Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Aaaagh! This morning started with a real HSM! At some point last night the pump to the fishtank came off its pipe and started pumping straight up like a fountain... and over the side of the sump tank. So I walked out to do temperature checks and feed the fish, and found this:



That is not a good thing to see before your morning caffeine!



I estimate I lost about a thousand litres of water, roughly one quarter of my system volume. The fish are fine - their tank stayed full, just with no water circulating, and the air pump kept them nicely oxygenated - but they're on short rations until I know whether or not the bacterial colony has been affected by the amount of tap water I had to put in to top up. I added just enough to keep the pumps submerged, and hopefully the rain we've got predicted over the next few days will actually happen and replenish my losses!

Blaaargh. That wasn't fun.

On a happier note, my potatoes are growing well:



While I was waiting for the tank to fill, I did my usual growbed maintenance stuff, and cleaned some roots out of one of the siphons. Nice healthy-looking ones:



...but the only things near that siphon are the perpetual spinach seedlings, which are still tiny, and the tomatoes, which are in root pouches to - you guessed it - try to keep their roots confined and out of things they shouldn't interfere with, like siphons. Soooo either the perpetual spinach are putting on a lot more growth under the surface than they are above, or at least one of the tomatoes has muscled its way out of a seam and is taking over.

Ouch Mel! Glad the fish survived ok

What sort of fitting was it that came adrift?

It's a short length of the sort of flexible pipe you get in a lot of irrigation systems, connecting the pump to the rigid PVC - there was a ratchet clamp holding it onto the barb fitting, but it worked its way loose. I've propped it up with a taller brick under it so there isn't as much strain on the joint.

Those plastic ratchet clamps are #@*^#@"" yes it may cost a little extra and dont go the ugly green shed, go to a agricultural supply shop and get metal pipe clamps as they really are the ducks n#ts

I'm thinking that's the way to go, yeah. My growbed supply piping is all the same stuff and I'm now eyeing it suspiciously!

I've seen that thin walled poly pipe used in garden irrigation systems with the ratchet clamps let the water out in hot weather a few times- I don't trust it except for non-pressure attachments, such as at the GB inlets. I'd never use it near a water pump outlet, although for pumps running full time the pipe shouldn't get too hot.

I can attest to functionality of the steal pipe hose clamps. We got several buried for our long PVC water pipes. We use an old-school plumbers torch to heat the pipe before tightening the clamp using a ratchet and socket to get them really tight. Good luck

Normally the head on those clamps are the same as a tek screw. I use my tek gun - carefully!

It's a good idea to have your pump up off the bottom of the sump if you have critters in there, means it can never drop below the level that the pump is set at in a catastrophic failure scenario

My pumps run 24/7 and the joint that failed is underwater 99% of the time, so I'm chalking it up to vibration rather than heat. I actually used the flexible pipe on that pump partly to make connecting it to the plumbing pipe easier, and partly to reduce the amount of vibration it transmitted to the sump and fishtank - so I guess it was doing the job!


I got one today (note to the place I bought it from: if someone phones up and asks if you have worm clamps, perhaps instead of saying "yes" you should say "yes, but we're almost out and only have one or two of each size right now...") and put it on the joint where the plastic ratchet clamp failed, so that one at least should be safe for now! Doing them up is a bugger when the only screwdriver you have to hand is a bit too small.


Yeah, both my pumps are raised a bit for that exact reason! I'm going to need to lower them when I get my second rank of growbeds into operation, though, to make sure they're below where the water level can drop to if all eight beds fill at once. (I know it's not likely, but that doesn't mean it's never gonna happen, and if I don't allow for it you can guarantee it'll happen...) The way my pumps are designed, they can't drain the sump down below about 2-3 inches even if I put them right on the bottom.

Glad to see you caught it in time Mel
Spuds are looking good too

It is always good to have a little good luck with your bad luck.
Glad your fish are ok.

Spuds are looking awesome and keep putting up new shoots! They seem to like it in that root pouch all right. I need to get the other one set up and plant out my watermelon seedlings soon, they don't like the seedling tray much.


I reckon catching it before it was worse counts as a lot of good luck. Didn't feel like it at the time though!

Fish are lively and hungry, but I've got a slight ammonia reading so I think I knocked my bacterial colony down a bit. Bugger. They're stuck on short rations for a little while. The gudgeons and yabbies in the sump seem to have taken it in stride, at least; one of the yabbies moulted last night (saw it in its pipe next to its old shell) and the gudgeons are out swimming around.

I tweaked a couple of things to funnel as much water as possible into the system from the hoop house cover instead of running it off sideways, and the rain over the last few days did an awesome job filling it up! That's a relief.

My friend's four enormous goldfish have moved into the aquaponics and seem to be loving it - the biggest one has been surfing in the current from the pump every time I've checked on them since moving them in on Thursday evening. They were originally in a pond (and had kind of outgrown it), but then moved into a 4' tank indoors when the pond got taken out in a garden remodel. They've been kept healthy with a lot of tank cleaning and water changes etc, but they need way more space than that so they're permanent residents of my system now. If I ever want to run trout I'll need to find them a new home first, but I'll sort that out if and when it happens.

The mostly-red one is the biggest, and the speckly red and white one is second:


The peppered silver one is the smallest, but still pretty big:


And this elegant fishie is Stealth, the only one with a set name. I know, I know, he doesn't look very stealthy, but he was all black when he was smaller and lived in a black-lined pond, and the name has stuck.


Stuff is growing well but is showing a deficiency I need to correct - anyone got any suggestions for getting P and K into the system without adding much N?

There was a guy in Adelaide used to be active here, his goldfish swam in a tank about 600/700mm wide but over 4 metre in length you should have seen the size of those monsters.

Cant even remember his name, but if by some chance he is still around and biews this please put up a pic or two. Was an amazing system he had too.

The weather broke! It's been stinking hot and humid for days, so this is a massive improvement. The temperature dropped six degrees in about ten minutes!