Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks for the tip and the photo. Good thing I haven't glued anything together.

looking good Elgin

Thanks for all the encouragement. I appreciate it and could use it since I have spent the last two days washing and hauling gravel. I am almost finished with two yards and have another 1/2 yard to go. I also bought the parts to increase my drain to 2". But I haven't installed it yet.

I have the barrels on one side filled up with the pea gravel from the Colorado River. Nine barrels.

I found out that the fish seller is coming to town next Wednesday. If I can get everything plumbed up tomorrow and start water cycling through at least the barrels I have filled with gravel would it be too soon to add fish on Wednesday? I plan to add the gravel from my existing text system to jump start the bacteria. The seller has 100 4-6" channel cats for $39.00. I was thinking of starting out with 25. I will have a 300 gallon FT and with the nine barrels I'll have 225 gallons of Grow Bed and 375 gallons when I get all the GBs filled. Any advice?

The only thing tougher than shoveling gravel for two days is to get finished on Friday afternoon and find there is no beer in the fridge. I'm off to the store.

Gravel washing...you gotta love it (if your some sort of psychotic nutter )

looking good Elgin

I worked on plumbing today and a bit more gravel washing.


The water coming from the FT is 1-1/2 inch branching to two 3/4", one for each side of the GBs. I have the ball valve turned off on one since I only have gravel in one row of GBs currently.

I re-plumbed the drain going from 3/4" to 2" and got the drain run to the ST.

Everything is working per theory but things needs some adjusting. My timer has fifteen minute increments and I am not sure that all of my GBs will totally fill up in the allotted time. The drain works fine. I have just tested it out with a hose as I have not filled up my FT yet. I am waiting for some rain as I want to use a mixture of rain and city water to balance the PH.

I made a math error. I am an artist and am math impaired

My sump tank only holds about 60 gallons and the pump starts sucking air before even all of that is pumped out. I thought the tub would hold 100 gallons. So I am going to have to add additional sump tank before I can get everything working. I still need another half yard of gravel also. I am back at work part time so my progress is going to slow way down. I was hoping to get everything up and running before I went back to work. C'est la vie!

We did finally get some rain and I rigged up a way to get water into my fish tank so it is full and the PH is around 7.8-8.0 which still seems high with the rain water added. Maybe I need more rain water.

I am also thinking I may need a pump with a float switch on it so I don't burn up the pump if my sump tanks get totally pumped out. Would something like this be OK?:
http://www.harborfreight.com/1-2-half-h ... 94648.html

I decided to use an old black tub for another sump tank that was a first failed attempt at making a biological filter for my duck pond (way too little filter for the size of pond). So I got all the gravel removed and let it stand with bleach in it for a while then left it out in the sun for a couple of days.

I dug a hole next to my other sump tank (old bathtub) and got it plumbed up. The configuration is a bit weird because of trying to use the existing drains on both sump tanks but it worked out OK. I should now have about 150 gallons of ST for my 15-25 gallon growbeds. I sure hope that is enough. I didn't have time to test it out yet.

I'm looking on the bright side: maybe I can use one of these for fingerlings.

I got half of my grow beds up and running. The timer is working filling the grow beds every 1-1/2 hours and draining back into my two sump tanks. I have a couple of leaks I am trying to figure out how to fix without having to drain everything but they are not too big. One is from the drain on my bath tub. It wasn't leaking when I tested it but when I filled everything up it started leaking. That is why I haven't fill in the dirt around the sump tanks.



I planted some cuttings from our tomato and basil that were in my test beds. I also have planted lettuce, kale, broccoli and swiss chard seeds.



Any recommendations on how to seal a leak while there is water dripping out of a seal without having to take everything a part or am I dreaming? I have several bung seals that are leaking in my grow beds.

I plan on buying a bunch of feeder goldfish to add to the fish tank after work today.

I sprang an underground leak in a waterline that runs by my sump tanks. I didn't realize it until the ground got saturated and my bathtub sump tank popped about 6 inches out of the ground. My growbeds could not drain so I couldn't pump water into the fish tank. I will consider this my first HSM.

I put the pump into the fish tank with a fountain attachment to keep the fish oxygenated while I fix the problem.

My question is: While this be a re-occuring problem when it rains? and if so how do I keep the bathtub in the ground. We are in a drought and haven't had any significant rain for almost three months so I haven't had the ground be saturated before this water line break.

Any suggestions? Many thanks in advance.

By the way I don't think I updated this thread: I bought 25-8" channel cats at Thanksgiving and so far they are doing fine although it has been pretty cold and they haven't been eating much. I have just started having ammonia show up in the tests but no nitrites yet. The ph is still high around 8.

Your PH will come down once the system is cycling properly as long as the fish are feeding and look happy just wait. Just need to keep an eye on the ammonia and once it goes up stop feeding until it drops.

How are the fish settling in?

As for the floating tanks I would have throught if you compact and water the dirt in around them to minimize the air for water to sit in would help? :
Hopefully some one else might have a better idea on this?

Your system is looking really good!

I fixed the broken water line and rerouted the drain from the grow beds to the sump tanks. Amazingly, the upheavel of the sump tanks did not cause the connector plumbing between them to leak. They are no longer level but they still hold enough water to flood the grow beds so I am going to leave them be for now. The fish are fine and the plants are fine.

About five weeks since I added 25 8" catfish. Water temp this morning around 8:00 am 51F, Ph 7.8; Ammonia 1.0; Nitrite (hard to tell as I don't think the colors match very well but somewhere in the 1.0 range); Nitrate, 0.

This is the first time Nitrites have shown up and a jump in Ammonia from .25 to 1.0 so it looks like the cycle is progressing. Hooray!

Best to stop feeding till your ammonia comes back down.
Almost cycled once that happens you are away and running

G'day

It depends on what they are like. If you can compress something to the outside silicone may work. I've been able to seal some small leaks from the outside with silicone....wouldnt work if theres much pressure though. Can you divert the water from that one bed for 24hrs or something to seal it up?