Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Earlier I did 2 ammonia tests, one with water temp at 15C and other at 29C, there was no difference at all, both tests show that ammonia level in my system is 0mg/l.

sweet!

Checked the water temp just now, it's 19C usually it's 15C on a hot day, today was not one of those, the max ambient temp was 18C. So I think it's safe to say that the solar heater works pretty good. Hope it helps a bit when it is raining.

Lekker broe!

Thats exciting Jaco. I like how you recycle things (pallets)

I'm a bit dissapointed, I bought a 2000lph pump today for the solar heater, hoping i would get roughly double the flow (previous pump was a 1000lph borrowed from my water feature), I used to get 180lph and now I only get 200lph for double the power input. Didn't think that 100m 15mm pipe would limit the flow that much.

Sounds to me like you should be running two of the 1000 lph pumps... Or run your pipes in a more parallel arrangement, i.e. manifolded to have more pipes with shorter runs.

I forgot about the parallel idea, thanks Ron, will try that tomorrow afternoon.

Got some 25mm poly pipe and connectors today, going to build a inlet and outlet manifold today and put the outlet into the GB to get more filtration.

Parallel configuration works perfect, output now at 800lph. Unfortunatly I cannot pump that into GB, GB and bell siphon are way too small for anything more than 400lph input. So I did this:
The reducer is just there to agitate the water a bit so it can intruduce oxygen in FT.

It bothers me a bit that my water is so dirty, is that fine for the tilapia?

Hi Jaco,

Looks good. So nice to see your system evolving. Any plans to add grow beds?

I think Tilapia are pretty tough but I don't keep them so I am not an expert but from my reading it does seem to be one of the desirable aspects of Tilapia is that they are hardy fish.

Regards, Martin.

if the dirty water bugs you too much, use a few old socks over the pipes to catch some of the stuff like filters for a few days and that may help clear it up for you. You only want to do this temporary, short term cause the socks can actually clog up with bio-slime and give you problems.

Tilapia not only do fine in murky water, they prefer it.

Thanks Martin. This system is just a test setup untill I have the funds for a much bigger system, so I don't think its worth investing more money on another GB unless I find a sponsor

Thanks TCL and Ron for the info, for now I'm leaving the FT water as is, it is probably going to take months to become clear in any case as I used Theewaterskloof dam water to fill FT.

Going to transplant some of the seedlings I started a while ago as nitrates are building up fast, a week ago nitrates were at 25mg/l, last night it were at 100mg/l

Yep definitely time for plants!