Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Great stuff Molj:grin: The system looks great.

Wow!

It has become much tighter, smaller pump, elbow taps and chift pist. Its gona work much better from now on! Finally you'll find pleasure in it! With the inlets on one end, and siphon on the other that looks perfect to me.

Have you saved some of the old stones, for PH buffer?

Nice work Leskovec family!

Thanks for the thumbs up Peter,

i haven't saved any of the old gravel, but luckily i have loads of it all around me, our rivers are filled with it and i have a gravel processing factory 500m away, so i can either pick it there or dig it in the river banks.

I sure do hope for some better results, my next task is finding some catfish around here or something in that department. I'm picking some fresh seedlings this week and putting them in, can't wait to see the progress on those salads when i come back to the GH.

Those carps got really big over these years, some of them weigh around 2-3 kg, big mofos, and theres around 30 in there all togheter. Maybe i'll try one again some of these days.

Be good!

I dont see the point for a swirl filter!?

Looks really great Molj, best of luck growing lots of stuff this year!

Peter: point is in hopefully not having to clean those GBs for at least 5 years this way, else they have to be cleaned at least every 3 years if not even sooner, you'll see

Dave: thanks, may your words become my food

3 years or 5 years LOL

Hi matej - I sorta have a contact for catfish fingerlings in Slovenia. PM me or even better PM forum member "ezone" for details, this guy told Tom (ezone) that he would have fingerlings in July.

Nice new setup - I'll hold you true to being able to come visit one day, sorry about not answering but I was very busy with life stuff..

Tojo

Well, after 3 years my GBs were totally clogged and i really am not so much into cleaning, but it sounds like you are

I know about the poop beneficial theory and i'm sure i'll still end up with enough fine goo in my GB. The problem was that after a week either in this or the old gravel i noticed that GBs weren't able to take so much water as they did from the start, specially on the intake side and maybe with a swirl filter i'll at least get rid of the big parts of fish poop -- and, and, use those leftovers to fertilise my fruit trees. I think it will be a good thing, we'll see.

Tojo: you can come by anytime ofcourse just send me a message when u'r up to it. Thanks for the info on catfish, i'll PM ezone

Relatively quick clogging caused by too small media.

True to some extent, had the same problem with 16-32mm old gravel, maybe other fish, specially trout, have smaller feces and moves easier through the system. Carps for instance make a thick wrapping around their feces and form small sludge covered sausages which clog up the system pretty fast.
Anyway, i'll try the swirl filter how it works, and its a really simple design so, nothing lost

I see your point, as my little grass carps excreate same kind of small sludge covered sausages.

What if you just put a filtersponge under the inlet of the pipe to withhold the "sausages".

+ cheaper solution
+ all nutrients stay in the system

- dont know is that would work but there are tonns of examples around

Also tried that, have put a small fine net under the outlets but they've got full of feces in a day, and that means daily cleaning with which you remove the nutrients anyway, else the water flows over the filter.

I believe the swirl filter will do a good job removing the big particles leaving the small ones in the system. Running it only for an hour or two the bottom was already covered with solids so it works. Had one blue 200l barrel at home, just needed to buy 2 seals and some pipework, the whole cost was around 15€ so it's not a big deal.

I decided to do this because if i feed those carps at least 30g/kg of fish per day(which i never did before, i fed the whole batch with only 100g of pellets/day), that means roughly 600g of feed per day and that amount leaves a lot of solids in the system and would clog it up in less then a year(specially with the new gravel now).

And besides, it's a really easy to clean that filter, you just open the bottom valve for a few seconds and it sucks out the solids and a few liters of water. Will talk about efficiency in a rough week when i come back from my vacation and will get you some photos then.

Had a pump failure yesterday, my father was adding water to the system, apparently too much, and the pump's regulator got wet and it got shortcuted. Luckily my father has backups and he installed another one and we've got away with wilted plants only, that has set back the plants for a few days but else it's all good. I've also asked him to put 5L of the lime gravel in the sumps for pH buffer.
I've also noticed that the system temperature has somewhat stabilised, for instance: today at around 11 am the temp was 13°C now at 4 pm the temp is 14°C and the weather was like mostly cloudy with a few hours of full sunshine. Sounds like an overall progress, am planing to install an arduino based temp monitoring station like you Peter did, so i can have some more data.

Am eager to see the system performance after a week of more nutrients input.

Have a good day!

Central European Jamboree 2013!

Peter and I, mixed up another one after last year's success!

Central European Aquaponic Jamboree 2013
28-29th september 2013
7091 Pári, Nagy u. 24. – Hungary


The goal of the jamboree is to meat fellow aquaponic enthusiasts, talk, share experiences, our invited speakers are some of the most interesting AP owners, form Hungary and Europe. We not just talk about aquaponics, but we do it. This year participants will get hands on experience in an interactive workshop where we will finish and start a 50m2 Passive Solar Greenhouse System. All presentations will be in english, with hungarian translation.

More info and tickets here: http://www.aquaponics.hu/blog/central-e ... oree-2013/

Lets meet on CEAJ 2013!


We are ready to help you to organize your travel, or if you have any questions just bring it!

Gönczi Péter alias Zsazsa
& Matej Leskovec alias molj


Peter's system: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=9276

From strength to strength Molj Great to see the interest you guys are creating, who would of thought eh?