Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Haha Dexter

Faye has met me allready so you will be the new dopey guy.

This is just a wild shot at saving me some time and effort, but would anyone within an hour of me have a "Tilkey' budget trough they aren't using yet that might fit in my bench? I'll swap it for one of my latest delivery ones if it is the same size as my first batch and not the wider version.

Tub problem nearly fixed. Thanks to Robbie again from Landmark Berri and Garry in the APA factory in Gosford.

I need to have a bit of a working bee this Sunday. It's the last weekend before the Perth trip and I should make an effort to have the extra GBs in before then. Michelle wants one of the beds to use Hydroton but that sounds like it will be about $350 and I'm not sure it's worth it. I'll have to make my mind up before the weekend.

I think I've worked out how I'm going to make my dividers in the tank with my newly arrived roll of 5mm garden mesh from Boddingtons Plastics. I'll post some photos as I make and install them.

The water in the tank seems a little murky to some and I'd like to catch and weigh some to see how they are going so my options are:

-add some sort of flocculant (eggs) then use our septic syphon to suck up the debris on the bottom, lowering the water level in the process making the fish easier to catch. The problem is the syphon didn't work as I'd hoped when I tried it before and it's a moth-eaten bit of a set up and will need some work to get going.

-plumb in one of my yabby farm UNO pumps and give the tank a big stir. I'll just run the water under some trees, then refill the tank with rainwater (irrigation water nearly looks like milk at the moment. Darling water!) after I've caught and sorted the fish while the level was low. The problem here is I'll probably have to get wet putting a saddle or something on the outlet from the tank, plus 3-4000L of water will make a big puddle under the trees, seeing as how we just had 45mm of rain and all.

-same as above, but run the water through the bag filter I got with the yabby farm and back into the tank, cleaning it pretty often (1 hour, twice in the day?) until the water clears up. The problem is the same as above without the puddle and the water level wont drop so I'll have to chase the fish to try and sort out some bigger ones for dinner. A benefit is I'll be left with a spare outlet with a tap on it for emergencies. It will need a lock on it.

-the simplest idea could be to simply syphon most of the stirred up water out with a length of garden hose and topping up with rain water when I've finished handling the fish. The problem here is the puddle will be twice as big because I wont be able to reach the hose very far without a pump.

It should be a fun day, especially if my other GB can make it here in 3 days and it fits, and if I can con some extra gravel washers in for the day. Probably a negative on both of these.

Sound slike you've got it all planned and mapped out Dexter... keep us up to date... and, ummm... pics??

Here are some pics of my planned divider.


Now this is the bag filter and the bio-filter from the yabby farm.

I think this was how it was plumbed previously, but I can't see why I need all the pipe. I'd like to plumb the pre-filter straight across to the bio-filter, and maybe build a frame to hold the whole assembly, including the pump, so it can be moved between AP set ups (I know I only have one but...... ) as an emergency filtration option. I just have a few questions on how I'd set it up:

-does the particle filter flow inside to out in the bag?

-do I fill the bio-filter with the plastic bio-balls and where do the 2 round pieces of perspex with the holes in them go?

-the bio-filter doesn't look like it wants to be pressurised so should the top of it be higher than the side of my FT?

So many plans.... So little idea of what I am doing

I just decided I don't need the whole set up pictured, just the pre-filter. The bio-filter would have to be aged like a GB right? I only want to clean the water a bit.

The water in the fish tank is rotten. In the pieces of 6" PVC scattered on the bottom for cover was a sludge that smelled like a piggery when we took it out. I think that is anaerobic bacteria, or is that rotten egg smell?
Michelle turned the pump on permanently and I just finished making an extra outlet on the tank and plumbing in the bag filter and pump from the yabby farm. There is a fair bit of paint flakes floating around so that is a bit of a worry. Like someone said it might be at the start of this thread.

I've been keeping a note on how much I'm feeding. It's about 700gms a week. That's 100gms a day. At 2.5% of fish load per day, that should feed 4kgs of fish. I have 50 trout that have surely got to be bigger than 80gms each. It doesn't look like I'm feeding enough.

I made the last 100mm of mine the hydroton and below that the blue metal. Seems to work fine, get the odd bit of blue metal rise to the top when planting but just chuck those back into hole 1st.

Had a big day on the fish today. We lowered the water level to make it easier to catch the fish and to replace some water in the hope it would clear it up a bit. It went from 5KL to about 1KL. I made couple of dividers for the tank so we could sort them and we weighed them as we went.


The poor fish had a lot to cope with today and I hope they are happy in the morning. We did some things that could have been better organised, but we'll be all over it next time.

More to come.

And... the results are...

The fish that came in second demanded a recount so its taking a while

There will be no recounting for a while. There has been enough trauma to last a few weeks. I am about to head out and have a look how they went overnight. I've been having pump troubles too, which is not what I wanted a just before I go away for a week.
I'm trying to work out how best to post the weights.

Were still weighting Dexter
This is like waiting for Oakshot to give his decision!!!!

I'm still writing my speech.

First, my pump.
A week ago I hooked this up to try and clean the water a bit.

Since doing that, I've had problems with my main pump getting air in it. I'll come home to find the GBs are empty and the pump is hot. I bleed the air out of the pump and I'm right again. All the pumps are well below water level. The new set up shouldn't have any impact at all (except maybe diverting a little on the suction for the main pump, but it's a 2" line), but the system has been running without a hic-up for 6 months and the pre-filter is the only change. I could put a non-return on the main suction or, better maybe, a small air release, but I'm a little confused as to why I have the problem at all. It could be totally unrelated. I do think the fact that I'm using a pressure pump is starting to be an issue with the dirty water.
Look out BYAP shop next week. My silly question list is growing.