Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Mel Redcap- You were saying what my inner voice was telling me.... more support (especially in the middle). I knew I should have listened to it- thanks for saying it out loud! I plan on restructuring the third storage shelf unit to place it as a middle support (3 across). I'm thinking that will do the trick- I also cut some 1x4's and will lay them under the GB. Your electrical info makes sense. Appreciate the comments.

Rininger85- Sounds like you have quite a few tanks to make use of! <-- Amend that. I just spent some time on your GH thread. Wow! nice work. I share many of the same viewpoints as you in terms of retirement, time left working etc.. I also have to deal with the cold weather and your passive solar design is really nice. I am starting in my basement, and someday I will graduate to greenhouse. I am starting to rethink my designs... our family loves salad greens, so I may try to maximize DWC beds after this initial phase in lieu of media beds, which will keep my produce and vertical growing space maximized (I believe). With all of those tanks, the imagination is the limit!

I started collecting tanks long before I started down the aquaponics road... I have a bit of an addiction to raising fish, so finding aquaponics is a little bit cheaper way for me to get my fix rather than the saltwater fish I was keeping...

I was able to keep the greenhouse from freezing this past winter, but still have some work to do to finish sealing the foundation so I hopefully will not lose as much heat next year, plus my system should be in better shape next winter so hopefully I will actually be able to keep it warm and growing next year instead of just keeping it from freezing. Still a lot of projects to get done before this coming winter though... Summer just started but it will be over in a flash...

Dwc is definitely the way to go for greens. Ours went crazy, grew faster than we could keep up with eating them so I've been feeding a lot to my chickens and more to my compost pile. I need to start lettuce at different times so we always have some but not all ready at the same time like now... But this adventure is all about learning... I'm documenting as I go, so hopefully each coming year gets a little better each year.

Rob,

The learning aspect of this journey seems to be the most rewarding part. I hope that I will have "too many" veggies next year...

Slay

System Update:

After a frightening encounter with electrical wires in the wall, I hired an electrician to install a GFCI outlet in the ceiling (the ceiling was their suggestion for water safety).

I added additional middle support (another shelving unit, and crossing support boards) for structural integrity, and installed PVC pipe (no glue yet):





Water test to follow...

Slay

Water Test Results.

Note- adding water really brought the system to life! Very neat feeling to even fill the fish tank!


A couple things I learned so far:

1. Supporting and aligning PVC pipe was a little more difficult than anticipate. I think zip-ties solves my issues there.

2. I added a spray bar divert from the pump back into the fish tank, and I believe it is taking too much water pressure from my pump (no water was fed to the grow bed). I capped off the spray bar 'T' and the water fills the grow bed in about 10 minutes. I've thought about adding a ball valve and keeping the spray bar, but my air pump has a second air outlet which seems to waste air anyways, so buying another air stone adds oxygen and I can keep water pressure adjustable into the grow bed.

3. Speaking of those air stones... I have 1 large stone in my tank, and it is awesome- it makes some nice fizzies which wet the outside of the tank a bit. I will have to come up with a nice tank topper to prevent fish suicides and keep the fizzies in! Any suggestions would be more than welcomed!

4. I added more water than necessary (volume of grow media is not present to displace probably 40% of the water), and the grow bed fills in 10 minutes. The bell on my siphon seems to sit crookedly on top of the bulkhead, but it did fire properly (this was also exciting). The bed drained for about 4.5 minutes. This seems long to me- I may decrease the flow rate to see if I can still trigger the siphon and drain a bit faster.

Next steps:

I am planting seeds, buying clay pebbles, washing said clay pebbles, and glueing PVC (not all of it).

A couple of questions to add- If I really don't want water to have a water accident in my basement, should I install another overflow-type pipe in the grow bed? Does the siphon offer complete protection (with media guard)? Does anyone think I should keep the spray bar and fuss with a ball valve and/or possibly a bigger water pump? I was thinking of installing a union right above the water pump in order to extract the pump for cleaning- is this work the effort?







Any suggestions are appreciated.

Slay.

I don't think you need to get a bigger pump, if anything you want to decrease the flow rate to the gb as you said. Once the media's in there it will flood and drain much faster. My bed takes roughly 8 mins to flood and 40 seconds to drain, so thats roughly 1:10 flood to drain ratio. If the bell siphon is well tuned it should work on a much lower flow rate. So it sounds like the pump's powerful enough, question is how to find optimum flow to gb and divert exess to the spray bar... i have no idea though its doable... perhaps someone else does

Set ups lookin cool! what lights u got?

Try running the t for the spray bar off a higher point, maybe all the way up to where you turn to go in the bed. The problem is water is taking the path of least resistance. There is less resistance pushing through a bunch of small holes down low than there is fighting the head height to get to the bed. I just ran in to this same issue when I tried adding a t off my existing line to run up higher to NFT tubes. I had to move the tank supply line up high to match the head required to get the water up to my nft tubes, then drop the water back down to the fish tank. I posted a picture of the reworked plumbing in my greenhouse thread this morning.

Danny- thanks for the info. Your numbers give me some reassurance about the pump, flow rate etc... the light I will be using is the Agrobrite FLT48 T5 Fluorescent Grow Light System, 4 Foot, 8 Tubes. Bought it on Amazon.

Rob- your explanation of the spray bar failure makes total sense. I will apply lessons learned in phase 2/3- I think I'm still going to go with the second air stone for now (just seems easier). What are your thoughts on an overflow pipe in the Gb if the siphon somehow fails? Is this overkill or should I do it?




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I don't have any experience with siphons in this particular application. I personally just have an open standpipe and have constant flood, so I don't have to worry about anything going wrong. Then if power goes out my plants still have water too so they don't die. I do occasionally remove the standpipe to change the water height. I did not glue the standpipes in so I can just put a different length pipe in for different stages of plant life (higher pipe to flood the bed for starting seeds, etc.)

I learned a lot over the last couple of months, however my posting has been lacking. I told my wife at the beginning of this journey that I would probably kill a lot of fish and plants before I learned how to produce quality plants. It is true. The next couple of posts will get us all caught up:

I started by planting seeds in my germination kit:


I discovered that the lettuce seeds I have don't really like the heat mat that I have under my tray. Also, I drowned the first couple of batches by overwatering. So-in short- I soaked my seeds too much because they dried out initially from the heat. I had essentially 2 of 7 seeds actually germinate. I have since adjusted my methods and don't use the heat mat (and use very little water (the plugs are just damp). Here is a pick of one of my latest batches:


I washed 5 40 Liter bags of hydroton by hand and setup my 8 bulb T5 light fixture. I started disliking the media bed method (all the washing). Something just seemed very inefficient about handling the media (and wondering how much I would need to handle it in the future). I stuck with it, and planted my beds with the new seedlings:



I tried washing the soil plugs off the roots of the seedlings thinking this would prevent any "dirty" soil from entering and polluting my system. This killed every one of my seedlings that I tried it with. I have been using Rapid Rooter plugs and they are simply too compact to remove from the seedlings without causing root damage. I tried planting a couple with soil plug intact and they survived transplant, so I have been sticking with that method.

Slay

Let's geek out for a little bit. CYCLING is like a magical scientific JOYRIDE! I was slightly nervous to start, because cycling was the first step that indicated that my system was coming alive. I used pure ammonia from Amazon, and added approximately a tablespoon a day. My ammonia rose quickly and my nitrites started very high and continued that way for weeks. PH started high. Stuck with the process and waited. It was hard to wait, as thoughts start to creep in about whether I did everything correctly. After about 30 days, nitrates started rising (from 0), and nitrites started lowering! Woo hoo! Ammonia disappeared and I had created an environment where the beneficial bacteria moved in to do all the heavy lifting! Seriously- cycling was fun.

I moved on to adding fish. I debated which type and variety to use with a relatively small tank (55 gallon). I have always had dreams of using bigger fish (Tilapia, perch, or Koi). I don't know if anyone else has those fish in 55 gallons, but it didn't seem big enough so I went and got ornamental tropical fish. I got 2 Danios, 3 Red Dwarf Gourami, 3 neon tetras and a Farlowella catfish. 1 Neon tetra died within a day but the fish store replaced it after I showed them the (good) water tests. The system has been a bit high on PH but everything else has been good since fish introduction:


The lettuce seedlings grew quite well, and my system seemed to be what I thought it would be... it was awesome! I was doing aquaponics!


My seemingly perfect system was unfortunately not so perfect behind the scenes. My adolescent lettuce plants began to brown around the edges of leaves and browned quite rapidly:



I adjusted the lights to be higher, and lettuce continued to shrivel and brown. A Gourami died randomly. I raised the lights a bit more, and planted more seedlings to replace the dead ones. I pulled the first couple plants from my system- they were not the full, green, energetic heads I was striving for:


Slay

It's 12:13 am on Wednesday night. I am doing what needs to be done. I am cutting part of my plumbing (the return to the fish tank), and my knuckles won't stop bleeding. I am tired but know that I have to address my system before I go to sleep. The system needs to be able to run. Let's back up to the beginning of the night...

I stop down at about 9pm to check my system and notice that my bell siphon sounds different. I looked at the grow bed. The media had shifted and the planted tilted awkwardly. It's running, I had raised the stand pipe height a few weeks ago because my plants seemed a bit dry. Now the whole bed was shifting during the flood and drain of the siphon. As I got closer to the siphon, I realized clay media was (wrongly) abundant in my fish tank. Some balls of clay were floating, and others were at the bottom of the tank, with fish swimming around seemingly unaware of anything awry. I removed the bell and peeked inside:


Clay pebbles had gotten past my media guard.


I should have put a brick or something heavy on top of the media guard, but I hadn't. The media guard had risen just a bit, but enough to cause an enormous amount of media through to the siphon. The drain pipes to the fish tank were full of media. I could heard them as I gently shook the pipes. I attempted (for a couple hours) to rid the siphon of clay media. I withdrew many pebbles by hand, scraping my knuckles on the media guard slats as I reached in and out. I hammered the media guard down, attempting to move it back to the bottom of the grow bed. It didn't work. After reaching and scratching and pushing for a long while, I stepped back and looked at my system. My plants were still crooked and unhappy. The plumbing was still clogged, and I needed to go to sleep. I needed to change my system. After reading many posts here, I had some previous advice running through my head... get rid of the bell siphon. I was in love with the "coolness" of the siphon and it functioned admirably, yet my bed had too many variables possibly contributing to plant growth failure, and now my plumbing and media was stopping my system from running entirely. My goal has been to produce nice heads of lettuce, not wow visitors with the scientific wonder of a bell siphon. I had (what I believed to be) enough oxygen input into the system via 2 large air stones in the fish tank, so I made the move and removed the bell.

My wife texted me at about 11pm asking if everything was alright. I texted her (no) and that I was getting the saw out to cut my system plumbing (I shouldn't have glued the lower plumbing since it's gravity fed). I started cutting the PVC piping to free the system of clay pebbles clogging water flow. My wife stopped down later (bless her) to check on me. After expressing my frustration with the current state of the system, she asked if there was anything she could do to help. I gingerly asked her if I could cut and "borrow" part of the screen from our back door for an emergency fix to plumbing. She agreed (so long as I fixed the screen next spring) and I cut the screen door in order to add some extra media guard screening to the existing standpipe.

I had cut PVC and removed all media from the plumbing from the grow bed to the fish tank, cut new PVC, and installed screening on the standpipe with a hairband I found :


I had now converted my system into constant flow instead of flood and drain. I was hoping this would alieviate all the media movement and pressure on the media guard in my system. I still wasn't able to get the media guard repositioned all the way to the bottom of the bed, so any tips would be much appreciated. For now, the screen prevents any floaters from entering the drain plumbing. Since the night was already late, I made a makeshift solids filter out of a coffee can (since solids filtration had been on my mind for some time):



That late night and previous washing and frustrations with clay media has changed my view on aquaponic growing methods. I am already looking forward to giving DWC raft growing a try. Something seems so unnecessary about all these troubles that involve media (movement, cleaning, guards, plumbing clogs). I can't help but shake this feeling that I want to ditch the media grow bed methods... right now time and money keep me from converting anything yet.

That's all for now.
Grow on!
Slay