Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So I've decided to make room in my backyard to fit an outdoor, fullsize system.

A few months ago I finally found fulltime permanent employment after almost 18 months of joblessness. From work I have managed to wrangle some pieces of broken PVC pipe, a green tub and soon I'll be bringing home two IBCs.

This has led me to a slight dilemma. The system I want to build is going to consist of 2 large growbeds, 900x1200mm, 2 vertical towers for strawberries and a vertical garden. I just don't really know how I'm going to incorporate dual IBCs and such a large tub. I was thinking of using the tub as a sump with a couple of goldfish or something in just for pretty's sake, but I'm not 100% sold on this yet.





PS: Sorry about the image sizes, if anyone knows how to resize pictures in the "[IMG]" tag it would be much appreciated.

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Thanks Charlie, I'll remember that for the next update.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/131237160286 can anyone think of a reason why a bilge pump could not be used? Due to location restrictions I'm going to have to build a 12v solar powered system or fork out for a outdoor power outlet to be installed which will cost only a little less than a battery and solar panel.

I don't know from personal experience but the consensus seems to be that they are not rated for continuous use and wear out and fail fairly quickly.

Where did you get that tub from, looks a cracker!

And welcome to the madness!

Pinched it from work along with the pvc pipe and hopefully soon a couple of ibc's.

What work do you (sorry to be nosey, but I like knowing what places good containers come from in case I can try and get some ahaha)

I work in a feedmill. The tubs come in mixed in with nonsaleable dogfood that we mill down to bilk up feed.

Have a look at automotive coolant pumps.
far better and more efficient than a bilge pump and available in a lot of sizes

Hi Alex, am starting my first IBC system too, glad I'm not the only one mad enough to try it in the middle of summer

Saw your other project, looks interesting

Thanks Alex!

Scored these from work today. Slowly working out a system design that I'm happy with. Going to use the grey 780L tub as a sump and the 2 green ones as grow beds. Then I'll use an IBC as the fish tank.

So here is the 3 tubs all lined up.

The 2 green ones will be the actual grow beds and will drain into the larger grey one which will sit beneath them. This will be the sump which will then pump into an IBC sitting beside them. Next step is to amass the plumbing and the IBC. Hopefully it won't take me too long.

Nice tubs. You will have a great system there with the IBC fishtank. There are a couple of things that I figured out along the way which I wish I had my head around when building my system, but you may already be across this.

Just make sure you set the FT high enough to allow some fall to the growbeds and some headspace for water to back up a bit above the SLO - and it would help to make your SLO 70-90mm to get enough flow out. I made the rookie mistake of having bugger all fall, no headspace, and putting in a 32mm SLO which was way too small (that was the size of my inlet pipe so it made sense to me at the time...). I increased ithe SLO to 50mm and it now barely copes with the flow as I have only a couple of cm freeboard spare in the FT. I will be adding another 50mm SLO to feed additional GBs soon.

You should have plenty of biofiltration and solids treatment with those nice deep GBs so long as you stock to your wet gravel volume (25 litres of wet gravel per fish) but you may struggle with having enough plants to take up all the nitrates produced. High nitrates can inhibit plant growth, an issue I am struggling with at the moment. Just did another part water change today to drop them down some more as its back up to 200ppm.

Also, leave some space in you layout to be able to plumb in some filters after your fishtank, in case you want additional solids removal down the track.

I look forward to seeing your build progress.