Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The vines are pretty durable, I have had some vine wreaths and balls out in the weather for a few years now. They are greying and are now quite brittle. When they get tatty, I use them as kindling in the pizza oven. Out of the weather they last for years.

Here is a pic of the ones I finished off today - they are pretty solid and heavy. My arms and shoulders sure feel the effects of holding them up while wrapping them.


Looks like drilling is the go - hope it goes well

The hole is to stop the aquarium draining a lot if you do something silly like disconnecting the canister without turning off the valves (it introduces air into the intake which causes the pump to just trash water)

This is a poor example (as in it was built for a different purpose) of how it should work viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4670&p=170001&hilit=micro+system#p170001

you are a crack up. Thank you for posting that. It's quite elegant

grow-beds fiberglassed; some better than others


we did them out of order, with the third being in the middle of the trailer we were working over, being hardest to reach, so we moved the forth off the trailer bed to get to the third box.


We have a huge roll of fiberglass donated to our project, so we got carried away and used too much, which soaked up resin madly. So the next three we cut the fiberglass into strips. Dong smaller strips also made less bubbles, which no matter how many times I tried during setup time, I couldn't get to stay down. I finally gave up at around one in the morning. I could have placed weights on the bubbles, but then I would have needed to figure out a release agent to get the bricks or whatever off, so I said to myself, forget about it, a few bubbles in one grow-bed won't matter. I can always add some pond paint if I have issues during the water leak test, after I build the bell siphons.

Yes, I love my shop, every old tinkerer needs a shop to work and play in.

nice view!

Good Morning!
Wow! If I don't say so myself!
They are up. The grow-beds can use another coat of fiberglass resin, and I probably will before I add any media. Also I ran out of treated lumber. We only had enough to get the basic supports up. I had two helpers available and I knew I couldn't move these beds by myself. So I kicked myself into gear at around five o'clock in another plan-less shoot from the hip engineering push. Did it too. WIth only a couple short peices of lumber left over the support system for four boxes was strong enough to hold the boxes while Matt and I lifted each up and on them. I got to tell you space to move around freely is at a minimum now. Walking backwards down the boardwalk carrying one end of a big box, knowing the six foot deep empty pond is on one side and a three foot deep full sump tank is waiting trap-like at the end, is a wee-bit unnerving.
I finished installing a box of 150 screws into angle brackets holding the boxes in place at 9:00 PM! Yep, killer day here at Las Tusas Ranch.

I still need to add supports under the top boxes, along the walls and in front.




As you probably noticed, the top grow beds are at different heights. That is because of the electrical conduit sticking out on the Northwest side. I wanted both boxes to be as close to the wall as possible as boardwalk space is now limited. The south side I wanted to see how much more light was available to the bottom box by raising the top box up to a point where reaching it may be more difficult.
I wasn't able to start on the bell siphons because I could not locate the spindle shaft for the particular hole saw which fits the 1" bulkhead connectors I bought. Yesterday, I had bought the 45 mm diamond bit for the aquarium bulkhead connector which hadn't been processed by Amazon yet, so after cleaning my shop for an hour or so looking for the missing piece to the hole saw, I came in and ordered a new 45 mm wood cutting hole saw for the newer type shaft the five other new hole saws I had bought over the last two years. I hope these two ship together. They both have expected arrival dates of Wednesday so I get to put off building four matching bell siphons until midweek.

A couple more shots of the progress made this weekend in our aquaponics projects!

Its coming together Rogers. You may get some stretching plants in the back of the GB's...reaching to the sun. How to are the top GB's. Going to need a ladder to do maintenance? It's a tight space, that's for sure.

^ how high are the top GB's.

The top of the one on the right is four feet, the one on the left is five feet

4' will be fine, 5 ' might be a bit tough. Short plants in the top beds.

okay let me see if my math is correct this morning: each growbed inside measurements of .61X2X.3 in meters, which comes out to .37cu meters. times four beds:

These narrow gbs provide 1.46 cubic meters of media.
It's a start

I'm 6'1" and the wife is 5'4" so I can work in either, but she'll be only able to work the lower three. I was thinking vines in the top anyway, then I can train them to the new trellises on the ceiling. Also, pretty quick here I'll build one more bed, this next one is a DWC bed over the ST, it will also be around .37 cubic meters. I still want some thin film hanging strawberry towers over the pond as well. I'd love to figure a way to put those towers on a spinning wheel setup so we could stand on the boardwalk and rotate the towers round to reach each from one place. For now, I'm dying for water, flowing water and to get this system cycling!!!

I very much like your rock work its outstanding

Yay for grow beds!

How many layers of fiberglass did you use?