Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well I have been busy preparing all the pipework for the NFT and strawberry tower extension.. I also received 6 air stones for my new pump so now its a bit of a spa in that FT. I also added a stocking with crushed shells in it under one of the GB sumps to raise the PH a bit as the tests are coming back 6.0 and it could be lower as the test doesnt show anything lower than that... plants are growing really well though!

I havnt glued any of the new pipwork yet as I am still laying it out and want to test it when done to make sure it works and that there is enough flow. I will start with one pump (6000 l/m 60W) but I will be changing that to two 3500 l/h pumps at 25W each so that there is a redundancy pump incase one fails as that would not activate my backup up bilge bump which is also going to be hooked up to the new above head piping (I may need a stronger 12v bilge pump as the head may be too much for it when supplying all the GB, NFT and strawberry towers.

I was lucky that dad got a lot of pipe for free.. its an od size approx 110 mm OD for the white pipe and 130 mm for the orange electrical pipe. Both the white pipe and orange is very strong.. the white pipe is actually some kind of telecommunications pipe and it was hard to find fittings for it but I found a place now. I have change my NFT design slightly so that the input is 25mm fed from 40mm and then the white NFT pipes will drain out into the same diameter pipe to reduce chance of clogging. To keep the water at a certain level approx 20mm I am going to make a small dam 20mm high from a flattened piece of pipe glued inside the pipe at the end.

Anyhow pictures speak a thousand works...

more pics

oops doubled up the last post image

Your just a fair dinkum handy man ay Tom! Really enjoying your progress.

+1

Thanks its coming along well.. I've built a strawberry tower too which I will test soon before building the rest.

Your setup looks great, we've been thinking about aquaponics for a while now. If you're ever running tours we'd love to take a look, we live on Macleay Island.

wow, impressive !!

thats insane, holy smokes, awsome work man

Yep thatwouldnt be a problem, but maybe in the New year sometime as I havnt put fish in yet and it will probably be even more interesting once some of the strawberry towers are running and the NFT tubes
But it would be great if you wanted to come take a lookaround!

So i tried to get end caps for the PVC telecommunications pipe that I have but they are way more expensive than the common PVC pipes (they wanted $8 each for them) so stuff buying them.. I have now cut a section of pipe, heated it with a heat gun to flatten it and cut circular sections to then be glued inside the NFT pipes at each end and also for the bottom of the strawberry towers.. pics to come soon when I have glued them in ....$8 for an end cap..no way!

have you glued your pipe yet. I recommend never walking away from the system for more than 5 minutes if the water is flowing through unglued pipes.

other than that, it looks good. and yes, the fittings for that telecom pipe are expensive, to discourage people stealing it from roadsides. some of the fittings are unavailable for love nor money.

I havnt glued the pipe that goes to the NFT and strawberry towers because Im not running any water through it yet.. im still running the old pipe work until everything is in place and I know it will work (enough water flow etc) then I will definately glue it.. I wouldnt be able to sleep if I ran water through pipe thats not glued unless it is in my GBs.

My dad got the pipe from some council guys out on the island, whenever they crack or chip or have cut offs left over they just throw them away so dad asked if he could have it and now we have tons of the stuff...some lengths are over 5 metres!

only a council worker would consider 5m an offcut :p

Do you have more info on this? link etc?