Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I made a Durso standpipe for the system. It has completely eliminated the gurgling drain sound of the overflow. Wow. I've GOT to do this for the living room tank; that one is LOUD.

I can't figure out how to embed a Flickr video, so you'll just have to click on it, sorry.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladylong/8499787102

Here's the Durso standpipe. This is a modified version I found somewhere...it takes up less space than the ones that use elbows.

I cut some 1/2" deep slots in the end of a length of 1" PVC -- basically just left two tabs sticking up. Then I epoxied it into a 2" end cap.

(The teflon tape doesn't really need to be there. It was a reused piece, and I just didn't bother taking it off.)


The holes in the end cap are to let air in. You start with one tiny hole, and then enlarge it until the noise stops. I drilled a second hole instead of enlarging the first one. (Pure laziness -- I didn't want to change bits.) That was enough to do the trick, for me.


End view.


See my previous post for installation and results.

Great progress so far! I might have to look into plant !t.

I do not understand why the forum insists on logging me out whenever I come to this thread. It makes it rather difficult to post in it. [EDIT: Aha! It was my signature link doing it. I think I have it fixed now.]

Henry decided to go on a walkabout today. My husband came home and found him flopping down the hallway while being barked at by a frantic Pomeranian. I'd think she was frantic because he's nearly as big as she is, if I didn't happen to know she doesn't have the sense to realize she's barely bigger than a peanut. I think it probably had more to do with him not obeying whatever orders she was barking at him. (She thinks she's in charge. I keep telling her she's not, but it doesn't do any good.)

Anyway, Henry seems none the worse for wear. When my husband messaged me at work after putting him back in the tank, though, I thought I might have to come home and medicate HIM.

Conversation with one of the doctors in the hospital where I work:

Doctor: "So what did you do on your vacation?"
Me: "You'll think I'm crazy. I built an aquaponic system..."
Doctor: "That's not crazy, that's cool!"
Me: "...in my bedroom."
Doctor: "Okay, that's crazy."

This doctor you were speaking to probably knows that cray people don't think they are crazy. Therefore, your belief that you are crazy nullifies your actually being crazy.

This morning before work I was mulling over why one grow bed was flooding and draining every few minutes, and the other was only doing it once in a while. I got out the level and checked the common drain pipe, and it was a teensy bit lower on the end that wasn't draining as often. So I got the rubber mallet and banged on stuff to try to even it out, making myself late to work in the process.

When I came home, I had the bright idea of flaring the standpipe, because I'd brought my heat gun and metal funnel into the house a while back. So I did.

Now neither grow bed is flushing.

I've made the system so quiet that I've almost convinced myself the pump is no longer working. Except it is. The flow rate looks the same as always, as far as I can tell. But my bell siphons have stopped flushing.

I guess I know what I'll be doing for my day off tomorrow.

What.. removing your "bells"... and going constant flood....

I've been doing that at night, to make it quieter. But I'm hoping to figure out why they stopped. If I don't, it will just keep bugging me. If I decide to go 100% constant flood, I want it to be a voluntary decision on my part -- not because some inanimate polyvinylchloride got the best of me!

Hah... stupid inanimate polyvinylchloride thingy.. think you've got the nest of me huh....

I'll just take you off... and throw you in the shed....

That'll show em....

My favorite thing about you, Rupert, is your mastery of subtlety.

And yes, you're probably right. I'll probably just give up for now. Because it's only one day off, and there are boxes to unpack, and a grandtoddler to play with, and I really can't say why I wanted flood and drain to begin with, especially for a bedroom system.

When my granddaughter was a baby, she learned sign language before she was old enough to talk. One of her baby signing CDs was called "It's a New Day," and "new day" was one of her favorite things to sign. So when I saw a rose named "New Day" that's yellow, (or "lello," in toddlerese), I had to buy it. She's not really old enough yet to have a favorite color, but "lello" is requested often enough that I think it's a contender.

So anyway, I get home, and I have this rose, in one of those tall skinny root bags they put roses in, and I'm working for the next umpteen days and have no idea where I'd want to plant it even if I weren't working AND it weren't rainy and muddy and cold and miserable outside, so I just set it on top of Henry's tank, leaning against one of the grow boxes, where it could get some humidity and light.

It's been there for 4 or 5 days now, and is sprouting leaves like CRAZY. It's not even in the water, just NEAR it. I guess the humidity generated by an aquaponic system would be higher in nutrients than regular humidity. Maybe. Or the 6500K bulbs I bought are really good ones. Or something.

All I know is, the rain had better give me a break this weekend, because I have a rose to plant. (And hopefully another grow bed to build in my greenhouse system.)

Oh, also, I got an Aqua-Lifter. The aquarium overflow siphon is now hooked to the powerhead in the aquarium to keep it from losing siphon, and the siphon that feeds the small tank that's part of the multi-part sump is hooked to the Aqua-Lifter. It sucks air (and water) from the top of the siphon inverted "U" and spits it into the tank, which provides a tiny bit of circulation in there, and I've also stuck in a bubbler, since without the flood and drain going in the grow boxes, there's not enough ebb and flow to keep the water stirred up in the little tank.

This is the sump. I can't remember whether I posted a photo of it before, and am feeling too lazy to go look:


Honestly, I can't fit anything else under there. There's a light over the little tank now, and the Aqua Lifter and the small air pump in the picture are crammed into what little remaining space there was in odd corners. (Once I got the plumbing in, the door wouldn't close any more with it mounted there.)

The little tank has various mosses in it that I've collected from our property, along with a colony of snails. The mosses are experimental, to see which ones are adaptable to underwater living, and to help with the ammonia/nitrate load. The snails are to help with cleaning up the mosses that turn out to not be semi-aquatic, along with the eventual algae.

The plumbing design isn't great for providing flow through the tank, but I was working with some severe space limitations, and since I didn't have the Aqua Lifter at the time, I didn't want to use no-holes overflows to chain it between the buckets, because that just had too many possible points of failure for my liking.

So, I'm still trying to think of good ways to add more water movement that would entail less use of electricity. If anyone has any ideas, let me know. Meanwhile, I'll just leave the bubbler in.

It turns out you can grow rosemary from cuttings.


This makes my daughter happy, because she just discovered she really likes rosemary.

There used to be a rosemary TREE where my fish tank now resides. The novelty of having rosemary wore off quickly. Especially when it ended up in EVERYTHING Mrs. Maggi made.
Notice how when I have guests, I do all of the cooking