Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It really is quite the place. Pictures really couldn't do the place justice either. It is something you just have to see to really appreciate.

System update:

The trout are all still swimming happily and growing nicely.

Currently, the outdoor grow beds are producing very well. We've consumed over 5 lbs of beans from one bush. Peppers have been great, but are just about done for the year. Strawberry plants are recovering nicely from their unexpected move a while back.

The bean hedge


Cherry and Roma tomatos overgrowing the greenhouse


Broccoli in one of the outdoor beds


Peppers and other vegis in another outdoor bed

This past weekend, I made a couple of adjustments to the fish tank and the large grow beds in the greenhouse.

First, the external pipe siphons were not working as reliably as I wanted them to. Once I added our new pump (The Laguna), the volume of water flow was decreased substantially. So, I switched to running the pump constantly instead of the 15/45 cycle. With the decreased flow into the beds, the siphons weren't starting or stopping reliably.

I retro-fitted bell siphons to the 3 big new beds. The drain pipe still goes out the side, but with a 90 degree elbow just inside the bed with a stand pipe. This certainly solved the start/stop issues I was having.

For the fish tank, I was inspired by the "Fish tank design" thread to add some circulation to the tank to provide a current for the trout and to move the solids more reliably to the center of our tank for removal.

To provide the current, I took a section of 1-1/4" PVC and added nozzles every 3 inches, making a nice manifold.



I secured it into the tank in one corner pointing along the side, and just slightly inward. It's producing a nice circular flow in the tank.

The fish certainly do seem to enjoy it. they'll swim against the current and swim right up to the nozzle jets, then zip away. Over the past 3 days that it has been in place, fish waste deposited on the bottom of the tank has just about disappeared completely.

I'll post some pics of the in-greenhouse bed growth in the next few days.

Good looking sparger. (That is what that PVC piece with the nozzles is called)

Thanks. I couldn't remember what it was called, and was entirely too lazy to go review the thread.

Time for another system update.

Our outdoor growing season has just about finished for the year. We still have a large patch of carrots growing in the wicking beds. I'll probably dig them up in a couple more weeks.

Our trout are still growing like mad. My wife loves feeding them. The only bad thing is that she tends to over feed the little buggars. I'd come home and find floating food here and there in the tanks, or stuck to the cage of the Laguna pump. The water was starting to become murky with particulate matter suspended all of the time.

I managed to get her to stop feeding the fish to see if the water would start clearing a bit. It really didn't, even with the over abundance of grow beds for filters.

I picked up a 5 gallon water bottle and made a swirl filter right after the fish tank to start capturing some of the larger solids. The swirl filter is doing a great job capturing some of the fish poo.

Filter number two was a square bucket, stuffed with sun shade cloth to capture some of the more fine particulate matter. I had a tiny pump pumping straight from the fish tank up into the bucket, through the cloth and out a stand pipe back into the fish tank. This worked fairly well, just too slow for my liking.

Filter number 3 is a 10 gallon rubbermaid tub stuffed with poly batting material like what you use to stuff a pillow. Water is pumped from the fish tank, into the tub, through the filter material and out a stand pipe back into the fish tank. I have a 600 GPH pump circulating the water through the filter. This filter has worked miracles at clearing the water after just one day. I'll let it run for a few more days to get the water crystal clear once again.

To handle the solids on the bottom of the sump tanks, I made a simple airlift pump and suctioned all of the solids off the bottom of the tanks into a bucket. This was deposited into my wicking beds. It should make some great fertilizer for the remaining plants.

I'll post some pictures of the filters, etc. once my Sky drive decides to behave again.