Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Update

Your a busy guy there Eddy! Great work.

Great progress!



I can't really tell if this will work or not, the 1" pipe is rate limiting for the outflow and I don't think it will matter what size comes after. I do know that it's almost impossible to get all the siphons in synch so you'd just have to run it until the very last one kicked in (some growbeds will partially refill which I don't think is a big deal provided that the growbeds either continue to drain or cycle regularly enough not to become stagnant). Since your limiting the pump time I doubt any will overflow (unless the drain becomes blocked) but the level might go above the growbed media.

I have 1/2" in and 1" out. I have never had a problem.

Got all pipes hook up, time to test. But only with one bed that"s filled w/rocks. Cause the other beds are not filled with rocks and i may not have the reserve water in the reservoir to fill without. For the reservoir i have 4-55 gallon barrels. Am going see if i make lid for the hub in the picture, like the one for the reservoir at the FT.

Here's what the hook-ups look like.

Go ahead and run the empty gb's with water. It makes it easy to fix problems should they arise.

+1

Did you leave enough room between the stand pipe and the media guard to get your hand down in there to remove media or roots?

Problems, i ran into when i went for the test run. The auto siphons did not seem to work and that was with only one siphon test, so plan B. Even with the stand pipe removed the water drain slow. Maybe it's having a hard time pushing the air out the pipe. I don't have a vent, do i need one? So for now i drilled a small hole at the middle of the coupling. It fills in about 18min and drains in 25min w/3" of water at bottom, it works. The way i ran this test was the filled GB w/the stand pipe in w/hole and rest (all GB's) without the stand pipe. I ran water through all the pipe a have setup, i evened the valves so they all flowed the same. I wish the pump would have pump more water, it pumped less then the test i ran when i first test it (see pg 1). The pump seem to pump less with the check valve in place, does the check valve needed to be adjustment it has a screw in it? When i pushed to check valve to opened the outlet side seem that it did not have a lot of space for water flow. I did water test looks good and no dead fish since 2+ month. I plant it some radish and chives. The timer am using has 8 on/off settings that i use to run the water pump. I have set as follows (1)-7:00/7:30am (2)-9:00/9:30am (3)-12:00/12:30pm (4)-2:00/2:30pm (5)-4:00/4:30pm (6)-7:00/7:30pm (7)-11:00/11:30pm (8)-3:30/4:00am Set to auto Mon.. to Sun..



The stand pipe is removable as you can see, i never glued them for that reason

It's a loooong run back, so maybe a vent is a good idea. It could consist of a PVC pipe tee'd into the return pipe, ran just higher than the grow beds.

I add-it the vents, but it seem the same. I was looking at the fish this morning and it seem that some have Ick. The ones in picture seem to have it, but i saw some that did. What can i use to fix/clear the Ick?

I was looking at this,will it work?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/230866858101?ss ... 1438.l2649

The usual thing in AP is to salt the water, I haven't ever done this so maybe others will chime in.

I would say either remove the ichy ones, or maybe isolate all but one set of beds and salt the water quickly. The quick change in salinity is what gets the ich, slow changes don't hurt them so much. After things pass you could get the other beds online. Sine you don't have plants yet it should be easier to do this. Strawberries don't like salt at all, but that isn't a issue yet here.

You should search the forum about this before doing it, there should be plenty of info related to it here.

(BTW we had two little fish in our living room aquarium that had ich really bad. I threw them in the trash can just a minute ago. Ich is always around for sick fish to get infected with it - IMO it is not worth it to try to sterilize everything until it is completely gone, especially since we keep buying new fish for the aquarium. I put new AP fish in a salt bath for a few minutes before introducing them to my AP systems for this reason.)

Don't use the aquarium ick treatments. Just salt up. Start with 10 parts per thousand, and then reduce with water changes. If it is just a few fish, you could put them in a separate salt tank, but I worry that more stress will add to the issue.

Thanks so much, i will buy salt first thing in the morning. Pool salt work, sea salt from the super market or go to pet shop for the salt?

Thanks again Eddy

Pool salt is great.