Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Cool, I am hoping to grow some yabbies. How much space do you think they will need? I haven't been able to find much info relating to growing of yabbies in tanks, mainly ponds. I found something on marron which said 4 - 8 per square metre, I assume yabbies can double that at least as they are smaller than marron.

Nova

Shall I save em for monday night B2B? Some silver perch and yabbies on the barbie......

*drool drool*
dont forget the coldies!

Hi EB .. did ya get to try any Tilapia in the yabbie tanks?

Yep, I have the young tilapia you gave me in one of the half barrels.. They seem pretty happy, though it's starting to get a little cold in there now..

I thought tilapia were illegal?!

I also notice that your barrels arn't covered by a shelter - doesn't this cause problems with overflow and/or dilution when it rains?

Tilapia are legal in WA, just not anywhere else in Australia as far as I'm aware

Anyone have any experience getting the tube-in-tube auto siphon to fit in a rounded blue barrel?

Hi Earthbound, im very interested in trying auto syphons, the outside i can see but how is it setup in side, how do you stop the grave and roots from going down the syphon tube, do you have a pipe round it like the bell type

newbie

thanks

dkeen222

Hi DK, I have a elbow screwed into the bottom of the barrel, with a locking nut on the inside. To keep the gravel away from the drain I have used a piece of 90mm storm water pipe drilled with many holes.. You can just make it out in some of the pictures, sticking up out of the gravel.

I must admit though, that this was one of the systems that put me off syphons, I had lots of troubles with these syphons working, or rather not working, whether it was the way they went in to the main drain pipe underneath, or the flow into the beds wasn't enough, I don't know, but I've ended up decommissioning this system.

Decommissioning sounds so much nicer than "I scrapped it".

Hi Dkeen. I'll point out that many others have perfectly functioning autosiphons, even if our founder is "autosiphon-challenged".

ElKayBee has a lot of experience with the bell or tube-in-a-tube autosiphon. I'm better at looped autosiphons.

EB, I've been looking for locking nuts..... where did you get them from?

The locking nuts I've used were actually to be found in the electrical department.

Sorry, just went and had a look and it was a little different... Theres a threaded valve socket poked through the hole in the bottom from the inside, this leaves a male threaqd poking out the bottom. Then I used an elbow with a threaded female on one end, and a 12mm barb on the other, to lock the fittings together and head the syphon loop off in the right direction.

you can buy "poly tank couplings" from retic stores. They are alittle more expensive but have a large surface area to screw together. They range from 20mm to 80mm in standard retic sizes.