Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Have you ever caught up on the plumber's trick of salvaging expensive fittings...

CUT the old pipe off about 5mm from the fitting..
PAINT the inside (offending) tube with pipe glue and light a match, allowing it to burn vertical..
REPEAT as many times as needed, until you can force a screw-driver between the faces and lever the soft tube out.... Just be cautious to not drip glue to where it's not needed, and then damage (burn) other parts..

I also use Long-Nose-Pliers and force one blade between, and then TWIST, rolling the old pipe out..

The bride gets annoyed when out driving, and I see a junk pile with expensive fitting being thrown away..
On go the brakes and home it goes for recycling.. She knows me now, and how much it saves..
..
.

Yes sir..done that one as well as make coupling using the same method. Also making "weird" bends when your short fittings using a can of glue and a match.

Charlie, I really appreciate the photos and I found your build thread very helpful about filtration which is my next challenge. Things are starting to become a little more clear as I go along. I have my box built and the liner showed up slightly the wrong size. Making small modifications today. They sent me almost enough to make two of these! But about 10% shorter then it should have been so today I get to shorten it off a bit.

So once my box is finished I hope to plan a 2-3 stage filtration system and I will be reading your notes as well as Ryan's about filtration yet again.

Do you guys have any other reading suggestions for understanding filters? At the moment it seems the best plan will be SLO - RFF - BIO Balls- Shade Cloth. I think I can run the filters on the front side of my fence, if I am slick about it.

After reading from Charlie's 2nd system (need to learn to quote from a separate post...anyone anyone Bueller)


To be clear, I'm doing DWC not RAS. I'm fairly sure the same rules apply here though. I think I understand you would never clean the bio balls (or gravel/sand etc) but you would clean the shade cloth and RFF because their jobs are mechanical. Still cleaning them in system water leaves the small amount of culture left in place.

Do these cultures need aeration to thrive? Do people pump air into filters?

We have been slow this week, went out of town for a wedding for a few days (eventually we will have our own wedding if I stop spending money on AP... she cooks too!), the weather changed drastically its perfect for working outside. So here are the photos of what was completed.


I changed the drain to be located near the fence line where the DWC box will eventually go.


We built out the walls for the DWC. Ours will rest on cement blocks, eventually.


Toes for AP!

Here is the box, again it will live along side the fence on cinder blocks upon completion.


You can see the EDPM liner out in the back yard.


A wise pirate once said, when in doubt add more screws! This shot also shows a close up of the corner that I had issues understanding at first. You can tell from the screws on top that there is another board out of view in that corner.

By the way if you guys see me screw up say so, I want to learn!

Small length adjustment made moving along...

We smoothed out the DWC area and moved the giant box with only two people using a cool lawn cart on monster tires. First we laid down flat cement blocks because of our flooding issues here.


Then we added more blocks to raise the box. I went a little crazy with the amount of blocks I used just so it would look flush.


Starting to see things take shape a bit.


Oh yes, there will be fish... and water, media, filtration, questions, reading, searches, lions, tigers, and bears!

100th Post! Xtreme!

1000th post comes faster than expected...

Isn't it cool that almost every idea we could have....

A) Has probably been tried somewhere in the world already
B) Probably wrote a blog or a post on BYAP about how it worked (hopefully without omitting the lessons learned)
C) Can be researched before spending $$$ on resources and serious time investments.

A person could have spent a life time inventing filters Blizzard without BYAP and would have been lucky to come up with a few of the modern filter designs used today!

My toughest job is deciding which methods are true and tested versus flux capacitor BS!

Small change of plan. At this point because I have media beds and DWC, I am leaning towards RFF and shade cloth in 2 stages. I believe because of the media beds there is no reason for me to use bio balls for biological filters.

It did take me some time to understand the difference between the filtration type bio versus mechanical as well as the need for additional clarity in DWC. On one hand I would keep reading "just add more media beds instead of more filters" and I told myself I wont even need filters. In media beds especially with worms its natural (and rather awesome) biofilter.

But with DWC filtration become pretty serious business.... especially with mechanical filtering or straining off the gunk. Then I would slowly realize latter the most complex filtration systems were only being found in systems with strange requirements like DWC, RAS, very small scale, or very high stocking density. So finally I saw the pattern with its goals and for individual systems.

I have a feeling I'm only touching on about 3 types of filters though when I'm sure the list is much longer and not always practical.

You can almost smell the wood stain







There is still sand on the fence from digging the sump.

...so everyone in Australia knows she worked hard today

DWC really likes filters in addition to grow beds. Don't fear the RFF. They are a relatively low maintenance way to polish off the water before they enter the DWC.

looking good PS, I'm a bit disappointed you are not fitting a "flux capacitor" however I'm sure it work just fine anyhow.

Looking good PS. I like my RFF, but until I installed the shade cloth/netting filter before the DWC, I was having problems with too much debris settling on roots.

Slowboat... sorry to disappoint you guys, I am working on some plans for my 2018 rebuild thread to include one. By the way the 2018 rebuild is flawless on paper and I invented it 100% myself. Its also better then anything ever created and not for sale in Australia.

Where do you get a suit like that?

I expected to check this post and see some correction somewhere either with the box or the filter questions. I guess we're on the right track. Going to proceed with hanging the plywood sidewalls today.

Chris... That was it though right? Just those 2 stages? SLO RFF Shade Cloth and you're done? There sure was a lot of misinformation out there regarding filters.

I'm surprised no one came along and created a material (other then shade cloth) specifically for this reason. I saw one member who even used "an old volleyball net" to do the job. If we were cooking we would use cheese cloth. Brownies anyone?

It makes me think about pool filters and that white synthetic ribbed material they use as a fiber. I wonder if a specific type of fiber works better then another. For example 100% cotton (volleyball net) versus porch screen material synthetic. No matter the choice they're all cheap at least.

There is purpose built filter material... Pool filters are not appropriate because they load up too fast. Matala is the brand of filter material. Their main advertising push is for koi ponds.

Putting Matala into the search here sure brings up a ton of good stuff. Suddenly I have great information about filters and no more flux madness.

You can get rolls of filter material for what 1- 3' x 3' piece of matala costs. PM me and I'll let you know. The shade cloth/orchard netting works well also. Yes, on the 2 only. I don't run any filters going to media beds...just let the worms work. I'm putting up roofing now, but will try to get some pics of the GH later. Things are growing crazy in there!