Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

After catching the bug many a months ago, and introducing myself a few months after that, I have progressed far enough to feel really guilty about not having started a thread on my "system" yet. The quotation marks in the last sentence is quite necessary as I am still expecting the whole thing to go "kaboom!!!" at any moment.

Every obsession has a beginning - and this was mine.

I got 5 altogether. I wanted 1 for a FT, then chop some up for 3 GBs that would sit on 2 STs.



The cuttings of the plastic and metal cage went smoothly. Which actually came as a surprise as I had not handled any power-tools since metal-shop at school, almost 2 decades ago. This also meant that I didn't own anything beyond an old hammer. My local hardware store now loves me. I think I am single-handedly sending their kids to college.



And to keep with tradition...

Then it rained like hell, brought down some branches, and work stopped for a few days...

Without a real plan as such, my next step was to plumb the two ST together. After driving around for a few hours, I found out that bulkhead pipe fittings were about as common as hen's teeth. I went with a common threaded male & female 2 inch pvc pipe and some silicone to help seal the whole thing.



Then I was overjoyed when I found that these also fit perfected to the center of the IBC lids!!!

Looking good Mudmonkey. I see you are starting small - NOT!

Unfortunately I didn't think that a 2 inch Affnan siphon would be wise, and reducing to 1 inch, then expanding to 1.5 inch for my siphon, with the past s that I could find, would make it much too tall. So, alas, I have had to simply drill a hole in the corner to hold my siphon.

Before I go further, I really must thank my two helpers, Scott and Udon. Without them, I really wouldn't be here today.



and

Thanks Arbe - it is actually quite compact... I had imagined that it would take up the whole yard. It has only taken up my whole life instead (in a good way, of couse).

I then cut off the top of one of the IBCs and went to work on my first-ever SLO.

This trickle of water was absolutely the first sign that I was doing something right - I had been absolutely unsure until then...

You can see the FT, elevated by about a foot, in the background. The SLO was again made using 2 inch PVC pipes and connectors, reduced down to 1 inch (which will become a thorn in my side later on)



BTW, the long pipe in the picture was just for testing. I promise that I sand down my pipes after cutting them....

This post shall be called, "All I want for Christmas is a proper hole-punch and a drill-press."



It turned out to be around 480 holes to be punched and drilled. My sad little Black & Decker was complaining the whole time. Then promptly ran out of juice after the second pipe.

It taught me never to use a glorified electric screwdriver for drilling again....

I was too angry at myself to get photos of this next episode.

It turned out that, with the GBs sitting on top of the STs, they were too high for the water to gravitate from the FT into them. Like a young man a little too eager to please, I had gotten everything wet before time. What I mean is that I had already filled up the FT, and there was water in the STs.

I had two choices, raise the FT, or Lower the cage on the STs.

I tried using my car jack to raise the FT, so that maybe I could put bricks under it, but that didn't work too well. The metal IBC base started to buckle and I gave that up before it all went to hell.

The other choice was to cut the metal IBC cage to lowers it, while still keeping it above the lip of the ST. After trying to do this with the cage in situ, and almost putting a hole in the ST, I had to remove the cage from the ST. Because the ST had water in it, this - of course - caused massive distortion that ripped the pipe out of the adjoining ST.

There was indeed water, water ever where. Thank god there was beer to drink.

STs were drained, cages cut, all replaced...and that was the end of 'that' day.

Today, after spending a couple of days with the pump and timer, making sure that the siphons where starting and stopping correct - I felt brave enough to add the "poppers" - which were the growing medium that I decided on. They are the only fired clay balls that I have found here, in Thailand.



I wanted all 10 bags of XL size poppers, but had to make do with 7 bags of XL and 3 of M.

As I ran out of XL sized poppers, I added the Medium sized one and though, "hmm, those look a little small. I wonder if they'd get pass the siphon filter."

Of course they did...

How things looked today...



Alas....my final kick in the nuts for today was that, since these clay balls still needed to absorb water, they floated with the water every time the pumped kicked in. Never in a million years I would have guess that the floating balls would lift the siphon guard up with them. This of course allowed millions of these balls to get into the siphon and screw up the starting and stopping of them.

Another lesson learned and a mistake that I will not make again.

For now, this is my solution. Hopefully once the poppers stop floating, I will not have this problem any more.

Excellent work. I wish I had enough space for a system this big.

Glad you salvaged the ft-st height problem. I recon cutting the leveling and alignment too fine is one of theist common problems/regrets for most people of their first system.

If u have 5 ibcs, how did you end up with 1 ft, 3gb, and two sumps. In my head, one of the components will be a different size to their siblings, or you will have a bunch of stuff left over.

P.s nice toes

It's early days mudmonkey and you have made a lot of progress. The clay should settle down allowing you to feed your fish, pick your produce and drink beer while enjoying it all running smoothly.

Looking great MM

Interesting that the media guard floated up, I wouldnt have thought it would.

and yes, nice toes