Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all, I created a thread a while ago with the idea of making a much larger system but school got busy and priorities changed and aquaponics became a distant memory. However, now I'm back into it and decided whilst I still have all my barrels and my IBC I think it could be a good idea to start off with a small one just for the learning experience more than anything before I get going with the big one.

I have a 4Ft fish tank and 2 60L black plastic tubs for my GBs and a small submersible aquapro pump with 750L/hr max which i can turn down slower, with the idea of running a simple flood and drain system, draining from the two tubs straight back to the fish tank which I wanted to have a few silver perch in (already rang a lady in Corowa who will give me some for a dollar each).

My fish tank is cleaned and ready, my pump is ready, I have the 13mm hose to pump the water to my GBs ready but I don't have the autosiphons made or even designed at the moment.

I was thinking I would make a loop siphon from each to run straight back into the FT, I made one with hose and it worked beautifully, but the 40mm PVC pipe and 90 degree fittings just wouldn't do the same thing for me (I shouldn't have rushed out to Bunnings without a well thought out plan and understanding of siphons).

Now I'm looking towards the bell siphons and any help with regards to these for my system or advice with any other part of my system would be greatly appreciated.

I will keep a report on my thoughts/ ideas and progress as I go. And add a few pics as well.

Thanks, Mav

Here's a rough sketch of the design so far that I whipped up on paint.

After a few unfortunate circumstances, the nice system design hasnt worked out quite as i intended. Instead the perfectly working bell siphons decided not to work when the GBs were full of gravel and my nice four ft fish tank mysteriously cracked and has been replaced with a blue barrel drum.
At the moment i have one GB hooked up with a now non working bell siphon in equilibrium to the inflow from the continuous submersible pump. With one tomato plant in red scoria and getting continuous flow past the roots and two goldfish while it gets going. Its become a pretty pathetic system however i was able to learn alot about siphons and how everything works. I may put up a picture of the system as is at the moment, but it is a little embarrassing. With two weeks to the summer holidays and the investment in a freshwater testing kit i can put this learning experience behind me and focus on my real system, with an IBC fish tank and blue barrel drum GBs. I will use loop siphons instead of bell siphons due to the cost and ease factor and run it CHIFT PIST, with silver perch.

Hey Mav,

You can still salvage your single blue barrel and the two tubs. I have a system that does just that. See pix below. The two tubs have drain holes in the bottom and are connected together. The loop siphon runs off a T from this connector. It pretty simple actually. Hope it helps.

Cheers
KM

This is what it looks like after 12 weeks!

Thanks KM that gives me a bit of hope that all is not wasted i had actually thought about replacing it with a loop siphon too

And oh yes! Forgot the toms. Here they are!

Things are starting to work for ya Mav...

been away for three days and have come home to find a goldfish dead with its tail sucked into the pump.
i had only started with two so since il be away all this week i have bought three silvers and got some fly screen mesh to cover the pump.
I also put in another tomato plant and a little parsley plant just incase the one tommy couldnt handle the new fish since its not very big yet.

got back yesterday to find the tommies had grown almost twice as big in one week and the fish are all growing and healthy, except for the other goldfish that was eaten... lol
il get a picture up on wednesday. one question however, wats the easiest way to make photos small enough to load on here? it sounds simple enough, but i couldn't do it

Irfanview ... Free software... Use the resize option... select 800x600... but do click resize again to find out if it has been truly resized to 800x600... some camera takes images to a weird ratio, hence the software may shrink the image to 800x602 for example to maintain the aspect ratio.... this becomes a problem when uploading... so you will have to manually resize by typing 600 in...
http://download.cnet.com/IrfanView/3000-2192_4-10021962.html?tag=mncol

When saving the reduced size file, just change the picture format to something that is suitable as I think it defaults to bmp ... choose jpg.

thanks mate thats perfect

Put 'em up! Mav! Eager to see them.

These are the two tomatos, ky1 and roma, and a baby parsley.
They have been in for a week now and the tommies have doubled in size