Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I moved in with some buddies last Saturday and we got a system up and running. It's not pretty, but its got a special place in our heart. This will be the first of many. All criticism is encouraged, we are learning through trial by fire so don't pull any punches.

http://imgur.com/a/7UnMX

Welcome post your photos here would be better maximum 800 x 700 in size.

Just be mindful of temp swings. A system that size, if you have a hot day, you'll boil the fishies inside, but it looks like it'll be easy enough to drag inside if need be.

Pump.

Grow bed.

Fish tank. This was thrown together pretty haphazardly, but we are satisfied with gen 1. We are looking into building a greenhouse and building gen 2. We have a 275 IBC tote on standby for gen 3 or gen 4. This is an awesome learning experience.

Looks like a good start. Next thing you will want to go bigger.

I give you a few months, and then you will want to use that IBC sooner.

Gen 2 set-up

Gen 2 set-up. I added a sump and put a big tote on top as a grow bed.

Awesome lool forward tl seeimg progress

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Moving fast welcome to the forum hugeverytree!

So we moved the gen 2 system in and out of the garage a couple times because we couldn't find a heating unit that was strong enough to stand up to the last couple chills of winter. The last time (naturally) we took it back outside we bent the frame and had to do an emergency set up. We called this the Frankenstein set up. Not pretty, but it worked.

Four or five days later we constructed what has got to be the worst put together frame ever. I'm not especially handy with tools, this is all a learning process. We settled with the "put in a million screws and it will hold technique". We are now contemplating messing marrying the gen 1 and gen 2 systems together, does anyone have any advice? We also just got quite a few 5 gallon buckets, so we are going to come up with a system for that as well, maybe experiment with a swirl filter. Any and all criticism is greatly appreciated.

Front. The bell siphon has been acting up, we think that due to the picking up and putting down the grow bed that maybe some hydroton may have got in there so it isn't syphoning. Does anyone have any advice/experience with this situation? It also isn't level, later tonight/tomorrow we are going to pull it back down, get everything nice and level, and then make sure there is no hydroton in the syphon.

There is no engineering like over engineering!