Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hey jeezy looks like things are coming along nicely. im down in southern pa in york county. Things got pushed back for me i pulled a dummy and used a barrel that had a semi acidic stuff in it that crashed my cycling but all is back on course just pushed back a couple of weeks. Those nitrites should drop for you soon. keep us updated.

Ah man, that sucks. I got really lucky with my barrels. Found them for $10 a piece up in Milton PA. Haven't found them anywhere near that cheap, so I bought 10 haha.

Update:

So the air pump stopped working in the separate holding tank. Makes me worry because I have 3 of the same kind of pumps in my other tanks. So I hooked up an IP camera and began streaming a live feed of my main system tank on my website so I can check up on it while at work to make sure everything is running.

I've been on the fence with heating my tanks. I calculated the total electric cost of running my system and it comes out to $40 a year. Add 24hrs of heating that number jumps to $180. I first thought of having the heater turn on with the lighting cycle (12hrs on 12hrs off) but I read that fish get stressed/sick if the water fluctuates too much. The water temp has been hovering between 64-69 degrees. I'm not sure what it drops to at night. Since the weather this week is suppose to be colder, I have the heater on 24hrs at 65 degrees just to keep the fish alive/healthy. I know that they can survive at lower temps (55 degrees) but prefer/thrive at higher temps (70 degrees +). I'm just screwed with the situation of having a old root cellar as a basement.

Other news, I secured 5 new tanks this week. Found them on craigslist for dirt cheap. I'm up to 10 tanks (2-55, 2-30, 2-20, 3-10, 5 gallon). I plan on setting up two tanks (20, 10) in my office upstairs for a breed and brood tank. I have two computers on full time so it keeps the room temperature up so I can utilize that free heat. The other tanks I plan on using for example systems I plan to make for friends and family to get them in on the fun. I'll start another thread to document that project. However, it's wedding season so aquaponic time has been very hard to come by.

Update:

Like an idiot, overfed my fish. Ammonia has spiked to 1ppt, will keep an eye on it. Flood tank had a glitch yesterday, the siphon mechanism wasn't releasing the flush valve. The pulleys are starting to rust so the wire is getting hung up. The temporary solution was I added some duck tape around the wire to give it some thickness to move/catch the wheel better. It's running but will be looking into redoing that system once I have a weekend with nothing going on.

In other news, I built a fish stand in my office tonight. Needs a floor mat to keep the 2x4 legs from scratching up the floor. Maybe I'll decorate it some to make it look more appealing.



30 gallon tank on the top and 2 10 gallon tanks on the bottom. Will keep my breeder male in the top with 2 females in each 10. Will move the females up when the time is right then move them back when they have done their thing. The reason to keep them up stairs is I can regulate the temperature in this room better than in the basement. The heaters won't have to work harder to raise the temperature of the water as they do down stairs.

Update:

Ammonia levels are still hovering around 1ppt. The holding tank still hasn't cycled. I took out my swirl filter that sat in my sump tank and replaced it with this.



I took a 3 liter soda bottle and transformed it into a Radial Flow Filter. It then sits through a hole in the lid of a 5 gallon bucket with the overflow going into the bucket. Inside the bucket I made my own bio balls out of cicada netting. I am ordering an air stone disk to sit in the bottom to provide aeration for the 5 gallon bucket bio filter.



I cut a Gatorade bottle in half that serves as the middle cylinder for the RFF.

This week I will get my second system going as well as the breeding tanks upstairs. I need to get a another tank ready to avoid losing any fish. So far it's been almost a month and no casualties.

My plants are doing terrible. I believe the lights were too high and they were becoming spindly. I lowered them to 6" above the grow beds. I replanted some lettuce if what I have already growing doesn't come back.

Update:

Well...decided to tweak the system last night. I measured the grow bed water level and it was 5" from the top of the grow beds. That's probably reason #1 why my plants are doing so poorly. I tweaked the soda bottle auto siphon by replacing the cap with smaller drain holes that will hold the flood tank valve open longer to allow more water into the grow beds. This worked...great... ...remeasured and the water level is between 1-2".

I come down an hour later to check if everything is still working and I see water all over the floor. Great... ...The issue is, the Fish Tank is now overflowing. I installed the RFF/Bio Filter a few days ago and I believe this to be the culprit. I disconnected it and the water height in the FT is back to normal. I'm no physicist or engineer but I believe 3 liter soda bottle RFF is causing a bottle neck in the flow of water from the FT. The current set up is: 3/4" SLO outlet into the 3L RFF with a 1" drain into 5 gallon bio filter bucket. The 1" drain pipe goes down to the bottom of the bucket. I might experiment and use a shorter pipe to see if that helps the drain work faster so that it's not submerged in the water. If that doesn't help, my only other idea would be to increase the 1" drain to 1.5" and see if that makes any difference.

The good news is, the 3 liter RFF worked great. After 4 days of running, it collected a cap full of crap.

The ammonia/nitrite levels have balanced out again and I have been feeding the fish every day small amounts of feed to test the bio filter. Seems to be working but I'm almost out of water test solution with having to check the water every day.

whats going on up there? The real question is are you haveing fun. Sounds complicated man. Try to think of the easiest solution. Whatever you do dont worry we are going to make it through this thing...

LOL, what's going on is the flood tank I made is so complicated it's hard to re-calibrate it when things go out of wack. Yeah, having a blast but having a heart attack when the FT spills onto the floor. I have the flood tank working again but I can't wait to replace it one day with something less complicated.

Update:

I removed the drain pipe from the RFF so the water pressure is no longer an issue. FT still floods during the drain cycle. I increased the outflow to 1.5". FT still floods during the drain cycle. I removed the RFF gatorade cylinder and the FT water level stays about 1" from the top. (I have chicken fence on the top so the fish can't escape). The RFF soda bottle is now just a vortex of spinning water and I doubt any solids are being separated out.

The top of the SLO in the FT is now consistently submerged under water. Ideally I would have had a 1" bulkhead SLO but the previous owner of the tank drilled a 3/4" bulkhead for his saltwater aquarium sump. So the growbeds are draining into my FT faster than my SLO and RFF can handle.

Back to the drawing board.

Just had an epiphany. Dual RFF/Bio Filter hybrid buckets. I will add a 3/4" T fitting to the SLO output and divert the water into two separate streams. Each going to a 5 gallon bucket Bio Filter / RFF hybrid. I hope by splitting the stream into two with the T fitting, more water will be processed. If not, I imagine the flow of water will slow down and the RFF cylinder can be put back into place. Either way, I'll be making a trip to the hardware store for parts to build another 5 gallon bucket system and then to the grocery store for more 3 liter soda bottles and of course some beer. Maybe I'll take a half day at work to get home and see if this will fix some issues.

Jeezy,
Let me recommend uniseals, they are a relatively inexpensive way to put in an additional larger drain on your fish tank if you happen to have the right size hole saw on hand. I like the idea of a 1 1/2" drain for the fish tank so you could stop worrying about overflowing things. You could still have the 3/4" drain feed to one of your filters and the bigger drain feed to a bigger filter.

@TCLynx: Uniseals are awesome. I have 5 or 6 in my systems already. My issue is with drilling a hole in my aquarium tanks. I picked up a few tanks last week from craigslist and the guy threw in a 10 gallon tank that had a crack in it. I was going to use that tank as a dummy tank to test drilling holes. It is very unnerving to have the water level 2" from the edge.

Update:

Had the entire day yesterday to spend on my aquaponics addiction . Besides working on my second system, I did some tinkering around with this system's issues.

I spoke last about the flooding issues I am having when I added a mini RFF to the drain pipe from my Fish Tank. I tried splitting the drain into two pvc pipes to see if that would help. I'm starting to realize that the water level in the FT rises when the drain pipe "L" fitting is pointing straight up into the RFF cylinder. I'm no plumber but I'd have to say the force of water isn't strong enough to push the water upwards into the RFF cylinder and slows down the overall flow of water through the drain. I'm at the point where I think I'm going to have the drain drop down into the first 5 gallon bucket as a swirl filter and then overflow into the 5 gallon bio filter that overflows into the sump. I'll post pictures later tonight.

The other issue was the flood tank drainage cycle. The toilet valve stand I'm using must be completely level when it returns to the bottom of the tank to close the drain opening. It stopped doing this leaving enough space in the tank to allow water to pass through. The counter weights I was using were washers and nuts.



It looks pretty ghetto with all the metal acting as counter weights. However as you can see, everything is starting to rust on it.

I replaced all those parts with a 3 liter water jug that I zipped tied to the toilet valve overflow pipe. It wasn't heavy enough as a counter weight to close the drain opening. So I took 4 standard water bottles and filled them half way and scrunched them up and placed inside the 3 liter jug.



It's a good replacement upgrade as I don't have to worry about the water quality of the metal rusting off. The drain doesn't always 100% close so the water is consistently flooding into the beds. I'm going to rip it all apart again tonight and realign the pulley system and re-position the water bottle counter weights. I'll post more images later tonight.

I wanted to get an image up from the fish cam. It's a network IP camera with controls to move the camera around. It's handy to have to keep an eye on the system while away. I might add a public feed later but it would destroy my bandwidth. I'll probably just leave it with a password or something.

Update:

The breeding tank is now online. Nothing too fancy, just a 30 gallon tank with some gravel. My plan is to move my breeding pair into the tank in the next few weeks after the tank has cycled. I wanted to make it look a little decent so I stapled some fabric to it. My upholstery skills definitely need some work.

Drilling glass tanks is a bit nerve wracking and there is no guarantee you won't mess up. You can get a bit from aquatic eco systems for the task plus a ring to hold the coolant while you cut. I have done it before on one tank.

@TCLynx, I picked up a few tanks last week off craigslist and one had a crack in it. Good thing it was cheap. I'm going to use that to experiment with drilling holes etc, once I find some time.