Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My pump is rated at 8500 ltr per hour,but with the lift when the sumps drop is roughly 1.7 meters,timed into a bucket its output drops to roughly 5000 ltr per hour. The tanks get turned over slightly more than once an hour the rest is pimped back into the sumps.
I wish now i had used four barrels connected rather than just the two i really didn’t take into account how much water it takes to fill the fish tanks,i reckon i only have a third of there volume left when its running.

Sorry about the late reply Sav.

At 4000l/hr, 50mm should do fine.

So if everything is at rest the grow beds are empty, the sumps are full and the fish tank is full???
Just finished reading your system thread, very nice.

Thanks, just what I wanted to hear as I have a bunch of 50mm fittings sitting there.

Whoo Hoo, ready to add the grow bed media now.
BUT, what to use, I feel scoria would be the best due to its porous nature giving a huge surface area for bacterial colonisation although I gather its rough on the hands. I will need approx 1m3
Shopping around for prices I nearly had a heart attack, particularly the huge difference between Townsville and Brisbane.
Could anyone point me towards a reasonably priced source or suitable replacement available in Townsville?
Thanks

Yes thats it,trouble is no room for expansion with out further sump capacity,i do also need to plumb in a float switch for auto top up and thanks for the kind words.

Well first part appears to be working as planned, the four water delivery pipes with the elbows on the bottom does impart a circular current and swished the dirt to the middle of the tank where the slo is situated.


, the slo works well, the break siphon valve works as planned.


I need to lift the far end of the distribution manifold a mere tad to even the flow a bit more then I can balance the flow to the individual beds better. Then I will find out if all the GB siphons work.
Thats tomorows task along with the photos.
Still cant make my mind up what media to use though.
Anyone know if black quincan is ok to use?

All the siphons work, takes approximately 22 mins to fill each bed and 4 mins to empty.
They all start with no hiccups at this flow rate and all stop flowing with no problems.
I will be interesting to see the time difference once the media is in place.

The delivery pipe is 50mm and fills up with the far end from the tank open to stop any airlocks.
The overflow also 50mm is directed straight back to the sump

The balance pipe between the sumps is 50mm and uses a male and female 50mm to iron thread couplings (one screws into the other) with one gasket from a sink and the other gasket cut from a piece of bicycle innertube.
I'm running it tonight to check out the noise levels as I think they may be a tad high.
I can run the inlets to the barrels under the gravel which will cut some out but the flows into the sumps is quite loud.
Anyone have any ideas how to cut those noise levels down??
One really cool thing this arvo was watching the bees queuing for a drink at the small drips from the fish tank break siphon, I didnt think of taking pictures till they stopped.

My word, what a mess.
The grow beds are now full of red quincan (they ran out of black) and the water now looks like reddish brown sludge.
I will run the pump to get all the water levels set correctly then maybe stop and allow the mess (hopefully) to settle and siphon it out.
The initial washing was a waste of time just as others have stated but I still am amazed at the amount of sediment that found its way into the water.
I cut the noise down drastically by adding another elbow and pipe to direct the siphon outlets to below the water level however this prevented the siphon from triggering until I placed a 10mm hole just below the second elbow. Now the siphons trigger with no problems and stop with no problems and the noise of trickling water is now virtually eliminated.
Making the side and end panels to enclose the sumps tomorrow.

Quick update and a stuff up.
Built the cage to hold the shade cloth and strung that up, still awaiting delivery of another 30 meters to finish the job.
I will remove the brick support at one leg and replace with a hinged bolted leg so I can make the side panels easily removable.
My water was registering at 8.4 pH, 2 litres of vinegar and a litre of unknown concentration of HCL barely shifted it down to 8.2 so off to the pool shop for some more HCL and added a cup seeing as the previous amounts didnt shift it much.
Bad mistake, the pH plummeted to below the reading possible on the chart. Hmm! a tad acidic methinks, gently added small amounts of potassium bicarbonate to bring the pH back up and its remained at 6.5-6.7 for 24 hours so added the charlie carp and a tad of ammonia to get a reading after 4 hours of 0.5 ammonia.
So I guess I am now starting the cycling process.

About time I did an update.
Almost finished the shade cloth with tank water registering 35'C, down to 32 today.
Slung a cup and a half of ammonia in yesterday till it registered 4 on the scale, nitrites were at 5.
Today ammonia is at 0.25, nitrite at 0 nitrates at 80 (very difficult to differentiate from 40 to 80)
I'm using a small aquarium air pump injecting into the water delivery line from the sump, this pushed the air down to each corner at the bottom of the tank without having to use a high pressure air pump.

I only have one side clad so far, it will be held in place with a screwed knob once its painted white.

These bok or puk choy were planted mid december, all the seeds were scattered over the gravel in what I thought was an even pattern but such does not seem to be the case. The climbing spinach cuttings were planted just before xmas.

Very pleased with the rate of growth so far.

these unknown seedlings (from an old packet of asian greens) were sprinkled in on the 23 Dec but I have no idea what the are, I also sprinkled a heap of silverbeet seeds in but nothing seems to have happened with them so I tried some more today in a very wet bed to see if that will make a difference, maybe its too hot to germinate.

I planted 6 melon seeds about the 20 december and 3 germinated and have shown awesome growth.
The blue barrel is my fresh water top up system so the chlorine can gas off and I can adjust the ph before its used.

quick footnote
Dont do the testing in full sun, I just noticed that the nitrite colour bleaches out very fast and would give a false reading.
Pushed the ammonia to 2 an hour ago and the nitrite went up to 0.5
I will check again in a couple of hours.
Just looking for a rough time for reading reduction.

this morning, nitrites 0, ammonia .25 or 0, difficult to see any difference.
The heavy rain thats o so wanted topped up about 50 litres so I think that will drop the nitrates a tad although I'm not too worried about that for the moment.
Soon be time for real fish.

The fish (jades) are in and swimming.
Lost 0ne overnight, found it up against the slo.
3 days later it seems to be the only loss (so far)
They are very skittish and I havnt actually seen them feed, as soon as the lid is raised they rush to the corners and huddle between the down pipes and the tank sides.
Nitrites 0
Ammonia 0
Nitrates plummeting, from 40 down to about 6-10 but the choy and melons have gone berserk.
Definitely need an iron test kit as the spinach is showing what looks like interveinal chlorosis (pics to come) so is probably iron deficiency or could even be magnesium deficiency.
If theres no iron I can dose that or if plenty of iron I will try epsom salts.
As an aside I slung a heap of epsom salts on my paw paws and the increase in leaf production was dramatic.