Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Will that work?

Hard to say for sure, but it should work. The rock and water is very heavy.

Thanks, I'll keep an eye at it when I'm filling up and if needed I'll add more support at the middle.

As far as the drainage I was planning on connecting the three half barrels together and having a common siphon (affnan style), or a flush valve a-la barrelponics.

Or what would you advise, I don't want to make a siphon for every barrel, it would be too many to get working correctly.

I have a siphon in each of my grow beds and never have any trouble with them.

the sides of the barrels may start to bow out...

Reinforced the grow beds and did about 60% of the plumbing. The I cut the top of my IBC to find out that my "clean/food grade" IBC is not so clean/food grade.

Upon initial inspection when I bought it it looked completely clean with no odor at all, but found out that it had some kind of glue because I can peal a thin layer of clear dried out glue. I threw it in water to sere if it was water base and I guess it is because it turned white.

I think I'm just going to get in there and remove as much as possible by hand and then take it to the car wash to pressure wash it, could and should I use anything else like vinegar to wash it? Boiling water?

Clean it with a bleach water mix, rinse thoroughly, and leave it in the sun for a day or two for the bleach to break down in the uv light.

There are lots of food stuffs that will dry a bit like glue. Like Milk (some old fashion paints used to be made using milk as the glue to hold the pigment to the walls.)

I'd say manually clean out and then pressure wash to get it physically clean. And then you could use hydrogen peroxide or bleach to make sure there is no unknown bacteria infesting it and then let it dry out in the sun before set up.

It doesn't look anything like dried out milk, could it be something that would be toxic to the plants, fish our me? Whew I peel it off it has a lot of elasticity kind of like school glue (which is non-toxic)

A thorough clean will sort things out. A number of members have used ibcs that came with all sorts of "dangerous" or "toxic" substances in them. Unless they are free, I think it's better to just pay the $40-$50 extra for good quality ibcs that have only contained food ingredients. Got to ask how much your time is worth cleaning an IBC for two days.

I had milky white water once in my 55 gallon system it ended up being my calking didnt dry perfectly

I would definitely pay more if I could readily find food grade ibc in my area, in the mean time I have more time than money.

I meant to say silicone not caulk

Have made a little more progress.

Cleaned the fish tank and installed the uniseal and preassembles the slo.

I ended up using loop siphon for the growbeds with pvc and tested to work without problems.

I need advise on the pipe from the slo to the GBs. Should I glue it or just put some silicone to it to prevent from leaking?

Silicon will be fine. A little goes a long way. If you put too much on it will be as good a glue anyway.

I only used more than a finger smudging on the pipes once. After needing to destroy the pipe to get it out of the angle fitting, I decided never to do more than a smudge ever again.