Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks Jet!
I think it may be to heavy for me to lift while wet as a full bag, but thank you for the great suggestion. I really appreciate your willingness to help.
So far I have have been washing it in a plant flat with 1/4 inch holes in the bottom. If it takes too long, once I start on the main system, I may try this suggestion though and leave it for Todd to handle after its washed.
Thanks again.

Hi Erich,
I cannot tell you what the plumbing will end up for the main system since it is still a bit in limbo, but I will take some photos of it once it is up and running.
For my experimental system I can try to explain. The water runs up from the pump, which sits in my tank with my fish. From there it goes up to the level of the experimental beds and tees into drip irrigation line.
The one side goes to the head of the gutter beds and has one drip line running to each as a constant flow, there is no drip head on it to reduce flow. The gutters are at an incline, I would think about a total of 3 inches over their 10 ft length. The water exits the gutters through the end caps into 3/4 inch PVC piping that is all dry fit together to run into one drain, combining with return flow from other beds. The water stands at about 1/2 inch deep at the drain on these beds.
On the other side, the drip tubing goes currently to one floating bed that is full of water and simply overflows back into the drain. This bed only has one drip line running into it. Following that there are currently 5 other beds that have Hydroton in them, each of these beds have 2 drip lines going into them. They are not very big and only have maybe 3 gallons of Hydroton in each? Each of these small beds has 1/2 inch stand pipe with six 1/4 inch holes in it, on all but one of these there is about 1/2 inch of standing water in the bottom. Though one holds about 1 inch of standing water. I am uncertain why this is currently and do not want to disturb the bed if I can avoid it. Perhaps the stand pipe got turned a bit and so is blocking the lowest holes? I have kale in these beds, so will be replacing them before terribly long with new ones I expect. Though I did nestle in some tulip bulbs into that bed, so it might be a while before I understand fully what is happening.

No siphons, all constant flow. I believe the main system will be the same unless we run into a difficulty. In my experimental beds, the surface of the gravel in the gutters is dry on the surface, but damp about 1/2 inch down. In the beds with Hydroton, so far the surface hasn't been dry, even in the areas that are furthest away from where the flow deposits.
All the water in the experimental system is distributed to the grow beds through drip irrigation line.
All the water in the main system will be distributed through PVC. I will get some photos of it once it is up and running. We plan to leave our PVC distribution in the beds temporarily dry fit with the water exiting from the pipes on the top, so we can observe flow rates and such and easily see if there is a problem (and hope not to wash the inside of the greenhouse film in the process). But after we reach a point of it running successfully, we will turn the pipe so the water exits from the side or bottom to limit the amount of light it gets to try to prevent algae if possible. Still so much we don't know yet that only experience will teach us.
I hope that is the answer you were looking for, if not please ask again. Sorry for my delay in getting back to you, my non-AP life has been keeping me kind of busier than I would like, and making final decisions on the plumbing for main system is taking time also.

So far, pretty much everything I have stuck into the experimental system seems to be adjusting well. My only fatality has been the little plecostomus, I think possibly the fantails harassed him to death, poor little guy. I had thought they would only be interested in chasing him for a short while, but he was dead shortly after. The sharks!
So I got 6 more small fantails to add to the tank. I am amazed at the color change the other little ones I had gotten just a short time ago had already made. I am always happy at how quickly they adjust to eating the worms. And I like how easy it is to know when to feed them, since they seem to eat them all. A couple times I have given them too much and have seen worms crawling around the bottom for a couple days. But they always clean them up later. I look forward to getting the worm bed set up, so I can gather worms in the green house instead of outside when its raining. Pipe to cut, wood to cut, worms to gather. So much to do still.
Happy to be nearly done setting up the rest of the experimental system. Even more glad to have it, I would be having a major impatience moment over the main system without it. What an addict.
Have a fantastic day!

I know a lot of people wash their media. Depending on what kind of dust is in it it may be necessary. I found for the media I'm using, lava rock, I didn't need to wash it at all. The water looked dirty for a little while but once the GBs had a chance to grow some bio film and get established the water cleared up. I also had a lot of clay dirt get into my system from all the landscape work I have been doing and it cleared up with no problem. So as long as the dust isn't toxic leaving it shouldn't be a problem. You could also just give it a quickie wash.

Thank you for your suggestions. I think it should wash pretty quickly. At least once it is able to be washed. The weather here has been a little crazy recently.

This is after somewhat of a melt, but will give an idea of what has been going on.

We put the greenhouse just a little bit close to the trees, they drop big shovelfuls of snow on the greenhouse when it falls off the limbs. Its crazy loud, and makes a nice rain inside. I think once the weather gets better those trees will be getting a trim.
But thankfully, everything seems to be holding up well in spite of the weather. The snow only seems to build up at all if it falls really hard and wet at the same time, otherwise it seems to melt off as it falls. We are really glad for the support from the solid ends though.

We are still working on the plumbing, its a bit daunting getting everything to fit together so it works well, but we are getting closer. A 4 day holiday coming up should give us enough time to focus on getting it up and running well. Its such a learning process. No major "Oh No!" moments thankfully.
I will be posting more photos once everything is glued together.
For those of you who celebrate it, have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

i think id die if i had weather like that where i lived!!

Nicely done with the greenhouse Beth...

LOL! You wouldn't die, you would just be very, very cold.

Last night it was down to about 18 degrees (-8C). Too cold in my opinion too. Brr!

Thanks Rupert!

Beautiful work, you guys!

As far as washing hydroton or pea gravel, my favorite (lazy) method is to fill the growbed with the stuff, partially fill the fish tank with water, then run a sump pump from the fish tank through the growbeds (use a large flexible sump hose: 1.25 or 1.5 diameter). After washing all growbeds, dump the water. Fill fishtank again and repeat. After about three to five rounds things are pretty clean and your back is less damaged. This is the way I washed a 12 cubic yard growbed/pool-filter of pea gravel and it sure beat hand washing: although I'm sure it is not as effective and leaves the sand on the bottom it allowed me to wash it in a couple hours rather than days. I could also still walk afterward. And I doubt the sand is more than a half inch or so...

Nice snow. Nice greenhouse...

Would it be possible to for you to tell me how much Hydroton it take to fill up a half barrel? I am trying to determine how many of those 50l bags I will need if I go that way.

Those barrels are 200 L, and those bags are 50 L...........and that means with a bit of free board you will need .....? (That is the teacher in me!!)

Your system looks great, and your weather looks very cold. My green house would not stand up to snow falling on it, and I wonder how it doesn't build up on the top of yours.

I just did a search on the forum and it prompted me to check your thread out. You look like you are having fun.

Thank you very much

I have found a really easy way to wash the Hydroton that I am planning to use to finish it up.
I simply took one of the half blue barrels that has the hole for the plumbing, but no pipe fittings, set it on a heavy mesh screen, with a piece of baby sized rabbit wire under it, it kind of wraps naturally around the half barrel. I use a hose on it. I get it all wet, then plunge the hose down into it to move the pieces around a bit and since there is no fitting on the barrel, nothing keeps the fine particles in the barrel. I tried it first with one that had a fitting in it and it held all sorts of small particles in the bottom.
Then I simply have Todd help me lift and we can pretty easily transfer the well cleaned Hydroton into the grow beds.
Rinse and repeat eleven more times.

I do love and appreciate all the different suggestions though.

I will thank you and agree with you on the nice greenhouse part, but I am not much of a snow person and really don't care too much for working in it, I think I would tend to call it pretty but preferred from a distance snow.

At least a bag and a half, but I am leaning towards a little more than that. Definitely less than 2 bags.
Hope that helps.

Thank you very much. It is coming together slowly but surely, I am hoping surely, so far only one put it together and tear it apart under our belt.

I agree, I do not think without the solid ends on ours that there would be any hope of it withstanding the snow. We also did another couple of things that probably help a lot. We have the wood stove and just before it got really cold we brought in an additional indoor propane heater to assist. We placed a small fan just above where the heat from the propane heater comes up and it blows it down the length of the greenhouse.
The one other thing we did that I think has helped us a lot is we have a board running the length of the greenhouse (several pieces tacked together) it is up to hang our lights on, but we noticed early on that rain was starting to puddle a bit and I had concerns since it seemed to be stretching the film a bit, so the idea I came up with was to take 3/4 inch PVC pipe and cut it a few inches shorter than the spaces between the hoops, cover it with foam pipe insulation a few inches longer than the pipe and then wedge it between the boards and the film at the very crest of the greenhouse. I was happy with the result because it took all the little bellies that were catching water when it rained and stretched them so that all the rain ran off.
Other than when it snows really hard and really wet, most of it melts off before it has any chance to hang out.
We both were really surprised and really pleased that when the snow fell off the trees onto the greenhouse that it didn't split the film. Especially since this is all still so experimental so we did not buy expensive greenhouse film to cover this. It is the cheaper recycled stuff.

We are having fun, and expect to have even more fun once all the PVC is finished. There is so much thinking that has to go into doing anything complex with PVC. Fittings, angles, unions, valves, ect. So far it has been our most stressful part and I for one, definitely look forward to it not being something that still needs to be done.

Today I should be getting some photos. Todd did this really nifty cut and glue on our PVC outer stand pipes using smaller PVC inside to hold it steady over the inner drain for in the grow beds, but not permanent.
Ok, off to start the day
Have a great one!

Finally some more photos to share.
Here is the nifty PVC drain pipe stand Todd designed. He made the standpipe out of 3 inch PVC then cut a long piece of 1/2 inch PVC on the table saw to rip one edge off a bit, then glued it inside. This first photo is with it off from the bottom, the second is with it in the bed over the 1 inch drain, looking down through the stand pipe. It fits tight enough to hold it securely, but not so tight it can't easily be removed.
Oh! I just realized he doesn't have the drain holes drilled into this particular one yet.



These next two photos are of one single bed nearly plumbed and the whole row of beds from the far end.

Here are some misc. photos of the experimental beds. First the fish.



This is how sad my chard in my dirt garden looks right now.

And the beauty of one in the AP system. I am amazed at the change in how the leaves look, much shinier and greener.

Beth

Looks good - real good

My concern with my BB system was the cost on the plumbing, having taps on every bb isnt cheap is it?