Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks Willem,

I see you are in Montana, not too far from me.

We should perhaps make a plan sometime and get together. I just reviewed your systems, they look really neat.


At this stage, I am still experimenting and getting my first system running, once this is going, I will be expanding to other systems as well. Still doing some research on what I want to do.

Hi Lear300
Hi i am francois from the friendly windy city Port Elizabeth
looking good

I use constant flood as a tool regularly. That is one of the things I like about siphons, you can change between them easily. I recently had a water quality issue, and I put all of my beds to constant flood, and the problem cleared right up. In fact, I would recommend it while your system is cycling, as it helps speed the process along.

Hi there......nice to meet you too

So, I had a disaster this morning. My pump almost ran dry. The three grow beds managed to sync themselves and I almost lost my pump.

Going to have to do some work this weekend to fix that. It cant happen again

Hey Lear dude,
Still dig the neat painted look. What's you plan to boost your sump capacity?
I know you have one.
I have to live vicariously through you because it's raining hectically hear so I cant go out and play.

Hey Mr. P,

You have the rain, we have the cold. And I am not a fan of winter. My water temp is currently 9 Deg C.

But I digress, my sump is giving me nightmares

I have a couple ideas, one is to install a second sump next to it and plumb them together to maintain a constant water lever, the other is to install a new sump, with bigger capacity. My third idea is to get a "pre-sump" for lack of a better word. This will basically be a 50 liter drum, buried so that the pump sits lower. I can then reroute the fish tank overflow to this as well as plumbing the sump into it with a 50mm pipe. This will permanently submerge the pump, but will increase my static head which will reduce my flow rate. So I need to do some more calcs and see what will be best.

I am also contemplating changing one of the beds to a constant flow bed as mentioned above, but I think this will be a last resort, as I don't want multi operating systems within one system. I will probably build a constant flow system as a separate system later on anyway.

Another option is a DWC, which will increase the volume of water in my system drastically, and won't effect the head, but I am not sure I am ready to experiment with more systems yet. I want to get the basic system running and operational before I start adding.

My reasoning for this is that if something goes wrong, there is lots to fix, but if I do it in "segments" then I can isolate issues and fix as needed.

If you have any ideas, let me know, I am open to suggestions.

Dude if it was me, being lazy, I would just put another IBC, cut it to the same height as your current one, paint for prettyness , join the 2 drains together with the correct couplings and open the taps.

Fill up the new sump 1st and let the chlorine offgas for a few days before opening the taps. Goes faster if you put an air done in there. (did you spot the big words I learned

Hahah....new words like chlorine off gas ? Very good. Will google that but I have a borehole, so not much chlorine in there.

I am super lazy this morning, still have not done my water tests.

I forgot to mention that my temporary solution seems to be doing an awesome job, I just added another three hundred liter of water to the system. So when all three beds were full, I refilled the sump in order to get the pump running again. So far it seems to be working rather well and my sump level does not drop below half

If this is good or not, is yet to be seen. Will keep you posted.

Is it still raining there?

Naah by the time I slid out of bed it was just cloudy.
The rain filled my system up significantly, the sump is almost brimming.
The only hassle is that the siphons don't break properly when their drains are under water.
Will use the extra water to vacuum the fish tank tomorrow.
I had to paint my new DWC tank black because the DPC I used to clad the other tanks and beds was really close to the end of the roll. I hate painting stuff.

Hey Mr. P,

I need to vacuum my tank too. Please explain how you do this. I have a lot of sediment on the bottom and I want it out. Same in my sump.

Also, it seems that my temp fix of the sump is working, turns out the extra water is all it needed. Still monitoring the situation to ensure no further issues, and still considering a pre sump of sorts. Will let you know what's happening.

Could I ask you to send me that spread sheet that you monitor your water chem on. I cannot get mine to look so pretty and professional, so if you don't mind, I am going hijack yours and input my figures accordingly.

On that, I seem to have misplaced a document showing what the base or optimal ranges of the water should be. So I am currently monitoring my water but have no idea what i should be aiming for. Anyone with a link for me?

Vacuuming the tank: take a piece of thin pipe (hose pipe) stick one end in the tank suck on the other end and get a siphon going.
Then use the end of the pipe in the tank to suck up the sediment. I taped the end of the pipe to a stick to give me more control.
Just be careful with the thickness of your pipe the thicker is is the faster it will drain your tank. you need a bit of time to clean up.

Tank capacity: Think you still will have to make a to boost the tank capacity, it's just a matter of time till the random nature of things has all the beds drain in at the same time, then you lose your extra water over the edge. Then they all fill at the same time and the sump runs dry

Can mail you the spreadsheet MSExcel 2013 need your email address though.

The water chem goals:
PH: sweet spot is between 6 - 6.4 (it starts higher then falls as the nitrification process starts to work)
Ammonia and Nitrite need to be 0 or as close to it as possible
Nitrate: Needs to be there for the plants to eat not a real issue as it only seems to become an issue for fish at very high levels when it inhibits oxygen uptake by the fish.

I got some water treatment grade Calcium hydroxide to push my PH back up, it's been running at 5.5 for too long. They said it was R39.00 ($3.50) and I must pull round the back - the bag was 20kg and they gave me some poly pipe off cuts to finish the reticulation for the DWC tank no charge. So i have a life time supply because I only needed 9.1g

Okay....its been a while, so a quick update.....

so I finally managed to track down the right people at GDARD. (Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development) My Application forms for buying and releasing of Trout into my system are being processed.

Question for the Johannesburg guys.....any idea where I can buy Rainbow Trout fingerlings in the Gauteng Province. if I buy from outside the province, I then need to get an import permit aswell?

My water chem is not right for fish yet, last nights test yielded the following results:

PH - 8
KH - 2dKH
NH4 - 5mg/l
NH3 - 0.27mg/l
NO2 - 1mg/l
NO3 - 50mg/l
PO4 - 4mg/l

the only constant is the copper content that remains at zero.

I need to figure out a way to drop my PH, or will that sort itself out? I am currently on day 27 of cycling, so I imagine I am about half way there. The "sacrificial" veggies are looking really good though.

I mentioned a little while back that I was having trouble with my sump being too small, I have decided the best solution for me is to get another IBC and make a bigger sump. This is a quick and easy fix and I will then have two additional "beds" which I can use to expand the system. Any ideas from the forum on what I should do, without causing too much havoc to the current system?

Here's a dude flogging tilapia for less than half of what i paid for mine
http://www.gumtree.co.za/a-fish/krugersdorp/mozambique-tilapia-fingerlings-r-3-50/1001168190290910001960509