Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sounds about right. I might just go to the lake near me and take out more crawdads and maybe some blue gill to put in my FT until the temps get lower and i can put some trout in.

My system is fully functional, except for two growbeds but I will get to those later. I need to get an end cap for my venturi drain, one of my crawdads got sucked up and got stuck in the piece of PVC connecting my FT to my radial flow filter. I will have some pics soon.

I finally got the some pics up. I have my first grow bed up and running !

more pics

Awesome! You might want to turn the PVC pipes so the water goes strait down instead of across the growbed. Wou want to keep the top of your media as dry as possible.

Yeah, i will next time. I already glued the pipes on my first GB but i am waiting to finish my other two once i have worked the kinks out of the first one.

How to say this nicely... Never glue your distribution pipes together! Very bad things will happen! Where do your solids go after your SLO picks them up? Into your distribution pipe. Hopefully, they then drop into your grow bed. The reality is that solids will build up in the pipes, and you need to disassemble them to clean them out. You may decide to cut them off at the elbows, and just push fit new elbows on. It will be a little smaller, but you want it to rest on your media anyways.

Yeah, i thought that my pump might dislodge the PVC but i will try it. Hopefully most of the solids will be taken care of in the radial flow filter but i am sure there will be some that get through. I will make sure the other two tables are not glued and the pvc will rest on the media. If solids glog the pipes then i will cut at the elbows like you said.

You only really have to glue anything under pressure... being pumped....

Anything else doesn't need to be glued...

... It is under pressure...being pumped... I am using a 1900 gallon per hour pump to pressurize my watering system. Il will try and do the second table without glue and see what happens.

I went to the river today and caught five 4 inch shad that i put into my system. I figured i could use them soon as live bait.

One tip I picked up on the forum is using silicone to 'glue' the joints.
Silicone won't do an awesome job of gluing but will seal with a little strength.
So you should be able to twist the joints apart for servicing while it hopefully has the adhesive strength to do the job.
Or so I understand it, best of both worlds so to speak. High pressure would probably blow silicone sealed joints though.
(I'm only sharing what I've read, not what I've done - totally unqualified opinion )

Sounds look an idea that is at least worth trying. If need be i can always go with threaded joints so i could unscrew the PVC as needed. but that would probably cost another 20 bucks.

A stainless steel screw can work wonders or keeping things together.

good idea! I am begining to think that I am going to run into problems once I get my second growbed working. So currently I pumping from from a 50 gallon barrel that is feed from my FT after it flows through my radial flow filter (All under gravity). The water is pumped from the barrel to the growbeds and then drains into a 45 gallon sump tank. From there it is pumped (the pump is on a float switch) to the FT. When the water is added to the FT the SLO sends the water back through the filter. My issue is that the pump going to the GB's drains the water almost faster then the FT can fill up the barrel. I will try and make a video to clear things up.