Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Good idea!

No i was waiting until i was all set up before moving the gravel/scoria around.

Guess that means i need to make the gravel shield.

No worries! I really want to get this working.

Any ideas for an improvised bath plug 60mm?

anything flat and some silicon

just go bigger if you cant find anything to fit inside

Hey i found a lid from some fertiliser that fits. But still seems to be a slow leak...

I made a decent gravel guard, filled her up with my medium but forgot to line up my holes... Doh!

Good news is the gravel guard etc works well. Going to empty it and start again.

The leak doesn't matter if your grow bed is over your fish tank.

Can you rotate the thing with the holes? If so you might be able to put some water in it and look down to see the flow.

The leak is in the bathtub plug. But it seems to have sealed itself (with silt from my scoria i reckon)

So i emptied the GB.

Good news is i noticed just how unlevel the whole thing was and the scoria got another washdown.
I have made some adjustments, levelled it all off and it is now ready for test 22!

good luck

Test 22 failed.

I taped up half the airholes thinking that maybe affecting the pull? Also fitted a wider mouth using a cut off old spray bottle top.

Does it look like theres any glaring errors? I havent added the gravel yet as i want to tidy up the bathtub and make sure its all 100% sitting right... but i figure the flow from my pump wont match the pressure my hosepipe is putting out so i want to see it trigger first!

Only that that's a pretty large diameter standpipe.

how much space is there between the top of the new funnel and the cap on the bell? there needs to be free space to allow for flow, and the addition of the funnel might have used up a bit much space.

Try it with a glass held over the top so you can see what's going on.

Yeah ok will give that a go. Theres about an inch gap between the tops.

The standpipe is 40mm. Would a smaller diameter piece of pipe inserted as you suggested help d ya reckon?

Cheers

Tried a clear plastic bottle as the bell. No dice. The water level just sits there just like when the bell is off...

Will look for the next size down tube tmrw so i can slide her inside. Just needs to be 10cm or so long yeah?

Yeah that's definitely going to need a sleeve

It shouldn't be a problem, and there's no need to glue it in or anything.

if it's only going to be 10cm long, put it at the bottom.

the idea is to create a seal (out of water), then stack some more water on top of it to start the siphon.

I don't normally recommend it because the less you have going on the easier it is to get reliable, but you could add an elbow as well to help induce a siphon, but straight down into fresh air means less chaos, and that means it's more likely to work the same from day to day.

Does the water level keep rising in the grow bed, or is all the water that's going in, going out?

now that its kind of set up, you can dump a bucket of water in the grow bed to see it work

If you are anything like me that's going to be kind of important

Put the plastic bottle back on and dump an entire bucket of water in, in one go.

You can then pour it more gently and see how much it requires to trigger. That should give you some idea of how much smaller a standpipe/how much more flow you need..

Yeah the water level just stays steady and drains out bottom.

Needs to be a big bucket to fill er up in one go! Maybe fill it halfway and then dump a big load?? Not built like Schwarznegger!

I was thinking there has to be more water in the pipe to seal it off... yup makes sense or it wont be pulling down and making a vacuum.

Hopefully theres some cheapo piping at the salvage place.

Have you tried adjusting the inflow??