Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have the opposite problem; I've managed to sell my significant other on the whole "we'll have fish, vegies and some chickens (chickens don't have to swim :-) ), and grow most of our own food" idea; and the first thing she said was can you scope it up a little so we get some excess to sell at local markets At that stage I went back to the drawing board and started muttering about 5000L tanks, double skinned greenhouses...

Keep up the good work! I think your right about the importance of removing as much dependence on external energy/food providers as possible.

One thought; why not add a 12 volt air pump (magnetic) and an airlift; this could hang off the battery (once you scale up the battery and sola).

I saw an interesting design where the air lift tube ended in a container with another container on top (joined by a tube) so that the air lifted the water into the first container and the water emptied out of the container; but at the same time the whole process produced foam which ended up in the top container along with any "floating nasties". This was designed to up the DO levels and at the same time filter out any left over solids that didn't make it into the main filters.

On the Sola panel, positioning may be a problem as well, how much sun does it get?

The cheap one is more expensive when you express it as $ per watt

Thanks, I will find out about airlifts.

As for the solar cell - I have positioned the panel pretty well - I think I just sized it wrong.....I always knew I was pushing the limit. I've proved that the idea works, now I need a bigger panel and battery.

One of my mates just looked at the battery for me. It is virtually dead. I have deep-cycled it too often. I need to scale up both battery and solar panel quite a lot. I will do some research, and when I'm sure that I've got something that works better, I will report back to you guys.

eame002, That design you saw for the air lift with a cylinder on top was most probably a 'Protein Skimmer'. This is basically a cylinder that is mounted so that surface water will flow over its lip and try to fill it. However, the air-lift in a centre tube will carry the water up, creating some foam which carries detritus with it, to be caught in the upper container. Along with a sub-gravel filter, they are great for keeping aquariums clean, as a lot of protein actually floats on the surface of the water and doesn't otherwise get filtered out.

Shin

From my experience you would get a larger power loss across the wires connecting several small solar panels compared to one large one. But if you have insufficient battery storage this problem doesn't matter (battery full who cares if you loose power before it is stored). But, quite often large panels can be more expensive compared to many small ,depending on size.

Do the math and pray for sun...

Hope I didn't hinder... (rather helped?)

Yep that's the bunny! Saw it in Fundamentals of Aquaculture (James Avault), good book if you can manage to retain some of the 800 pages of info

And just to hinder a little more The cheaper panels probably don't last as long

I have two possibilities:

1. Go for a paddle wheel. The general consensus in the literature seems to be that paddle wheels give you the best DO level per watt.

2. Go for an air lift pump. This has advantages in a green water system.

But this raises a new question: Do I want to continue the green water system? One of my grow beds went dry a few days ago. They are fed by 4 mm gravity-fed tubes. It turns out that a green water system has enough junk suspended in the water to clog a 4 mm tube. It has only happened once.... but once is all it takes to prove that I have a problem.

Does anybody have thoughts?

I promised a few more photographs....so here they are - proof that I am no photographer:

There is a biological filter that doubles as an aerator:

Here are some autopots from above. An autopot is a flood/drain style valve. However autopots do not recirculate - the "drain" part is done by the plant soaking up the water. In summer the drain is pretty quick, but in winter a drain can take days.

And here is the heart of the autopot - the Smartvalve.

Here is another view of the valve. If anybody wants to experiment with autopots or smart valves let me know - I have got to know the inventor pretty well, so I can probably negotiate a discount.