Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well I am finally getting around to starting the second part of my aquaponics plan. Details of the first part are here viewtopic.php?t=3693

Part 2 is based on my new poly tunnel. It's a galv hoop tunnel that was a 30m x 4.5m commercial setup that I got of ebay for $800. I split the sytem into 3 gave one to the father inlaw 8m x 4.5m setup one as a fenced in and shade cover for the wife's' dirt garden 10m x 4.5 and the other 8m x 4.5 for the AP.

The PT is going to have 4 separate systems.
1 and 2 are 200L blue barrel heated tanks with half barrel sumps, each tank will feed 3 half blue barrel beds in serial sequence.

3 and 4 will be 1000L IBC's with 3 or 4 timber and pondliner beds again in sequence.

Total tunnel capacity will be about 3500L water and 5000L of GB's

The idea is to start fingerings off in one and grow them at 18-20c over winter, as they grow split them into the second heated system and then by summer move them into the larger IBC systems.

I have the first heated tank and gb's setup. And I have a separate thread to cover the details of the sequencer design. viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5996

There are only 20 murry cod surviving after the problem I had with the heater not working, about 6 died covered in fungus but since the temperature has been restored to 20c they are fine.

Looking good Novaris....

Here is a live wire detector I just built to add to my system.

I had a problem when we go away that if there is a power failure I would prefer to know. I have family come in and look after things while we are away, and although they are close they are on a different mains grid so they don't know if the power goes off at our place.

So I designed the unit to detect 240v mains on any cord, if the power to the cord fails, it sounds a buzzer and closes a relay. They relay can be hooked to my house alarm system and that dials us to let us know it has gone off.

More details and circuit are here
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=6192

Bit of an update as I am about to start my second small heated system, basically its the same as the first one but I decided to use the sequencing box as I did for the cold water setup.

With the new slow drain beds I have found that I can almost run them continuously the drain holes in the bed added to the previously filled bed draining at the same time provides enough water return not to empty the sump. So I have reduced to 5 min between switching beds.

One interesting thing I have noticed is the difference in cooling when plants are in the growbed. The second system is now running on continuous pump with a small amount of gravel and humonia to start the cycling (hopefully full gravel next week) I am aiming to put silver perch in at mid December. Anyway I have noticed a 3-4c difference in the water temperature which I suspect is due to the transpiration/shading effect of the plants. Current outside temp 32c inside greenhouse 34, murry cod tank 26c new tank just under 30c, looks like I need reflective insulation on the fish tanks.

The greenhouse setup has certainly shown its potential I have Ox Heart tomatoes on the vine in November. In the outside system I normally only have the cherry types available about xmas, while Ox Hearts did not set fruit till the end of January.

50 new silver perch arrived today Not that you can see them in their home. The growbeds have been cycling on humonia for about 5 weeks still slight nitrite reading but ammonia is fine.

I am almost finished the controller to set-up the flap valves and the system will be up and running. Also about to do the first of the larger unheated systems, I have decided to base it around IBC's. One for the tank and and half units for 3 GB's and a sump.

For once I was lucky, I forgot how small the new silver perch are and came out this morning to find a half dozen in my grow bed. Luckily I don't have the auto sequencing going and I was flooding only one GB which was full, I always dig a small hollow at the water entrance and all the fingerling were live and kicking

Well there is a lucky bit. Yea, gotta remember to keep fish out of the pipes.

Lucky..... How big are the perch?

About 3cm, I guess a number of them were in my green sequencer because I have rescued several more and lost one during the day. I have put a trap in the bin to check if any are getting through the overflow from the tank they should not be but I wan to be sure.

Boy the silver perch grow fast, they are almost like the trout at the moment. It's about 2 weeks and they have put on over a cm. They are feeding really well three times a day Picture below is them feeding, pity you cant see them.

Duct tape come to the rescue. I made a mistake with the overflow outlet height, I though I had allowed enough height for it not to over flow at the edges, but I did not account for the end of the tank being on an angle and it raised the flood height that bit more which combined with some warping of the edges was causing over flow on the edge of the cut-out. But it is fixed for now, just not sure how to do a more permanent fix yet.

Possible solution to water level:

cut a lower hole for same size pipe and use some elbows to make pipe rise, then drop. Leave unglued so you can rotate them and adjust water level. Or just cut it a few cm lower and several cm to one side.

Leave a pipe in the old hole and add a 90deg elbow pointing up..

looking good Novaris.

Regards

Matt

Thanks Matt

The new larger tank set-up is going to have be running soon
The last two days raised the temperature in the small systems to 32c and the Murray cod really need more space. It seems that I am going to have to pump between sumps big to small to stabilise the smaller ones in hot weather or perhaps rig shade for the greenhouse.

The father inlaw runs the same size and type of polly tunnel just for normal gardening, last year he had shade cloth on the top of the house but found it damaged the covering somewhat, this year he hung the cloth under the polly tunnel and it actually seems to work better Of course he does not have 12 tuns of water and rock as thermal mass in his.

My FT temp got to 29 yesterday.
My system is only about 650 liters in a green house as well.
I found at the end of winter my FT temp average was 21.
half way through spring I quickly found that I required shading to limit the amount of heat that was produced.
I'm hoping that a larger system and digging FT in to the ground or insulate FT & GB will assist in maybe a couple of degrees on these hotter days.
Looking forward to your progress

Once again thanks for the IBC contact.

regards

Matt