Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Straighter tank drain piping

Don't go into HSM mode. I can hold the fishies for a bit.

Silly question--the water level on your black tank looks high. Will you have a little fence to keep the fishies in? Or a lid?

Looks good Dave, loking forward to seeing fish in there. I'm thinking your going to need alot more fish tank when they get to breeding.

Hi J:
I will have a styrofoam lid, and yes the level is pushing it. I think it will likely overflow when I have four siphons running (it almost does now when both are running), but a tee might help it drain fast enough.

GF, I think my plan for the rest of the year is to see if a 300 gallon Rubbermaid will fit down our stairs. I could use that for the fish and maybe a second one or several 100 or 150 gallon tubs as sumps, to get like 500 gallons of water total.

Didn't you have plans for a lined box for your tank at one time?

This is great so far DD. I really like the look of your system, it is so compact and you make great use of space and inexpensive materials.

Is their a reason you haven't looked at putting your system outdoors? (Weather, you live in an apartment etc had a look through the posts and was just curious)

How will you get light to the plants...


I hope you are not repeating yourself with my questions.

P.S. Just saw where you live (Cashtown) is their a story to this name, sounds like a very lucrative place to live

That's why the chainsaw is in the AP tool kit

Those plasic containers, any problem with the sides bowing when full?

Like how you removed those extra bends, had to go back and look at previous pics to compare

Looks real neat and tidy DD

Hey Asitis:
The main reason it is in the basement is that I want to grow tilapia this year and the >70F degrees temp won't work outdoors. We haven't seen any snow yet this year (which is very unusual), but in a normal Winter we could potentially see weeks below zero C and snow and wind which would be a real problem for keeping the water and grow beds warm. I don't yet have a greenhouse, which even then would need a lot of energy to warm the water for tropical fish like tilapia - GotFish's water temps are in the 40s and that is pretty good for Winter I think.

Cashtown has a sign that says it was named for an innkeeper that required cash payment.

GF, I am going to add the styrofoam around everything after I get things sorted out and verified. I will use the blue foam around the bottom and the white with foil on the top, to help the light bounce around.

Hey Ell, I expect they will (the sump does a bit right now), and might a lot when warm water is running through them. The upper beds will be next to each other which will help support them, but I expect to have to put frames around the beds or sumps or both in time. The main thing I am trying to get going right now is to start things circulating and sussed out, then I plan to dump the water and then get things going again for cycling. I am hoping our water only has chlorine and not chloramine - the plan is to call the water dept to find out this week, it would make things a lot easier if the water can just be outgassed instead of treated.

Got some work done tonight, I'm happy where it's at for now.

Put a bunch of blue board around everything, but I am out of duct tape and nylon ties! How will this project continue without these essential AP items?!?

I shortened the pipes for the pump outlets; I figure the longer pipes enhanced the slight height differences between them and made the one flow faster than the other.

I saw a couple of hugely interesting boundary layer effects while running this tonight. The one was that I initially had just the tee for the pump outlet, with no extensions or elbows. The water was coming out in spherical sheets! The other cool thing is that I had to use a 1 1/4" pipe extension on the end of the siphon hose so that it is guided into the tub, and the water attaches to 1/2 of the circumference of this pipe to make a semi cylindrical sheet of water into the tub, enhancing aeration!

BTW Les, I added bracing to the tubs, the sump was bowing a lot earlier this week.

Check out the awesome boundary layer stuff! These are sheets of water!

Real cool DD, I had my GBs being drained via 40mm(1-1/2") pipe fan-bloody-tastic, talk about aeration! - damn well drowned the fish so thought a modification was in order - dropped a length of 25mm (1") pipe down the outlet, slowed the flow right down to a more managable level.

Its really too easy to add aeration naturally throughout the system, even with the 25mm pipe, air is being sucked down through it and mixed with the water

Back on top with more duct tape and nylon ties!

We have a lot of batt insulation that was removed from the basement ceilings. I put some into some garbage bags to keep them dry and shoved them in between the fish tank and blue board, worked pretty well.

I want to draw the drain water from the bottom of the fish tank to help with solids removal and maybe help pull less oxygenated water out, so I added a length of pipe and an elbow and some more length of pipe to draw the water from close the bottom. This slows the drain to where it's getting a bit too close to the top edge. (The drain hole should have been a bit lower than it is) It's not quite overflowing, so it stays.

Full up with gravel, so the cycling routine begins!

Took the opportunity to reconfigure the system tonight. I wasn't happy with the layout because it would be too hard to get to anything with the previous layout; I wanted to be able to get to the plants better. So the tub was moved under the shelving, and the sump is now outboard behind the system. I also got some 2" mega PVC pipe and made the drain from that, which will eliminate any slow drain problems when more siphons are up. It is now a straight shot to the sump. The four grow beds will be lined up along the shelf.

The water dept only uses chlorine, so I can just run this for a few days then start cycling.

Big drain pipe, straight shot.

Well well well....... looks like Dave has been busy this winter......did you spend any time above ground?? lol