Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Go the kegs... People will trade you home grown veggies for beer...

It's all getting clearer now, ditch the veggies, grow peanuts. A complete diet. Fish tank gets turned into a hot tub.

Ok just make sure the grow bed frames have supports under them for the kegs, that way you keep the sun off the kegs and still get your grow beds.

Thought I'd post a few pics of our design for an auto siphon. We tried a few others but found we had trouble with breaking the siphon.


The extra leg has two cut out notches in it which then ends in a cup. So when it drains below the cup edge it cannot fail to break the siphon.


Picture of our solids lifter, since this was taken we have added a vent cap to stop the fish from escaping. :-

Manifold for strawberry towers



Vertical towers



Our plumbing is FT -> Solids Filter -> GB -> Sump ->

So we cut the vertical towers into the sump -> FT line. So the question is will there be enough ammonia for the bacteria in the vertical grown tubes as this water has already passed through the grow beds?

It is actually a good thing to send basically clean water to those kind of towers, otherwise you risk gooping up the top of the tower and having the water overflow down the outside of the tower. The water's first pass trough the media beds will have done a good job converting the ammonia to nitriate and filtering out the large solids and the plants actually want to use the nitrate, not so much the ammonia or nitrite. Just make sure you protect the top of the towers from sun causing an algae matt to form which could cause overflow problems if it becomes too thick.

+1 this Ozgal. Great beginning! All the best!

What's it going to cost me to have a system like this? Roughly.

Looks great. The strawberries should do well, I wouldn't be concerned about the nutrients unless you have almost no fish.

How are those strawberry towers attached and what are they attached to?

Thanks for the feedback, We have now covered the tops with end caps. Already getting strawberries.

Thanks Nanniode, we haven't really kept track of the cost as we are too scared to!

Hi Scotty, the feed/manifold pipe is hung from brackets on the greenhouse, then we removed one barb end from the valve and press fitted it in. Drilled a hole in the back of the tower and pushed the other end of the valve through. The towers are buried in the grow beds about 30mm, so they are pretty well self supporting, but we put a strap around the top of the towers and over the manifold pipe just to be sure.

Great design for a siphon, not seen a siphon like this before. Very unique and an innovative idea.
It looks so big to me. Can you please explain the dimensions? Is it a 1-inch pipe? Is the cup simply placed or glued at the bottom? How big is the gravel guard?

Hi Nan, yes it is 1" pipe. We found we needed this size pipe to get the siphon/flow rate. Actually thinking of trying 1 1/4". The cup just sits under the vacuum breaker pipe with the tips holding it in place. The gravel guard is larger than we wanted but it was the only thing we could get that was food grade. It's actually a bucket. Having said that it makes it easy to see any roots trying to come through.

Bit of an update, 100 Silvers went in last Friday, fish flashing Sunday, salt went in today. Oh well least we`re not worried about how to add salt anymore!

Had to pull all the strawberry plants, the goldfish in the ibc are looking after these for the moment.

Growth on the plants is fantastic, already pulled about 10 lettuce.



Yabbies are happy in the sump, dining on peas and carrot and hopefully not each other!

Daves also done a bit of work on the sump cover :-



Not treated pine!



Just have to get some flashing folded up for the lid surrounds.

Back to making the remaining two beds inside the greenhouse next week