Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This week I started with aquaponis again. I left the CHIFTPIST idea for a later stage. Started out with a small kiedies pool as a grow bed (might be a bit shallow ,20cm , but it's a start for now).
It is a flood and drain system with a bell siphon and a 1000L per hour pump constantly running.
I just need to add fish, gravel and plants. (I used river water to fill FT, so that should help with cycling time)

Feel free to point out any issues.
ps. i will add pictures a bit later.

Still in testing phase.
The 50mm bell over the 32mm standpipe was not sufficient so that was changed to a 63mm bell.
I dumped the trap idea cause the siphon did not stop.

Pictures of final setup. Currently I have 5 Bergriver Redfin fish in and will add onother 12 (15cm) tilapia on wednesday

Hey Jaco, that looks great. Keep the pics coming will be great to see your AP system take shape. Good luck!

Regards, Martin.

Thanks Martin, I will upload pics of progress.

Some pics of the worms that I added to GB on monday and the rope trellies for peas to grow up.

Planted some seeds (pak choi, spring onion, broad bean, chives, parsley to name a few) yesterday evening in trays. Will make a quick greenhouse tonight for trays and insulate FT.

Nice little system. I like your recycled kiddy pool

Thanks, I hope the kiddy pool idea works, it's not very deep (20cm) and a bit small for all the veggies I want to grow.

If your strapped for cash or space or materials, Go for something that uses easy to find free plastic drums or crates, and eliminate a majority of the pluming costs by making a step down overflow one into the other.
I saw someone posted a thread here recently with such a design.

So last night I got the tilapia, hope they are going to survive the winter.
I also insulated the FT with old dog food bags that have a sort of foil inner coating, just need to paint it tonight so that my yard does not look like a dog food factory. I checked the water temperature this morning and it is still the same as ambient temp but it is also the same as it was last night. Will find out soon if it helps, tilapia will die if it doesn't

Nice use of materials.

Out of interest, is there any reason why you didnt put the FT on ground level and the Gb up on the paved section. To get it all a bit lower if you know what I mean.

Jaco, that is the most inventive use of dog food bags I have ever seen. Good going man.

If you want to heat the fish tank in winter it can really help if you run the water through loops of black piping. This can heat the water and then if the tank is well insulated the heat loss during the night will be less than an uninsulated tank.

It's difficult to see in this example but have a look at the looped black piping on the lid.



And this one:



I know this looks expensive but I am sure you could duplicate this with some salvaged materials?

Regards, Martin.

Charlie, the only reason for that was space, the stuff in the back is part of the future AP setup and I would not want to break that up for the small semi- testing setup. It is a bit high but so far it works for me.

Thanks for the tip Martin, that will be my next step. Think i will make holes for the solar heater piping in the lower half of the fish tank and keep the piping below FT water level so that i don't need a pump to circulate the water... or I think I won't need a pump