Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Stu, ponds, berms, swales and rain gardens are all effective ways of ensuring you control the water flow on your property. It seems like the waterflow came from behind the camera. Would be interesting to see the landscape to see how the water flowed.

Regards, Martin.

Martin the land looking back up hill looks like the below pictures.



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Hi Binky, I know it's a little beaten by the weather but that is a lovely piece of land.
If you look up some of the things I mentioned above then you can see how to change the land to stop this kind of erosion. I'm sure you're probably ahead of me.

Regards, Martin.

Yeah I have my buddy coming with his dozer and loader to fix it I have a pit on the property.


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Much evaporation. I have been catching rain water in a 75 gallon fish tank mainly cause it's sitting there and I didn't use it. I do plan on catching the water off the roof of the greenhouse sooner or later.

Anyhow is it ok to put the caught water directly into my fish tanks? I'm guessing it's not something I want to just pump into the FTs but put it in a little at a time?


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Hey Binky, it depends on the material of the roof. Some materials like galvanised steel are a big no-no while others are acceptable. If you have a plastic or inert material like a clay tile roof on a house then you should be okay. If you have a lot of birdlife on the roof you might want to think of filtering/cleaning the water as all the bird droppings and whatever rubbish is in the gutters will get swept into the collection tank. It just depends on your situation.

Regards, Martin.

The roof on the greenhouse is polycarbonate plastic so I'm not too worried about contaminates.

Anyhow I've been a busy boy the last two days. Built my half drum both ways grow bed tables and the grow beds. Just finished the plumbing. Will have to take pics of the semi final if the bell siphons work. Also left a valve on the side I intend on putting my duckweed table. I found a great local source for duckweed also.


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I should have known all things were going too smooth with the first 4 bell siphons. These latest two in the above pictures aren't wanting to shut off like they should. Woohoo. Made a level adjustment to one and it stopped perfect. Yes I'm typing while sitting in the greenhouse.


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Still have one that doesn't want to cut off. I made a level adjustment to it now just waiting on it to fill up and run a cycle.


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Don't know what I did to that one but it won't start either. Is there a trouble shooting thread some where that I haven't found?


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I went ahead and dug through all my crap in my shop and found a mister kit that I acquired somewhere, and built snorkels for both of these siphons. The first one cut off as advertised. The second one never was able to get down low enough to catch air. I think half my problem is the pump I'm running on this FT is prolly over sized and I'm pushing too much flow to the two small grow beds. The line I plan to use for my Duckweed pond is currently being used as a return. Though I think since this pump is so powerful I'll likely plumb in a 3/4 or 1" return to give the pump more relief.


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If I manually submerge the bell and then quickly drop it over the stand pipe it starts a full flush but for some reason they aren't wanting to go one their own. Waiting to see if they will both stop.


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After some good ole' fashioned research here on the search page I'm thinking I don't have my in flow dialed in quite right. Going to fiddle with it tomorrow after church. Though being Easter I'm sure my hopes to spend all day in the greenhouse will be dashed.


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Oh yeah hey I added a window that opens in my door on the East Side. Lol.


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So I thought it would be great to run a submersible pump that I had laying around in my third FT. Turns out it's not made to run all the time. Wow water in that tank was about 90 degrees. Oops. Good thing I caught it before planting. Gave me an excuse to buy something else off amazon.com.


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