Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Interesting design Mon. A vid of it in action would be cool.

Yea, that looks fun to watch in action!

Charlie / Ron

I'll get a video done once I've sorted things out.

Correction - I said:



I meant that I haven't! Possibly an idea is to find a suitable jar with a plastic lid and heat mould around the lid, which would need to have a hole cut in to it only leaving the threaded part.


I measured the pipe I used to attach to the jar and the diameters are:

Inside: 48mm
Outside: 54mm

Thus, the thickness of the pipe is 3mm.

I believe this is a BT grade duct pipe used for cabling:

http://www.drainagepipe.co.uk/products/ ... -2670.aspx

Which makes sense since it was used as a cable conduit pipe for my garden/pond electrics (which I had to dig up).

The 3mm thickness made it a bit trickier to heat up and mould. I thinner PVC pipe would have probably been easier.

Regards,

Mon

Hi,

I had some time to do some more work on my glass bell siphon.

I needed to cut it to size and make the flow and break holes. This is how I did it.

I measured and scored where I wanted to cut the tube to length and also drilled four 16mm holes along this line:



I then cut the pipe along the scored line - this will be the 'feet' of the siphon and the arches will be the flow holes. I'm not sure yet whether these are actually big enough to provide enough/good flow during siphoning:



I sanded down the edges and smoothed out the lines to make it less jagged and not prone to trapping/catching anything:



Above and between the arches I drilled four small holes which will be the siphon break holes:



The important thing about the siphon break holes, as per my understanding about bell siphons, is that it should be:

1. Higher that the flow holes - obviously enough.
2. Much smaller than the flow holes.

Number 2 is important as it means the main flow of water is through the flow holes which should mean the water level (during the siphoning stage) should go lower than the siphon break holes, which means that air is more likely to enter the siphon break holes.

I performed a quick test and the siphon made and broke at the first attempt - so I'm quite happy at the moment.

I will make a video of the glass bell siphon in action when I next get a chance.

Cheers,

Mon

Hi,

I finally managed to get a video done of my glass bell siphon in action:




I think I need to improve on my video editing!

Cheers,

Mon

Awsome.

Thanks - it does aid in troubleshooting when you're able to see what is going on in the bell siphon.

I made my media guard. I knew that cutting slits in it would have been easier.

However, I decided to go down the eejit road and drilled holes instead...

I got two bits of A4 paper and stuck it together and measured out where I wanted to drill the holes and stuck it on the the media guard pipe:



Then I drilled the pilot holes:



I took the paper off and then used the pointed part of a flat drill bit to drill a hole in each pilot hole:



I'm hoping that'll do the job!

Cheers,

Mon

Hi,

One problem I have with using my pond is that it is the spawning ground to frogs and toads - and this ultimately mean tadpoles.

I don't think I really like the idea of tadpoles being pumped, dumped and stranded on to the top of any grow bed. This won't be a problem for most of the year - but it is a problem right at this moment for me in the UK.

I came up with the idea of a 'tadpole bypass'. This is essentially a net pot connected to the media guard via piping - here it is all connected up:



The inflow to the grow bed will dump the water in to here. The pipe will allow any tadpoles to eventually get flushed back down via the bell siphon. The inflow water would be angled such that it will hit the side of the net pot first - so most water will not go down the pipe first. The bottom of the net pot is below the top of the standpipe - so eventually it will start to fill as the water level rises and tadpoles can then swim down the pipe.

That is the theory anyways. Worst case, I can visually see if anything is trapped in the net pot and do something about it.

I may use another net pot inside this net pot - so it will make taking anything trapped easier just by taking the top net pot out. This will probably mean the bypass pipe is redundant.


We'll see if this tadpole bypass works soon enough!


Cheers,

Mon

Hi,

And here it is - my somewhat unorthodox growbed:



Note: the pots are actually the same size - just the angle of the picture taken. The middle pot is higher than the side ones)

The pot in the middle is the 'radial flow filter'. Although the flow diverter (aka fish food container) is not in the middle of it! I'll probably redo this at a later date - I just used what I had at the time. I've put some bio-filter media in the flow diverter just for fun.

At the moment I have not got any ball valves to limit the flow of water going to the grow bed. I improvised and just put an 90 degree elbow fixing in to the outlet hole. It's not stuck or attached - it just stays there by the force of the flow of water.

Here is that tadpole diverter in action - or at least a picture of it:



The siphon is just starting so this is at the high water level mark. You'll notice the bypass pipe is fully submersed allowing any critter to go down it.

Not sure how all this will work in practice - but at least it is a start for me. Just need to decide now what to grow in that limited grow bed space. I'll will be adding another grow bed like this to the other side of the radial flow filter.

Cheers,

Mon

Hi,

I cheated and got some plants for my setup:



From left, going anti-clockwise:

* sweet pepper
* strawberry
* cherry tomato
* wild rocket

Just a few things I thought I'd try for now. Not sure how well these will do.

Thinking about it now, I'll probably move the tomato so that it is at the 'back' so that it won't over shadow things once it starts growing.

Cheers,

Mon

I love your design, very cool

Love the critter catcher!

How's it working out?

Hi,

The tadpole bypass (or critter catcher) is on the whole working sort of OK. I've seen a few tadpoles in it and next time, or time after, I look they are gone.

However I think they may be out of water for too long. I think I need for the floor of the net pot to not have any holes. This may be case over time when it may get blocked with string algae - but I might put a plastic covering over it. The tadpoles don't seem to be sucked down the hole as much as I like - a since the water level is just the same as everywhere else in the grow bed.

Some are also get stuck with their tails in the gaps of the net pot and I have to angle the inlet to try to flush them out.

My plan is now to put net pots on the outlets of the radial filter and then have an open outlet going directly to the pond.

Cheers,

Mon

Hi,

I've just acquired (for free) an Alpha Technologies Pinnacle Plus 1000T UPS (rated at 1000VA/700W), plus an external battery pack for it.

http://www.alphatechnologies.com/de/pro ... x?&lang=en

The UPS unit itself has 3 x 12V 7.2Ah batteries. These are connected together in series to create a 36V 7.2Ah battery pack.

The external battery pack has two sets (in parallel) of 3 x 12V batteries in series. This gives a total external battery pack of 36V 14.4Ah.

Connected together this would give me a combined battery pack of 36V 21.6Ah:



There is an option to add in another battery pack to provide more capacity.

In the grand scheme of things, 36V 21.6Ah ( = 777.6Whr) is not going to provide that much power - but it is better than nothing!

I have considered a solar-panel/battery setup - but this would require me buying things! I may still do it - but I already have a grid-connected 4kw solar PV system, so using a UPS backup power for my pond/aquaponics setup is the cheapest option for me at the moment - especially when it is free. Although, I need to check the status/health of the batteries.

Potentially, the batteries can be replaced with 9Ah ones that are the same physical size. Or I can hack it and use much higher capacity batteries (but physically bigger than the current ones). The UPS vendor has indicated that the charging unit inside the UPS is only 1.5A so charging the batteries to full might take a while for these larger capacity batteries - but I suppose this is not an issue if only used for occasional emergency backup.

This UPS also has a USB and RS232 port. There is also an optional SNMP module (if I can source it at a reasonable cost) - so I may experiment with some form of monitoring and/or data-logging.

Cheers,

Mon

Hi,

I started work on adding two more grow beds (tubs):



These are being fed from the filter to the left, out of view. I have removed the tadpole bypass since I now have a net pot on the outlet from the filter.

I am now using PVC pipes to get water to the grow beds from the filter, not flexible tubing. I have used T-pieces, instead of ball valves, to try to regulate (by adjusting them up/down) the flow of water to the grow beds. I'll eventually use tie-straps to secure the pipe to the grow beds.

I've still got to make the media guards - so the two outer grow beds have no media at the moment, only the glass bell siphons in them. I made the glass jar siphons exactly the same way as my first one. All three grow beds siphon out directly in to the pond.

Cheers,

Mon