Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yes EB a leak would certainly get my attention and yes I'd probably get a photo as well
It should be able to handle the task,
It was built by the Engineering Dept at Monash Uni and served its time as a "Wave Tank".
So I'm hoping it will be capable of whatever the trout can throw at it

HeHa.. Yes, the camera tends to live at work,
It doesnt look like much yet, just a big freezer with a couple of hoses running into it.
and its half buried in cr@p as well so it looks even worse than it could.

I'm in the middle of a backyard blitz type thing at a friend's residence for the next couple of weeks but I'll try to get some photo's of the way the freezer is set up in case anybody wants to give it a go. I'm also tossing up the possibility of fitting an automated thermostaticaly controlled bypass valve to remove the refrigerated trout tank from the system loop during really hot spells, and pump straight from the sump to the GB's using seasol.

I'll see how it goes.

The thermostat on the freezer system is working perfectly. On a hot day I come home and the freezer has turned itself on and is cooling the system down. The pipes running through the freezer work well as a heat exchanger, but although the cooler holds it's own in the temps we have at the moment, (30-ish Deg C.) the flow is not really enough to get "ahead" of the rising temp of the grow beds with a 3000L mass of water.
This last month has seen a series of deaths at the rate of one or two a week as the water temps rise to about 20-21C and remain there until the weather changes.

Last night I bit the bullet and removed the heat exchanger coil from the freezer.
I netted all of the remaining 22 trout out of the system FT's and put them directly into the "Cooltank". At this stage that is where they will stay for the summer.

Once a week I will do a 30% water transfer into the AP system.
The overflow from the AP system already runs into the garden, so now, instead of watering it directly from a hose, the garden will be fed AP overflow, and the trout will get fresh cool water from the tap.

Isolating the trout from the GB's also allows me to pull the water temps in the Cooltank down to a friendlier temperature for the trout as the refrigeration system is not battling against the input from the sun. I reset the thermostat from 21 down to 16 Degrees and even with the warm temperature last night, this morning the 700L tank had already reached to the desired level. I will let the fish settle for a day or two and then drop the temperature to about 12 -13 deg.
.

That tap water contains, of course, a decent amount of chlorine which may have a detrimental effect on your bacteria population and even your fish.

If your water has chloramines as well, it is highly likely to cause a disaster.

I'd be trying 10% the first few times and monitor very closely.

Pretty good for levels of both chemicals in our area,
Also, the cooltank is removed from the rest of the system, so the tap water won't actually be coming into contact with the GB's
until at least week after it was introduced into a highly aerated fish tank.
This means chlorine levels should be negligable (if any) by the time it reaches the growbeds.
Monochloromine levels in our area are less than 0.002mg / litre, and even this small amount will be transfered
through the system rather than being allowed to build up due to evaporation.
In all the years I've had fish they've not been worried too much about the tap water.

Good call though, not all water supplies are as good as ours.

Last year I had a split in the sump tank and the autofill mechanism kicked in.
It was a couple of days til I realized, by which time the system was running purely on crystal clear tap water. Just swapped out the cracked sump, and the refilled it (once again with tap water) and turned on the pumps. System didn't miss a beat!
The fish actually seemed to be happy with the clear water..
.

Ah, OK - wasn't aware of that - yes, you certainly won't have any probs from that then

Hi Dicko
Im in Endeavour Hills not far from you I have a tank 700mm burried in the ground and has about 2000 L in it a single growbed and my water temp is about 22 and has been there for about a week drops to about 18 at night I have 12 trout left they don seem to show any simptoms of stress the only thing is I run a 100 LPM air pump with 5 50mm diameter air stones and a 2nd pump continusly trough my filter and touch wood ever thing still ok

Gabriel

Hi Gabriel,
Sounds like a good system.
Burying the tank will help to stabilize temperatures,
and a single GB will reduce the amount of heat into the water.

I ran a couple of trout over the summer last year but it was a real effort.
I had a huge supply of 3 litre juice bottles filled with salt water and frozen in the freezer I have just converted,
and I rotated them through the tanks on a daily basis.
This works well until you go away for a couple of hot days....

Even on a good day the temperature fluctuations were quite substantial.
The water would heat up through the day and then cool rapidly at night when I put some iceblocks in it.
Apart from the eyesore of a FT full of floating juice bottles,
and the power consumption used to run the freezer almost nonstop to keep up with the demand for iceblocks,
the fish were never really happy about all the activity in the tanks.

My trout coped OK with temps up to 23 degrees with plenty of air,
but any extra stress usually ended up with at least 1 death.
At least now I know that I can go away for a weekend in summer and the Cooltank will be at a steady 12-13 degrees.

Hi Dicko hows the freezer going holding the trout

Well the trout have been in the cooltank now for about 6 weeks.
so far the only deaths were on the first day, and they were all dog related

I came out to check on the fish and heard a rustle in a bag of stuff I had leaning against the freezer.
I chased down the noise expecting to find a rat,
but instead found a trout that had jumped out of the poorly covered tank.
I had left the freezer lid on and just had it propped open about 30mm
I returned the fish to the tank and thought how lucky it was.
As I walked back to the house I noticed 3-4 fish heads on the lawn.
Seems the dogs noticed that the fish could get out of the little gap in the tank lid before I did!!
The tank now has a fitted wire mesh cage lid.

Water temp is set to remain between 14 & 15 degrees and the fish are looking very happy.
I am feeding them about every 2-3 days and giving a 1/3 water transfer every second weekend.
Levels are all pretty good with nothing getting too high.

so far so good

True to form, I left the still camera at work again!!
You'll all just have to put up with a hastily put together video.
Some idea, the freezer is around 700 litres, 750mmwide and about 1800mm long.
The fish are a bit stressed as I have just removed the pump, cage, and airball from their environment.
last time that happened shortly thereafter, there was a big net dragged through the tank.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tS8ZUA2AXXg

Enjoy, Dicko

P.S. Does anyone else have a trout that comes up to be tickled?

Looking good Dicko. I have the same sort of temp controller on a fermenting freezer for my homebrews. They work a treat and keep the fermenters at 15-16C
If you name that trout you know you will never eat him eh

Thanks i have one of those temp controllers coming

Finally...
Doing some AP work and I thought "Better get a Photo of this, or it never happened"

Some time ago I had passionfruit at a friends place, and the fruit was almost empty! (Hollow)
we put it down to the drought so I decided to try a plant in AP. plenty of water, plenty of nutrients.

I put in a single little plant right at the end of the GB, and let it go, the plant thrived.
Not much fruit the first year but I've been told this is fairly normal.

It also blocked a lot of light as it grew up and across the frame I have over the GB's.

Over the last few weeks I noticed that the syphon on that bed was a little lethargic with the drain guard showing signs of blockage.
No problems, a quick twist will fix that... Umm, don't recall it being that tight before...

closer inspection showed roots had grown through the holes in the guard and formed a root ball inside the syphon area.... No problem, just cut them flush on the inside and dig them out, give a quick twist and the situation will be remedied..... Ummm Still pretty tight ....

OK, dig a bit of hydroton out to take some pressure off...
That's when I found the real problem... the root ball started not far beneath the surface, and It was Tough!!

I finally realised this was not a 2 minute fix, wrestled the standpipe clear and had a good look at the situation. As I lifted the pvc shroud, there was no Hydroton avalanche as would normally be expected, the thick root mass went right to the bottom of the bathtub.

The roots started about 40mm below the surface, just about the "Flood level" of the bed.
More digging to expose the extent of the problem, and it became apparent that the mass protruded along to about the midpoint of the growbed!


After unceremonious removal of the passionfruit vine, (Which I might add was only as thick as my finger,) from the bed, I went about removing the rest of the root system.
The vine was about 18 months old..


The roots seem to have pushed most of the hydroton aside rather than growing through it.
I think I will have to find another method to grow Passionfruit!

I know this might seem after the fact and all... But did you get some good passionfruit?


Thanks for sharing... I am now a little worried about the pasisonfruit thats planted right near the drain in the DIY system here at the shop...