. Then you can get flooded with new terms that you will wonder what they mean.
Like CHIFT PIST and then tell you to put hummonia in it or you might wonder what duck nuts or fish nuts have to do with tomato growth. Welcome to the madness
Oh, and once you start designing your first system, be warned that there are usually more to come.

"Once you start designing your system".....,be ready to change it 472 times,,,LOL,.....,but then if I ???.....,473.

Don't be worried about trying something different,,,we may all benefit from that,.....

I will probably post a separate thread but what I am planning to start out with is probably a 55 gal. fish tank with some plants. Once I figure out what exactly I want to grow then I will expand a bit. I would like to have a small "business" where I supply local restaurarents with some produce. I have one already interested.

Probably stock the tank with mollies, guppies and other hardy inexpensive fish so if they die I won't be crying about the money I spent. Some snails too.

Thats a start!
Welcome BTW

Thanks for the welcome.

I am starting to get excited to tinker with all of this. I would like to decrease the amount of things I buy at the store.