Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Lets try posting pictures again.

Last of the first gravel washing day pictures

Just goes to show why people should wash their media..... could easily have thought that pre-bagged pebbles would be clean eh?

I know better since I've had experience with handling all sorts of bagged media. This stuff was pretty clean to begin with. If I had simply put it in and run, things would have gotten cloudy but eventually cleared up. However, I had no way of knowing what the fines were without doing the washing so had the fines been more of a clay nature, It could have been bad. Hence why washing is good.

And it really didn't take very long. I spent more time drying my hands to take pictures than I did actually doing the washing.

These two beds will be this pretty river rock but I am planning to test different types of media in some future beds. Mainly because the gravel is kinda $$ and not so sustainable here. If I can figure out how to make sand work for me, then that is easy to come by (gonna be digging a pond soon will have lots of sand.)

The other point is if the fines got into the pump - could have caused a bit of damage - good to see gravel washing at its best

At the moment I'm more worried about leaves and my pump. Before I got the gravel in to hold down the drainage pipe, leaves were causing problems with the siphons already. Now that the drainage pipe is held down, the end of the siphon is protected from most leaf like material getting to it but leaves can still fall/blow into the tanks so I guess I'll need screens.

Is the irrigation pipe around your float bottle smooth on the inside TCL?

Wondering if it could get "snagged" on any corrugations if they're also on the inside

Thanks for the PM Rupert (still feel like an idiot, used to grow water lillies in the pond)

Leaves? Where ya getting leaves from? It's 10 degrees out with a foot of snow on the ground! Leaves?

Well Done!
Another reason to wash gravel besides the obvious (its a right of passage thing) is to wash away any possible chemical residue. I mean do we really know where our gravel came from?
Well Done! Wish I had those pots, seems they made it easy peasy.

Some collanders from the dollar store would probably work ok if you couldn't get the handy square net pots. I suspect those net pots were from something like water lillies.

The pipe the bottle is in is corrugated on the inside too but it seems to be moving ok. When the bottle fills with water there is enough weight that a snag would likely slip free and then there are weights on the flapper so when the bottle empties there is a little force to pull it back up. I will keep an eye on it though since that is the primary moving part. It needs regular checking to clean out alge and anything that might block the hole in the cap anyway.

Yeah, it was the upward return I thought might present a possible problem....

Figured there would be enough weight when the bottle was full, and as the bottle is tapered....

Suppose the top of the float (bottle bottom) has a rounded edge which might be enough to ride over the corrugations if it somehow gets off centre

Got the overflows in and washed up the rest of the gravel. Drained out the cloudy rain water and put in fresh well water for the buffering capacity it will impart.

Looks like a sort of nuclear reactor or something. Do the neighbors slow down when driving by it?

Actually, a neighbor driving fast is the oddity since they are dirt roads right in this part of the neighborhood. I have been getting the neighbors used to odd objects in the yard since I moved in back in Feb 2007. Hopefully this will only seem a natural progression.

Crazy weather.
Yesterday morning going to work it was so foggy/misty (and chilly enough for a jumper) that it was just down right wet. It wasn't actually raining but unloading a truck outside left the cloths almost as wet as if it was raining. By afternoon, it was rather warm and muggy and definitely t-shirt weather. Thunderstorms on the drive home. By bedtime it was cool again and come morning, down right chill (coat and jumper.) Still only 55 F and windy though sunny.

I'm rater against putting up a "green house" since even this time of year here it would quickly be way too hot inside most days without vents and blowers and on the really cold nights it would only afford some protection. I would rater go for shade supports that can be covered with large tarps for the "freeze warning" nights and otherwise avoid the overheating a greenhouse would cause in this climate.

I've had people on Hydroponics forums show up asking what type of lettuce they should grow in their greenhouse lettuce business they just built. The explain that the greenhouse business has no plans/budget for additional cooling, it is a hot climate and sunny. Without outdoor temps regularly reaching 100 F they need a lettuce that likes it hot and they get upset when I can't tell them what variety of lettuce grows well in 100 F heat. <sigh>

Ok, I just seem to be ramblings now. I guess I'm just pondering what to do while I wait for some humonia to reach a pH of 9 before I add it into the newly built system to hopefully start up some bacteria colonies. Would be nice to have things ready for fish before I get impatient and start re-arranging it into a "new system"