Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

For those of us not using the gorgeous BYAP kits, what is the biggest bodge you have made while assembling your own system?

Not sure what country my language is from anymore so bodge = ' to make a mess of; botch; A quick and dirty job, something done very hastily'

I ask this having just had lots of fun fixing underground leaks over the last few weeks, and had to go and buy a car jack today to help lift one side of a collapsing growbed stand while I added extra foundations to it!

I'm starting to wonder if it's just me . . .

Oh I've had a few. (some of them took some time to present themselves though)
Reading through my thread you will probably find some.
Like termites eating into growbed liner because I used old posts to support under the grow beds instead of blocks.
So I've been replacing lumber/liner beds with stock tanks on blocks. So would have been cheaper to do the stock tanks in the first place but in the first place, I hadn't thought to use the deep 100 gallon tanks without stands so <hum>.
Hum, I went and built the monster bed too low to be able to gravity drain so I have a pump running on float switch installed in that bed (but it has some uses that way.)
Not too long ago I spent days taking apart and cleaning an old leaking aquarium. Then when I glued it back together and went to fill it up, it broke!!!!! Argh.
Back in the beginning I had tried to do a sort of inline sump/walkway to drain grow beds into and it would drain into the big in ground tank. That was a big mistake. Always make all parts of a system easily accessible. And probably the biggest issue with that sump walk was that the outlet plumbing into the big tank was too small. All gravity feed plumbing needs to be way big.

Not making the plumbing big enough is probably the most common mistake in DIY system design. Especially gravity drain plumbing needs to be huge.

Spme great stories there TCL!



I'm experiencing this at the moment - the 3x50mm diameter overflows from the fishtank are working well - they just handle the 11000lph output fine from the 38mm diameter inlet pipe. The link between the sumps is slower than I'd like though - I thought 100mm diameter pipe would be enough, but apparently not!

+1 on pipe sizes. I had a least a couple floods in our kitchen/living room before ripping and resizing.

Frames and lined growbeds seem to leave nice spaces for ants to nest in so they can protect their beloved aphids. Diatomaceous earth helped with that.

Anything that can flood will flood! I don't care if you have autosiphons, flood/drain, or valves (like barrelponics): include an overflow! It may seem like extra work, but do it.

Fish will go into any pipe that they fit. You will end up with fish in growbeds, pumps, etc. Or with pipes blocked (at sharp bends) and your kitchen flooded! Get a barrier that will keep out the fish.

A "too clever" mistake, not technically a "bodge": I made the greenhouse fish tank so that most is under a growbed and inaccessible without swimming with mask and snorkel in order to minimize heat gain and loss. This was a bad idea: fish will occasionally die and you won't see them.

My god your a genius, I'll be doing that tommorow........
I was considering bringing in some earthmoving equipment to do it ( my GB media is blue metal )
My GB has been on a 10 degree tilt for 9 months, mess's with the flood level something awfull

If I was a genius it wouldn't have happened!

The stand is 5.5m long with three huge growbeds on - 2.5 m3 of hydroton - and one of the legs in the centre started to sink. Had to be very creative to get the jack into place as it was over the two small sumps we have.

If I hadn't come up with the Jack I'd have been totally screwed. Going to use it to level up some of the other beds now too!

My biggest bodge was my first system design - a sump which was WAYYY to small:
I siphoned from the tank to the growbeds, which autosiphoned to a rubbish bin sump (70L I think), which had a pump on a float switch which pumped it back up.

Every time the power went out the sump pump wouldn't switch on and the sump would overflow, and the water would continue to siphon out until it was almost empty. So every time the power went out I lost 3/4 of my water.

Think most of my system falls under the bodge. Was only glueing fittings the other day and after applying the glue thought to myself. That not going to fit. I know you should check these things first but that takes all the fun out of it.

That's so me.

Sometimes I rein myself in, mostly not though

"Measure once, drill twice" is my motto.

HA! did that under the "bath tub system" from circa 2006............the system is de-commissioned and the jack is still holding it up

Theres a G clamp holding a bit of flashing on the shed thats at least 25yr old.

Getting married before starting AP.

+1 on gravity fed pipe sizing, but got that fixed...

+1 on the car jack! I used one to level a bed that settled a little on one corner once filled with media and water.



My dad's quip was always, "I cut it twice and it's STILL too short!"

CB

There is no such thing as a mistake only if you do it twice otherwise it is know as learning