Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Now that IS some very sweet landscaping!! If all AP systems looked like that everyone might want one Good job!

Mmmmmm Very neat !! You'd hardly know it was an AP set up how cool is that. Great idea for suburban blocks. I think neat jobs like FF's and Rain water tanks should be mandatory !

I agree Erro.... would you please write a letter to my landlady.....

yeah mate no worries, give me her address, i can put up quite a convincing agruement.

Excellent design and execution Brett! Inspirational!

It's interesting that such a large bed can still work with siphons.

Thankyou for your encouraging compliments, my work trip was cut a little short so i'm back early. Susie did a great job keeping all the fish alive and the plants have grown considerably in the past 4 days.
Synapto i don't think was took any photos the day i put the pipework in but basically its just a pipe burried running under the whole growbed that does 2 things. One it helps to drain the bed evenly to one point where the auto syphon is and secondly it works like an equalizer and alows me to add water in only one spot and yet still flood the whole bed at a equal rate.
By having 3 evenly spaced large (70mm) drains connected to the 90mm pipe underneath and using this 90mm pipe as a manifold for the cokedrum/autosyphon box at the end it allows the bed to drain faster as the growbed gravel creates to much resistance to drain a bed this big without a timer controlling the flood and drain times.(or leaving half the water behind)
A very important factor to me was that the pump had to run continuously and the auto syphon drain at twice what the pump put in so that it was as if the pump had stopped and the bed was not left dry for a large amount of time as the syphon tries to cope with the last of the remaining water draining at almost the same rate as it comes in from the tank.
To be honest having a larger number of smaller growbeds would have been better in my opinion but i couldn't work out how to flood and drain them in sequence without causing major design headaches so i decided to keep it simple.
Big growbeds work out much cheaper than small ones by volume with pond liner and also have less pipework. Also if the bed is big the pipes are big and therefore less likely to ever block-up I figure.

Sorry to ask stupid questions but is the pipe buried inside the growbed ie above the liner or underneath?

Synapto, I think he mentioned 3 stand pipes, and you can clearly see one in the pic, penetrating the bottom of the liner, so i have to say underneath.

Yeah, underneath the growbed, could work inside just the same even a piece of ag-pipe buried through the whole thing would work but with the three drains i can spin them to cut any roots growing inside.. they also act as inspection points.

so cool

wow nice system.

but why do they call you fish fingers?

Ummm...... Not quite sure about that one. One reason could be because processed food is gross and i would like to raise awareness about this topic???????? Oh and also because children are brought up thinking that fish have fingers when in actual fact they certainly do not! Does that clear it up?

cos it's a unique name, and if you look at some after cooking shots, it seems many members make fish fingery battered bits from fillets, or half fillets, so it's fitting?
Of course you probably didn't give it this much thought

To be honest my deranged mate came up with it and i couldn't think of anything better. He is building his system atm. Last i checked there were 9 cubic metres of soil in his driveway all dug out by hand....

Tell him to get on here! We like Progress... your shots of everything all finished all at once is a bit too shocking to bear too much!
I've moved 5 metres out of my backyard, and used it for fill in the low spots... I'm considering yet another dig but I have to get some other things finished first.