Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,

Here's a few photo's of my IBC system I'm setting up:

Picture 1 : Drain to filtration, from IBC's fish tanks, running behind the barbie length about 6 metres dropping 1 metre.

Picture 2: Side view showing where they are in my backyard, home made level control/skimmer boxes. All Out of 90 mm storm water PVC with removable ends for cleaning.

Picture 3 : Shows top view of IBC and skimmer box type thing.

More photo's to come.

Cheers.

Here's a couple more photo's.

Picture 1: picture of IBC's on the right showing the drain to the filtration on the left past the old trout grow bed behind the barbie.


Picture 2 :Side view of old trout grow bed looking from near the barra tanks towards the IBC's.

Old trout grow bed 1000 litres barra growbed 1000 litres both of white river stones.

Currently recycling the trout grow bed with no filtration attached yet, will build and install soon.Sump in place and used when cycling,You can hear the drainage working very well indeed.It's not noisy but if it does get too noisy I can easy fit a lid to the skimmer boxes. I have 5 600 gram barra in one 1000 litre tank and 10 200 mm barra in the other. Plan to move some more over now I know I haven't killed these.

Will attach a solids filter, moving bed bio filter and one or more sumps depending on how much water flows from the grow beds

Will also connect barra grow bed (1000 litres) soon.

Plan to add a further 1, 2 or 3000 litres of white riverstones but that will have to wait until grow beds are installed along the fence in front of the barra grow bed moving towards the IBC's
Not looking forward to filling the beds with river stones considering the steps I manually have to wheel the wheelbarrow up, and the very limited room I have to maneuver the wheel barrow in doing so.But It will be done.

In the end I would like my barra bed and new growbeds,about 1000 litres each to be connected with 50 mm standpipes going into a 90 mm drain and possibly auto siphon and or mega siphon setup to take care of the drainage.

Cheers.

Bigdaddy, those skimmer overflows on the FT's are nifty. Looks like they draw water from the bottom of the tank.

Hi Jdfish,Thanks for that,

Yeah,they're nice, aren't they?

I originally got the idea from Crusty over on HQ which were round ones, then Gary posted one of his own home made job which look similar to these.

There is a 50 mm PVC pipe going into the IBC at the 1000 litre mark with a 45 degree elbow attached then a 50mm pipe going to the bottom of the tank.Water comes in to the top of the tank and the weight of the water pushes the water down the bottom up the "suckeruppera" and into the box then down to drain.

Ive been learning about filtratation, one of the things I've learnt is to try and keep the solids as big as possible and not cause fines, when a pump pumps water the solids get ground into fines and the fines are then suspended in the water and are very difficult to remove.

This way the pump is in a separate sump so the water will come out of the tank into the drain into what ever solids filtration you wish to add and with mine it will have a separate moving bed bio filter after the solids removal,then it will go into 1 or two sumps.Depending on how much water comes back from the grow beds.

Having those skimmer boxes also has the benefit for your fish that whatever noise your pump may have made will not effect them.

I still plan on attaching air stone/s on the suckeruperer (ATM I have discs sitting on the bottom of the tank)) near the bottom of the tank.Those two things are the only things hanging in the tank.

So far I have shifted 10 600 gram barra over to one tank and 20 200 mm barra over to the other tank and have been recycling the old 1000 litre trout grow bed with those fish and have not managed to kill any fish yet.

Cheers.

Nicely done BigDaddy..

What are you powering the air discs with??

Hi Rupe,

Thanks for the encouragement,

I'm at work now,don't worry it's OK I'm the boss,not really, she's the boss.

I can't remember exactly, I'll check that out later when I get home but it's a Haleia small one, I think ACO 5505 6 watts,seems to be pumping a lot of air, plenty of bubbles in each tank and importantly quiet as. It's only tempory until I can find the money for a good Airtech or something like that probably in the facinity of 70-90 litres per minute,we're looking at 3-500 dollars though so I'll be battling no it won't happen yet, to get that one past the boss she'll go ape.

When I get those tubs away from the pergolla, after tranfereing the fish over,and connecting up the barra grow bed. I'll have another one of those, currently doing a good job for the tubs, I'll connect that up to the IBC's as well.

Cheers.

What I don't get is how the "skimmer" is going to be skimming anything if it's taking water from the bottom? Or have you put it there so you can remove the pipe for the skim effect?

Heh my old system has almost exactly the same kind of thing (viewtopic.php?p=123521#p123521) where the connection comes out the top, but sucks water from the bottom, however I don't think I've ever used it as a skimmer - I never even thought of it. In saying that, I've also never had cause to use it like that... still - I'm embarrassed I never thought of it!

Also it looks like it's connected at the taps of the IBCs - are the taps turned off? Why did you do that?

I can only guess so that the tanks can be completely drained through the existing plumbing, preventing flooding of area adjacent to IBC's? I think I would have done the same.

Hi Gemmell,

Oh I don't know what to call it, I called it a skimmer type box thing but hey whatever.

Yes, you can take the pipe off and put a baffle or two in the box if you want to use it as a skimmer,I'm just using it as a level control thingo, plus when I made round ones up for my barra tubs I found they removed the solids pretty well, so I'm hoping this set up will do the same.

Yes the taps are normally turned off.

I had a look at just using the blue valves as drains only, but I like the idea of a suckerupera with a level control box what not added, It really didn't take a lot of work, and once you understand that the weight of the water coming into the top of the tank makes everything work It's not that complicated (It has to be so for my simple brain lol). and yeah just plumbed them into the existing drain so that if you want to drop a tank or two quickly you can with out being washed away,that's the main reason, another is if you want you can isolate a tank easily.

It's a 5505 Haleia Rupe only a small, cheap temporary airpump, but does the job at 900 mm depth.

Cheers.

Hey yeah,

I just had a look at your suckeruppera Gemmell, Did it work good for you?

Cheers.

Hi everyone,

I've had a bit of a rough week, this week,We found out Sunday night that last week my wifes uncle suddenly died, she's now in Melbourne after the funeral, and last night my Auntie died from cancer.

I have been busy lately so it's been a bit hard to do as much work on the AP that I want to.
I have figured out how to get the water from my sump to the fish tanks and the grow bed/s

I'll run some 25mm PVC pipe from the pump right up to the top of the fish tanks an elbow to go around the corner and 2 tees with valves to adjust water going into the tanks then run the PVC right across the back yard past where the new grow bed/s will be,to each bed a tee,and valve so flow can be individually controlled then an elbow to the barra bed with a valve on it.

I did not have the time today to take pictures but will post some pics soon.

Cheers.

Hi Everyone,

I got busy today and laid most of the drain from the barra grow bed ready to be hooked into the new IBC drain.

Sorry to hear about the news Lucky you have the AP to get away, interesting setup....gives me some ideas...

Thanks for your thoughts Bonsaibelly.

I think the AP should work,

The main thing is I have access points to all the pipework, in case I need to clean it.
I like the 90mm storm water PVC because it does not restrict the flow and It is cheaper than the smaller stuff.

I still have to dig out the rest of the new grow beds but the most important thing is to get the barra bed on line urgently, as my nitrites and ammonia are peaking, and I don't think I will have enough bio filtration with the old trout grow bed alone.(just about 1000 litres).

Still a bit of work to go I'll post some more photo's when I have the other bed on line.

Cheers.

hey BD sorry about the news

how much filtration do you get out of each gb??? in teresting concept of having them on the ground like that