Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

those troughs will make great GBs, and i dont think you need to seal staino
HTF did you get your gf to paint the tank while you took pics?? any tips, i could use some

just promise lots of chocolate... it's a win win..tank gets painted and we both get chocolate.

I'm worried that because I'm trying to put this tank fitting (see pic above) or look here http://www.hansenproducts.co.nz/product ... T-size.htm on a corrugated surface I will have trouble getting a seal?

anyone have any experience to share with me? or am I just fretting for no reason.

oh, I emailed the manufacturer and I need special washers..

Try this detail, works OK on mini-orb, don't see why it won't work on normal corro iron.

Cheers IanK

nice idea ian, i like it

that's pretty whack, I'll give it a try.

so I gave Ian's suggestion a try..three tries actually..and well I couldn't get a PVC piece into the right shape with a hacksaw, hole saw or angle grinder. I did however keep the idea of the wooden flange?..then I just went ahead and pumped in the silicon. I should have some kind of a skeleton of the new system up shortly for appraisal, stay tuned.

new system is slowly coming together



excuse the reflection, its raining O/S so I took the picture from inside.

I have various problems atm, including a leaking tank adapter - behind the wooden bit, GB's are too low for the ST (green dude) to fit under them, and last but not least no idea how to plumb in a 4th bed that is not directly adjacent to the others to get an equal flow (not that I have much idea how to plumb in the other 3 as you can tell from the photos).

I re-sealed my tank hole..It'll be a few days before I can try it out. In the mean time I just bought these from the local Aquarium for $7 each



They are 11cmx5x6 they have no writing on them and the clerk dude couldn't tell me how old they are or what they were used for. The shop picked them up from a Quarantine or something?

they have two outlets that are kind of brown.

I figured for $7 how could I go wrong, all I have now is a tiny single outlet aqua one thing

I picked up an IBC and a 500L green bucket from Krozbolt (forum member), I seem to be accruing stuff at an alarming rate, I am not sure how I can adapt these to my not yet assembled system but I was thinking of using the IBC as the sump. Pics later as I will have to somehow get the IBC over my garage into my backyard first..

Thre are also a range of fittings that you can get off the shelf both metal and plastic/rubber, that are made for corro tanks.

Here are some: http://www.paton.net.au/geelong-rainwat ... tings.html


But then it's hard to go past Ian's beautiful drawing...

I drew this up for a friend who is helping out with the system, and because I was having trouble figuring out how to get the SLO to feed equally to 4 beds until a I had the somewhat ingenious idea of adding taps. I figured I'd post it here just in case I'm making any mistakes.



@ earthbound
I'm going to see if the SLO leaks for the second time, my thoughts are silicon should hold it as it shouldn't be under too much pressure as long as I get all the gaps, failing the second leak test I will have to investigate some sweet washers, gaskets..thingies. thanks for the link!

Hi,

It's been a while but here is what I have done its still in the just getting working need to tidy up phase.











sorry for the quality of the light in the photos.. the only space I had for this project was the south side of the house and these were taken in the afternoon.

please any advice or criticism is welcome.

Okay so I never wrote how my system works..sorry.

I have built everying as cheap as possible so it is a little mismatched. Its a Chift-Pist system with the corrugated Iron tank ~800l acting as the main fishtank and the IBC cut at ~700L the sump tank. as the ground is concrete the sump couldnt be lowered and all the GB's had to be raised to about 1.3m to allow for proper drainage. I opted for a CF model as I was unsure what my sump size would be when designing the system and also all my drain pipes are different sizes.

I would guess that the system has a minimum 400L GB atm but could be as large as 800L, unfortunately all the beds are not regular shapes and as such dont yield to my simple mathematics skills.

I am currently runnign with 7 Gold fish, which are displaying minor signs of sickness and am in the process of salting to 3ppm before looking to get trout, I realise it may be late in the season to get trout but this is on the south side of the house and is fairly cold.

I was thinking of stocking lightly possibly 10-15 trout and feeding heavily both to cycle and try and get a quick harvest...?

although new the system should be quite resillient as worms have been added and 1 of the GB has been used from my initial experiment system.

System has been on the timer 15 on 45 off for 3 days now, no dramas to speak of.

however I did complete the first test today

Ph 7.4
A .5
Ni .25
Na 00

from what I understand these readings are to be expected at this stage, the pak choi and kale however have really taken off noticeably in the last week with increased flow through the system.