Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

For my first build I wanted to stay as cheap as possible. So many how to's describe their parts as stuff lying around but fresh out of apartment living while in college, I have nothing lying around but textbooks. I'm in a house whit a backyard now, and have changed my christmas wishlist to tools tools and more tools. For the building supplies I've been using craigslist.

Tracking cost is important for this build as my motivation is comes from a new credo of making not earning. I'd rather grow and build instead of shop and buy as much as possible. So I'm keeping a log of the running cost of my aquaponic endeavors.

My build so far includes
4"x10' drain pipe = $5
1"x10' pvc = $3
1/2"x10' pvc = $2
assorted pvc fittings = $15
(fittings include bulkhead fittings, caps for drain pipes and caps for bell siphons)
100' of 1/4" black plastic tubing = $12 (bought way too much! but cheaper by the roll - maybe i'll build a mister system for summer)
10' of 1/2" tubing = $5
5 gallon buckets x2 = $10
55 gallon barrel = $25
250 gph aquarium pump = $20
4 dozen goldfish, $.25ea = $12
massive supply of fish food (flakes) = $5
hydroton = $8
net pots x16 (.50ea) = $8

I'll post pics as soon as I get my hands on a cord to download them form my camera, but here's the rough description.

It's a tube style ebb and flow system made of 5' lengths of drain pipe with eight 3" holes. That's 16 plants to start. There's a 5 gallon bucket with a bell siphon to periodically flood the two grow tubes.

I wanted a bucket each, but the pump is too weak and doesn't fill fast enough to create a siphon when both buckets are hooked up. One bucket works great, but barely fills the two tubes. Right now they both fill simultaneously but I plan to get some new fittings so that one drains into another, and maybe that will yield a good water level.

Right now the water rises unevenly. It floods the draining end of the tube up to the top, but the fill end only gets 1/3 full by the time the siphon stops. Need to get a better pump or stick with a single tube per bucket. Wondering if it will be efficient use of nutrients to cycle water through one bucket/tube into another bucket/tube. Will take more height and second tube will get sloppy seconds on the nutrients. But is that even a factor?

I started a bunch of seeds germinating while I built the system, hoping for better timing than I have. The sprouts needed to get out of the wet paper towels so I went ahead and buried 2 of each plant in an inch of hydroton (with tiny leaves sticking out as best I could manage) and have let the system run for two days now. The bean sprout wasn't ready and is looking morbid. The rest seem unphased. I still have a bunch of sprouts on paper towels but I don't know how long they'll last.

Transplanting from paper towel I tore a lot of roots, so I'm not very confident about that method. They grew from seed to leaf bearing sprouts within 3-4 days, but have stopped growing and it's been a week. I'm thinking of going back to my local hydroponics store and picking up some rockwool cubes or some other form of seed germination medium, as well as building an indoor seedling grow system. That means lights and fans and another pump, but I think I can manage those on the cheap.

I also have an aquarium air pump that I've seen used to pump water, and air powered ebb and flow. I am slowly collecting 2 liter soda bottles and the like and plan to experiment with this for the seedling station. Idea is to pump air into top of a sealed water reservoir that has a submerged line running out and into the bottom of a seedling tray. The air pushes down on water forcing it out the submerged line and into the grow tray. The tray is elevated so that when the air pump shuts off gravity will return the water to the reservoir.

fyi, I have tomato, lettuce, spinach, arugula, basil, cilantro, jalapeno, and black beans.

Never grown anything since elementary school experiments so this is all quite new to me. No idea how big or how fast these plants will get. I know tomatoes and beans are vines or vine like and will need a different setup. I also realize it is december and not a time for planting seeds. But I live in San Diego and the temperature is always between 50-70 and it never ever rains. So I am supposing that backyard hydroponics will be pretty stable year round.

The goldfish are stand-ins. They'll get the system running while I work out the kinks and might make nice food for the tilapia I plan to grow when ready for expansion.

No idea where I'm going to find the tilapia but that's for next year.

here's my sketchup design


and top view

So are the buckets with the siphons filled with the hydroton? No not for $8 So where is the bio and solids filtration?

I also noticed 1/4" tubing on your list? Is that for the air? If for air, it's fine but I don't advise using anything so tiny for fish water. Unlike hydroponics, aquaponics gets lots of bio-slime that quickly clogs things up.

You might want a bigger pump but if you adapt up to a larger size plumbing, you might be able to get more out of that little pump. Just because a pump has 1/2" plumbing fittings doesn't mean you have to stay that small, you can always go larger (at least to a point.)

Oh and as to transplanting seedlings into net pots.
Here is how I got around that issue. It seems to have worked for me for lettuce and basil ans some other plants using gravel as a media.
Anyway, here are some pictures in my thread that show how I set up the wick in my "net pots"
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=183096#p183096

It is definitely easier than trying to transplant seeds started in paper towels.

Yep, the quarter inch tubing was for the air pump which will be part of the indoor build, but it would move water as well as air since that line should be same size as air input otherwise need much stronger air pump.

And the hydroton is in 3" net pots along the 4" drain pipes. The shop was out of big bags, on order, so the guy discounted me on a smaller unmarked bag at $8. Still only used half.

I do need to work out some sort of elementary filtration in the buckets, would a fill of gravel with a screen around the siphon work? Could be as high as 6 inches without decreasing water volume in the flood. The bucket has a bulkhead fitting in the side at the bottom, and an L fitting a few inches in so that the siphon, a 1" pipe about 12 inches tall, stands in the middle. The air line on the bell siphon, which breaks the siphon is about 4-6 inches from the bottom, so that's why there's space there for gravel fill.

Since I can't upload pics I'll do a quick sketchup of what it looks like.

As for the seedlings, I like your idea. Can you really plant the seeds in the rope?

sketch of bell siphon, right bucket's siphon is raised to show interior pipe, other has gravel and screen in place

You don't really need to move the seed starting indoors unless you really want to (cost and mess and all) You can start the seeds right in the pipes with the addition of some wicks to your net pots. I think one of them rayon good will mops costs about $3 and should last you a year as you cut it apart.

Yes gravel in the bucket should provide some filtration but I would suggest filling it right on up. That will make the bucket fill faster and it might not provide much of a flood to your pipes but growing in pipes is usually more of an NFT (nutrient film technique) where there is generally only a thin film of water that runs in the pipes all the time.
Anyway, it is usually a good idea to have as much flood and drain gravel as you can to provide filtration.

It won't matter too much for right now with only a few fish but if you try to grow tilapia, they are rather poopy fish and will gunk up the roots of the plants quickly without plenty of filtration.

However, without media for surface area to grow your bio-filter bacteria, you won't be able to support more than a few fish. I know the insides of all the pipes and other surface areas do provide some surface area but that will only support a minimal amount of fish. Generally we recommend at least 25 gallons of flood and drain media per 5 lb of fish. So I would say you could perhaps support 4 eating size fish if you fill those 4 buckets with media. Then I would recommend using the air pump right out there with the outdoor system. You can always hook up another try to the outflow from one of the tubes for starting seeds if you don't want to do it in the pipes with wicks.

Beware with pipes, you have to keep an eye on the root masses. Some types of plants tend to produce lots of roots and can clog up the pipe easily. (Beans and tomatoes are a couple I've heard of doing this easily and I've had basil clog 4" pipe in my system.)