Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

No probs mate

Nice 1st post trout. Would be nice to see some pics of your system.

Thanks for the welcome.

I've attached some photos of my fibre glassing attempts.
fishtank, growbeds, wicking beds and a 1000 litre rotating composter.

However, all may change early in the New Year as I have been following
with great interest the experiment comparing the three types of growbeds.

So much so that I am running one autosyphon bed, one constant flood bed and
one timed bed (15min on/45 min off) from the single fishtank.

If I notice no difference in growth, I'll increase my growbeds fourfold but still
use the same size pump by eliminating the autosyhons.

Could only post three hence here are the rest.

Do you have heads on the broccoli?

Hey Trout can you Please give a few pic's and explanation of how you made your Rotary compositor..

juergen

hi juergen

The rotary compostor was one of my first fibreglass projects hence is a little rough.

Because it's a one off project it's no worth spending a lot of time on the mould.

I found the best mould material is melamine board (that I bought off Ebay)

Melamine board, with a light wax will release the fibreglass. Otherwise the book on
fibreglassing suggests making the mould from plaster and apply upto 20 layers
of shellac until you have smooth sealed surface. Hence I used melamine.

The mould is half the compostor (see diagram) made of two ends and 8 boards all screwed together.
The fibreglass is laid inside and once set the mould is unscrewed and the fibreglass shell
removed. The process is repeated to make the other half shell.

Then the two half shells are laminated together with fibreglass and the barrel is finished.

The axle is a 2 inch gal steel pipe with pillow block bearings.
It is wrapped in fibreglass so that it doesn't leach any of the gal into the mix.

It is about 1100 litres in capacity and when full can have 500 kg of material in it.

Unfortunately when full I can't spin it, hence I have picked up a starter motor from
a commodore V6 and will try to incorporate it as an automatic rotating device.

Hope this answers your question

cheers Lou

Sorry Zman
Didn't see your post.

They're not broccoli, cabbage on left and brussel sprouts on the right.

cabbage was good, brussel sprout failure.

So far I've planted brussel sprouts in the ground, in wicking beds and AP system.
Yet to eat one sprout.

cheers Lou

Awesome guys, I'm very inspired

awesome tips trout you've just got me onto the idea now my biggest hurdle was thinking about the mould but melamine is so cheap and easy to work with

That is amazing Trout, thanks for the pics and lengthy articles.
I LOVE seeing grow beds that chocca!!!

Instead of buying fiberglass cloth I used to buy up lots of fleece blankets and other stuff from the thrift store for 25 cents each. I would buy ragged sweaters and such too even old work uniforms. Much cheaper then the cloth just clothing would need to be cut into strips but big blankets would just be used as is and would be stretched over the frame of whatever I was making. You can't get away with using stuff like that all the time but for some things it would be fine. Built hundreds of very sturdy speaker boxes with those methods.