Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Keredg:

Hi Derek,

I'm happy to report the reduction 90mm to 50mm SLO's works a treat, no problems at all with one only in use, in fact I think the one that I have currently running performs much better than the straight 50mm I was using before.

When I finish the next growbed and bring the second SLO online it will improve the solids removal even further.

The pump has also been upgraded from 19mm to 25mm hose and now pumps faster ready for the additional growbeds.

Joe

Great, would be a shame to have to undo that nice pipework, fancy a holiday in spain to do mine?

Hi Derek,

I'd love a holiday in Spain just email me the ticket and I'll bring my tools LOL

The plastic plumbing fittings here in OZ make it so easy to plumb anything and if you stick to the standard size materials it's reasonably cheap, use anything other than the normal fittings and it gets a bit more expensive.

I've now added another GB to the system this time using blue stone as the media instead of clay pebbles because of cost involved. 1/2 a cubic metre of blue stone @ $38.00 was far cheaper than clay pebbles and there's enough blue stone left over for another GB.

Under the new GB I placed a 1/2 blue barrel with an air stone for Duck-weed and have left room for an additional GB in the future.

The Duck-weed 1/2 barrel has a 25mm stand pipe and a media guard has holes at the bottom only to stop any overflow problems with rain. There's no bell so any excess water flows over the top of the stand pipe and no Duck-weed will be washed away.

Its looking better every day, nice pics too

Thanks Derek

After losing 2 Silver Perch fingerlings up into the slots on my SLO’s I decided to change the design and lose the slots.

The first Silver Perch was only 40mm long and I found him dead up in the growbed, this second guy was nearly 85mm long and had been forced through the SLO slot when I added a few more growbeds and had too increased the water flow into the fish tank.

For the new design I used 2 - 90mm round to square downpipe adaptors and a small plastic basket from the local $2 shop.

The two downpipe adaptors were tied together using cable ties and a small dab of PVC glue to make sure they didn’t move, and then I cut the plastic basket to make a bottom.

The old SLO had the vertical pipes fairly close to the edge of the tank and it allowed the fish to hide when you tried to net them, and the two pipes running across the bottom of the tank also gave them another spot to duck for cover.

The new SLO definitely works better than the old system and there will be no more fish disappear up anymore slots and it should be very easy to clean when the time comes.

Love your workmanship mate. Like the sign too!

Added 3 half barrels to the system

Because of the small 500 litre sump this is about as far as I can go with this current system.

10 - Freshwater Mussels, 3 in the sump and 7 in the fish tank.

They should help clean the water and keep the tanks a bit cleaner.

Things are starting to grow a lot better now the warmer weather is here.

The Basil and Duckweed have both taken off.