Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

World's cutest tiny capsicum, y/y?

Aaaand my cunning solution for bracing the sides of the growbeds works perfectly.

On the one hand: darn, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, that will put a crimp in my plans to keep painting things. On the other hand: ow, I am sore! A day off for recovery might be a good thing...

(Of course, arthritis + rainy day often equals MORE OW, so this might not go too well. )

I finished the sloped bottom in my RFF barrel:



cleaned up the edges on half the growbeds, started priming them... one down, seven to go:



and siliconed up all the open ends of the cut IBC frames:



Partly to stop water etc collecting in there and corroding them from within; mostly so that bugs don't decide that's a nice place to live. Ants, eh. Earwigs, eh. Cockroaches, ewwwwww~! Not happening!

It is indeed raining, and yes, arthritis + rainy day = pain and swearing. But I finally drew a completely updated plan!



It's a bit stylised but hopefully still understandable. The little paired rectangles drawn under the growbeds are the besser blocks I'm going to be using as supports; I didn't draw in the wood that's going on top of them 'cause it was already getting confusing. The side and back fences to our yard are about a meter away on the right and top side of the diagram; morning sun comes from the bottom, midday from the right, and afternoon from the top; and yes, the left set of growbeds are going to overhang the 4m sq slab by about 20cm.

Looks nice and very well planned

Hiya Mel, from your plan I see you have two pumps and are cycling ft=>sump=>ft. Any particular reason you are running a type of chop 2 config and not cycling all the water through the gbs running ft=>gb =>pist=>ft?

Yup - relative heights. The tanks I'm using (because they're available from a supplier near me that will deliver free, and they're a good price, and they're a size and shape that will fit where I need them to, and they look good enough that my husband won't hate the system on sight...) come in only two heights, 51 cm and 102 cm. So I've got 51 cm of height difference to fit the SLO piping, growbeds, growbed supports, and return piping into... I drew it out on paper a few times and I couldn't make it work. Well, technically I could if I made the growbeds 20 cm deep instead of 30, but I don't wanna. I can't dig the sump in, I can't safely raise the FT, so modified CHOP 2 it is.

As for why I'm planning two pumps instead of one; it's easier to have separate pumps than worry about balancing a split flow from one pump so that the FT turns over enough and the growbeds fill & drain right, it's easier to shut off the growbeds to work on their plumbing or whatever without disturbing the fish (and vice versa), and if one carks it I've got the other to keep things limping along until I get a spare.

Aw, thank you! You should see all the versions I stuffed up (except that you can't 'cause I threw them all away )

Was going to suggest raising the growbeds to be above the FT. But they'd be too high to work on comfortably.

I know that CHOP 2 is frowned upon by some. But I ran that way for a few months - including having two pumps - and saw no change in fish health or plant growth. You should be fine with all your grow beds and additional external filtration.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Yup. As it is, it looks like they're going to be at about the perfect height for me. Seeing as I'm getting into aquaponics partly because I can't bend / crouch / etc without serious pain, I'm not about to mess with that!



I reeeally wanted to make straight CHOP work! Solids 'n' worms in the growbeds, sump staying as clean as possible, simplicity, all the reasons it's a good thing. I even considered getting a couple of extra inlets cut into the sump, at the top of one edge, so I could run the drains from the growbeds in there instead of over the edge. It would have saved me maybe ten cm.

...Then I said "*bleep* it, stop twisting yourself into knots trying to make this work. You were thinking of putting in an RFF and a mineralisation tank anyway; that'll keep the sump clean and the nutrients in-system," and just went with it.

Hoop house construction ahoy!

It looks like you have underground orange PVC electrical conduit there, I hope it wont be exposed to the sun very much, as it has minimal UV stability due to being meant to go underground. It will go pale and very brittle in a few years. Grey conduit is better, but even it really needs to be painted if exposed to the sun.

Yup, that's what it is. It's made from the same stuff as the grey conduit, uPVC - I picked it because this is the stiffer one and we get occasional high blustery winds, I don't want the hoop house flexing too much. It's going to have duct tape over all the upper/outer edges so that it doesn't come in direct contact with the greenhouse film (that would make the film degrade faster, enough that it voids the warranty on it!) and I'm eventually going to tape or paint the other surfaces too. Pretty much all of the structural bits of the hoop house are going to get painted the same colour as my tanks and growbeds; the more coordinated and 'together' it all looks, the happier my husband is going to be with it.

Soooooo there has been a slight delay in construction, as the handle of the brand new mallet my husband was using to drive in stakes snapped, and the 1.8kg mallet head flew off and hit me. In the chest.



That, uh, hurt. I'm pretty much fine, it could've hit me in way worse places (!!!), but hoop house building is on hold until a) we have a new mallet, b) I'm not sore any more, and c) my husband is over the trauma of briefly thinking he'd killed me.

Poor husband i hope he is alright.

Mel i wish you a quick recovery also.