Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Everyione,

I have been lurking around on this forum since i found it. I liked it so much I frist brought joels book and read it cover to cover about a zillon times. Fastforward 1 year and my wife and i managed to get to perth for the long weekend just gone. While there we dropped in to BYAP and walked around checkeing out the systems and asked hundreds of questions.

Eiter way we decided to get the basic your system from BYAP and give it a go. So please stay and put your feet up, grab a fav beverage and watch me make a mess!

For those of you dont know Karratha is about 1600km up from perth and about 800km down from Broom. If you have heard of the minning boom in Western Australia, well karratha is probably one of the places they are talking about.

ANyway emough of that i got the gear over a week ago and well, I should have just brought the damm stand from BYAP!!!
I thought that i would have the steel to make my own, but due to the cyclone cleanup it got well thrown out. So have got my hands on a few sleepers (12) and I have started making a GB Stand.



Anyway, quite a bit of liquid nails later. and they are almost finnished. Its a bit hard with tempreture hitting 40.
Now once that is finnished i just have to start on the gravel..... Woo Hoo shoveling gravel in temps over 35.
I think i need some of that Kalgoolie air over here and maybe, in serveral years, i will have as much as OBO.....

So starts my addiction.

heheh, I started out a lot smaller

Are you sure those GB stands will be strong enough? They look a little flimsy

Well we do get really strong winds up here........

Plus they were free.........

Stong enough yes, but stable.... dunno untill i get them up and push them around a bit.
I will have to tie them together some how, just not sure yet!

Ok,

I have just stood up the parts and i am pritty sure that it will take the weight but its not real stable in the forward/back way. the two legs need to be joined.

I suspected that this would be the case and i was orginally looking at using a halfing joint and cutting in another sleeper. But if any of you have tried to work with these things you will know just how difficult that is! Even with the right tools!

Free is not allways better, but its better than nothing......

So i think i will have to come up with another solution, as I really dont like it at all. I need to get some steel. Damm i realy should have got the BYAP stand. (cant now it would be another $300-ish in freight to get it up here).

This is going to be the final location/setup of the system, it is under a steel patio,(you can just see it the pic above) but it gets the morning sun untill 11-12 oclock. this picture was taken at 2pm (you can just make out the shadow near the leg). The other reason for keeping it under the patio is to protect it form the rain. (cyclones up here will drop 1m of rain in night, i guess that much fresh water would not do it much good.)

Looks strong enough. You can allways counter sink a few lengths of box steel across under the GB. Screw through the box steel into the wood to keep both side together.

Get a quote from a boiler maker, but I couldn't beat BYAP's price, it could of cost me anouther 150 dollars in Onslow minimum to be made up

Why, what's wrong with fresh water ? Yeah, sure you loose some nutrients , but they build back up again quiet quickly

Just a suggestion, place the table in the sun, for better light, your plants will probably grow stingy and not very healthy where it is, and move the tank to where the stand is situated now.

you know if the fish tank full of water, a steel frame with 300 ltrs of hydroton blow away.......you will be praying for your life, not the kit.

Hi Dufflight,

Yea, she will take the weight, and i was thinking the same thing regarding the steel ties. The problem is that the liquid nails is not sticking to the timber (i roughed it up and cut slots into the wood at the joins. It must be the oil in them.)

So i dont know, even with the metal ties if the thing is going to be stable emough. I could get some "coach bolts" and mechanically fasten the legs together, but the cost of those bolts and the drill to go with them.......

So i will go and have a look through the scrap bin and see what i can find, plus i will have to cost the metal make it.
(there is not much in the way of "hardware stores" up here and definatly no big B, plus what does pass for a hardware store up here closes at 4pm on a saturday (not to mention the 100km round trip to get it)

oh well. lesson lernt......

there is a steel supplier in the Industrial area in Karratha

Hi Jessy,

I am not really worried about the cyclone, if it can even move a grow bed, the last damm thing i am going to be worried about is the AP system, i would have lost a caravan, car and probably the house!!!!

I am just worried if all the plants blow away. and what that will do to the system.


You are probably right regarding the stand, but as i am a ex boilermaker (turned IT person) i can weld it up myself. This is origanaly what i had in mind. But my source for the metal (second hand stuff) cleaned up while i was away and had nothing. Then these sleepers turned up and well ........

Time to bite the bullet and see what my freind has now or just by it new.......
Yes there is steel supplier up here, i think he is related to Ned Kelly....

Nothing....with out the plants for a short time, nothing will happen. Last year after Domonic levelled the shade onto the garden....I sulked for weeks like 4 and refused to plant....nothing happened. The bio filter kept doing its job, and everything was cruisey.

Its just like replanting, when you rip stuff out, replant in the right moon phase again with seeds / seedlings, and away you go again

OK, sounds like a plan. Once i have the stand issue sorted out i will move it outside and the FT in the corner.
thanks!

You have got to be kidding right?

Drill a hole the size of a broom handle through top bit of wood into the leg. Glue broom handle in and cut flush. Repeat until you run out of broom handle. Hide rest of broom from other half and the GB will cover the evidence.

If you move the gb outside, put something under the legs so termites don't start working on making the bench lighter.