Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Dont know if its exactley as discussed but the 1000 litre tank is in the ng heated glasshouse still gets down to 15 overnight just with an air stone with a 150 wat heater water stays around 18 once a day divert 200 litres from the big outdoor system only drops it 1.5 deg and warms the other system a bit also in glasshouse is 150 litre aquariam sitting on 18 deg [just heat from the sun] gets 20 litres changed when the outside system runs

Hang on vb nearly have all the stuff for your gas bottle filling thingy

Lots of great ideas guys.

Tonight I went outside and turned all the lights on to get some mental pictures of what I can do. As an aside, I noticed that I've fracked up my timers - just this morning I'm quite sure, so that the pumps were on tonight and off today . Glad I noticed now and not tomorrow :-). So I'm thinking, grow-beds have been offline all day, ammonia will be high. Tested and found that ammonia is 0 and nitrite as good as 0. This means that the 20 litre biofilter inside the shed has handles the ammonia load for the day and last night. They were not fed today and didn't eat yesterday, so that would have helped. BTW temp in tank is 21.5 at the moment (less about 1 degree cos I think the thermometer reads high).

Anyway - back to the mental planning. What I'm thinking is 4 or 8 square metres of pool heater collector on the concrete - maybe ontop of some tin with black plastic between (this is intended to stop the concrete acting as a heat sink. Hopefully one of my normal pumps that run water from the sump to the tank will push water slowly through all this - though I wouldn't count on it. To get this set up, I'll need to buy some new header pipes with barbs on them. I'll be up for about $60 worth of these to get the amount of collector online that I want in a tightish space.

I'll dig out a thermostat I have here somewhere - which unfortunatelly switches on when it gets hot, not cold - and see if the sparky at work will put a relay on it for me and rig it up with a plug and stuff so I can turn the pump off when the tank gets to a certain temperature. I'll also have the pump on timer so it only runs in the heat of the day (best I can do since I'm at work in the day and can't set up a differential thermostat or anything at this stage).

On top of the solar heating, I will get some sort of cover over the grow-beds. I pulled some of my 32mm PVC pipe down from the mezanine and it looks like the lengths are probably long enough to rig up some sort of half hoop structure with one end of the pipe secured to the outside of the shed wall a couple of meters up and the other into a stake on the ground - pipe bent into a half hoop shape. Unfortunately the first beds edge lines up with the edge of the shed, so I'll have to find a way to extend the strucute past the edge of the shed wall - but I'll work something out. I don't think this will be a huge job, but I am prone to underestimate .

What I have also done is changed the timer so that the beds now turn off at 5.30pm instead of 7pm. When I get a chance I will make a larger biofilter for the shed (maybe with polystyrene beans - bought 200 litres a while back for this purpose) which will eventually allow me to reduce the pumping even further.

This lot may just be enough to get me by.

Next question is what order I should do all this in, given my general lack of time.

I'm thinking:

1. Cover for grow-beds (which will also cover the sump BTW).
2. Solar heating.
3. Bigger biofilter.

F&F - thanks for collecting those bits and pieces for me. This will be an additional solution I can make use of. Thanks.

So what do you lot think about this pump from Nightingales (CL15G-10) as an option for the solar collector. Pumps 18 litres a minute at 4 metres head using 90 watts. Sounds pretty good to me. I guess this would be a slightly longer term option for me, but worth thinking about, particularly if I could get something similar up here or I am down Vic way again sometime.

http://practicalstuff.razza.org/night/p ... l#minipipe

I wonder if this type of pump has the danger of leaking oil.

no oil in the top one afaik VB, doesnt look like an oil motor.

No VB - Its bad!!

http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:jHOKGTa7VCQJ:cnwaterpump.hisupplier.com/supply-145508-household-boosting-pumps.html+cl15g-10&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=au

Copper Impeller !!! and case....

18 litres a minute on a few bits of black plastic pipe sitting on concrete???
I think your over estimating the heat you will gain.
I think a 1 litre per minute would be more appropriate ,, but then again I know nothing much about these type of heat collecters.
Use any power saved on the pump for more tank heaters.

doesn't really matter either way 1C gain @ 10lph or 10C gain @ 1lph.............same energy

and there is the added beniefit of higher temperature gradient at the end of the run with the higher flow.

40% of your pumps input will go to heat anyway

Nah - I'm talking about using a pump like that once I have the collector on the shed roof - 4 metres plus off the ground. Eventhough a pump like that is meant to pump 18 litres per minute, it would lose significant capacity due to all the small tubing the water was going through. Once on the roof - the collector lengths would go 8 or so metres across the roof and back again - so 16 metres through each little bit of tube. Litrage would drop heaps I reckon. Anyway - if the pump is no good for the purpose - then its no good. Haven't looked at that link yet.

Regardless of the copper - the pump would be useless anyway from what is said in the link. It is a boosting pump and will only turn on if water is being pushed through it first (eg by the mains when tap is on).

VB member dbird who has the banana thread in members systems is growing trout now and is going barrumundi in the warmer period, maybe this is the answer,

Take all the plants out of the grow beds, insulate the heck out of the bottom and sides and pipes, and put used glass doors over the top of them. The beds would become solar heaters. Maybe just do this to the one that is pretty empty already. Insulate everything like crazy (old batt insulation in garbage bags is cheap to do), and buy another heat or two. FWIW I am running 900 watts of heaters and our basement doesn't get extremely chilly.

Well my new sand-filter , to take beds off-line in winter ,has arrived ..... pics tiomorrow ..... it calcs out at about 110 litres ,, has all the goodies , pressure gauge ,back-wash , winter-mode etc and I got it on ebay for AUD $60 DELIVERED ,, brand new. It will be mounted in the warm shed ( ahh the still to be built shed,,,lol)
SORRY to thread hog ,, the thing was advertised at 19 inches high from based to top of controller ..... someone can't measure ,, it's 19 inches ( 48 cm ) diameter and 60 cm tall NOT including controller.

Vb can I suggest one continuous coil rather than lots of t pieces and joins. It will prevent you from having to re-prime it every time you turn it off.

I haven't read the whole thread (posting from work! ssshhhh), but I vote for letting them die. If any survive, make them breed. Over a couple of generations, maybe it'll take your whole life, but maybe you'll be able to breed a variety that can handle cold temps.