Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

or posting watts and running time here, and we can tell you how many $$

Mind you I wouldnt mind my SP being @25 deg c now

Its all a bit of trial and error at the moment. I havn't worked out whether to run the heater at night only, or whether to just monitor and turn the heater on when temps get low, say 18, and run it until it reaches 23. I am not sure yet which way would use less electricity.

I am lucky in that our backyard is very sheltered and captures a lot of heat during the day. My grow beds are adding plenty of heat on warmer days and the insulation on the tanks works very well. Unfortunately with only a small body of water (400 odd litres) the temp can fall alot on wet cloudy days.

Ive got one 300 watt heating wand, with it on at night (9PM to 6AM) with reduced night time water pumping, and warm sunny days the water stays at 23/25.

With cold rainy days I have seen temps drop to 20 and with no heat being added from the grow beds I suspect that temps would drop even further but I havn't let them. In last weeks wet weather I had the heater on full time for several days; bring on the next power bill

I think ultimately I will settle for temps above 18 and will only heat accordingly.

You will find that the more you run the heaters, the less heat you will absorb naturally, because the beds are already close to the ambient temp. If you only run the heater when you really have too, more natural heat will be utilized.

Maybe run the heater off a timer from say 10pm to 2 am - use offpeak as chappo says?

It won't be chareged as off-peak unless the power is run from your off-peak hot water supply ( please see a sparky before playing here)or BETTER / FREE ,, you have a SMART meter:)

Couple of wires, cut twist + tape

Couple of wires, sput + phist mate

Is he Kiwi

No, and I don't even own any ugg boots. Though I do like Kiwi aftershave (mint sauce).

No smart meter and no off peak. Chances are that we will be moving houses within the next 6 months so all that sort of stuff has been put on the back burner.

The pump is a Laguna 6000, sorry I missed answering that earlier.

Thats a REALLY big pump for a system that sized

You would only need to run it for 3 minutes per hour....

Hi all

Lots happening at the moment and not all of it good. Just got out of hospital after a back operation; pain is my new friend

We are moving out if the unit so I had to dismantle my system and move it to my sister in laws place. I now have nothing but a big hole in my backyard where the tank used to be, bugger.

On the bright side it means that with my generous brother's help I can now build a bigger system at the house we are moving to Hope to have it all up and running before XMAS.

Wishing you well and

Have you hurt your back many times? I only had to do it once, I am soooo careful now.

mind you that was back in my navy days, on HMAS Wollongong

Yes, herniated a disk in 1993 and I have had ongoing problems ever since. This time my leg went numb and started collapsing under me so off to hospital I went. Seems to be getting better, still have some numbness but no collapsing and falling over.