Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My dad headed back south this morning so today I have the day to myself. I started out cleaning some tomato plants that were done producing out of the greenhouse, then I planted some of the clones that I had in a bed into the beds I actually want them to grow in. I cleaned out my NOT-NFT and shut it down for now because I only had a couple things in it so I moved them to raft beds. I planted a few other plants around the new tomato plants to use up some more space better than I have been.

I decided to change my last bed from 2" supply down to 1" and added another shut off so now all of my beds are using 1" supply with a shut-off. This might not have been the best idea, combining the smaller supply with shutting off the NOT-NFT made my fish tank almost overflow, so I had the drop the pump down about 4 power levels... Will have to look up what that means for flow but for now it will have to be ok.



I added another supply to my wicking bed so now I have water at both ends to water a little more evenly.


I started setting up my indoors AP system. I put a small tote on top of one of my fish tanks and have a slow flow pump pumping water from the tank up into the tote then back in to the tank. I washed hydroton and filled it up with hydroton and have it running. I will plant some stuff in it after I finish eating then take a picture and post it.

Awesome. I too have all one inch inflows with valves. Can't wait to see what you did on the aquarium. Is it the large tank?

I didn't end up getting it planted, but here is a pic of the start up. For now just the one bed on top of my 75 gal which has 9 tilapia in it. It is the least filtered, getting to where I need to do a water change to see the fish so instead I added the bed instead.



My 240 tank has no filtration other than the sump acting as a settling tank, but it only has a couple dozen small goldfish and tetras so doesn't get dirty.

My 55 gal has 10 tilapia in it, but has double the filtration that the 75 gal has so it's clean for now.

I may eventually put beds on all three tanks. I want to experiment a bit. Have a hydroton bed and a raft bed on both the 75 gal and 55 gal since they are similarly stocked, but the 55 gal is heated at 80 degrees, the 75 gal is only at about 60 degrees right now, I'll slowly bump it up but didn't want it too warm since they came in from the greenhouse when the water was cold.

I bought a drone on black Friday. A little aerial tour of my backyard...

Stuff still growing in the greenhouse in December now! It was mid 40s and sunny today so the greenhouse was mid 60s, the hoophouse was over 90 when we were in it before lunch time.



I moved three of my aquarium growlights out to the greenhouse for a little more supplemental lighting. I hung them on funny angles to Target different beds.




These are the cheaper lights I bought to put in my fish room. Excuse the mess, I have a lot of stuff in the fish room that needs organized. I don't know if these lights will grow my leafy greens or not so I kept one of my aquarium lights inside until I see if the lettuce keeps growing under these lights or not.





They are cheap LED lights the size of t5 lights, two of them combined over the 8ft bed since it just has goldfish and some tropicals in it. The two four foot tanks I have two of the LED fixtures side by side attached to a 1x4 so I could hang them closer to plants.

I am going to start building a bell siphon. I've never built one before so need some pointers. Web4deb has a couple of videos I've watched but I can't use the same size he has, so what I've got is 1 inch bulkheads, so my standpipe will be 1 inch. The bottom drain I need to make a payment trap, is going down to 3/4 pipe enough of a change from the 1 inch? Should I go to half inch instead?

The bell I think will be 3 inch because I don't think 2 inch will sit over the bulkhead nicely. Then a 6 inch gravel guard. Might be Overkill for the size of bed but it's what I have. Also the stand pipe gets a small hole drilled at the bottom right?

You don't need a hole in the bottom of the stand pipe for a bell siphon; that's for timed flood and drain. Your bell and gravel guard sizes sound good; make sure the bell is tall enough to give good clearance over the standpipe though, if it's not tall enough it'll restrict flow and make it unreliable. On the bottom drain mine aren't a smaller pipe, I have several inches of pipe the same size as the standpipe going straight down and then a 90 degree bend to provide the necessary backpressure to help it start. I've also got expander fittings on top of my standpipes so the area where the water flows in is wider than the standpipe itself; some people go a bit further and put a narrower section of pipe in the middle of the standpipe as well, to form a choke point to establish the siphon faster. There's a lot of wiggle room.

3/4" bulkhead with pipe set 2" below media. 2" pipe sits on top of bulkhead and with cap, finished close to media height 1.5-1.75". Leaves around 1" of water in the bed after each drain

3/8 holes drilled up about 1/2" from bottom with another that tops out around 3/4" for break. 4" guard.

Drain pipe is a 1" using 1x1x3/4 T and have the pipe returning to the sump @ 1/4"/foot.

For back pressure, connect a 90 to the drain line, straight pipe with another 90 and kick the leg upward so it be around 10-15° from plumb

I also have vents at the end so it flows as freely as possible to break since multiple beds are connected to drain line.

Every so often, drain times line up and all want to dump at the same time. So make sure you have additional space to not overflow.

Valves to regulate flow to ensure that water coming in is fine tuned to feed, cause siphon, and allow break. Also making sure that not to fast that if it tries to break, and does not, then constantly keeps draining.

Adam

Was that your first flight of the drone? Pretty sweet. Almost looked like someone was in you hide. Great videos as always Rob.
Bell siphons are pretty forgiving. I'm still running the four I made in the beginning. I fiddled with them a bit, probably the most effective way to get them to work was tweaking the little tilt up of the ninety degree elbow.,as well as the length of the pipe coming off the bulkhead elbow to the tilted up elbow. Each pair of the four, drains into one pipe. I used a 3" drain on one pair and a 1.5" on the other pair. Never saw any issues for either. I initially cut a hole in a five gallon bucket for the 1" bulkhead and stand pipe for a proof of concept. My media beds are stacked so each set of drains are at dissimilar heights. Never had an issue with both dumping water at the same time.

So here is the thing... since my pilot flood/drain will be in the indoor system my current plan is to just pump water out of the fish tank and have it flow back to the fish tank. The water height will change some but it is what it is... I'm only using small grow beds that are sitting on top of the tank, and at first (and maybe long term) will only have one bed per tank that is flood and drain, the other bed will be constant flood (and only have room for two small grow beds per tank... eventually I might build more beds to run off of my 240 gallon tank but for now I'm only going to do it on my 55 and 75 gallon tanks). Eventually I could possibly drain the tanks and drill them to be able to make an overflow in the tanks and then run them all to a sump (would be nice if I could eventually combine them all in to one sump, but then I'd need to heat them all too where right now the 240 gal only has fish which I don't need to heat the tank in it) but right now neither the 55 or 75 gallon tank are drilled.

My thought is that both of these tanks while there is 20 gallons difference in capacity will be similarly stocked (right now I have 10 full grown tilapia in the 55 gal and 9 full grown tilapia in the 75 gal... eventually I'll split them out and have equal number in each tank, but for now it is what it is). The 55 gallon tank I have heated at 80F degrees. The 75 gallon tank is currently only sitting at about 65F degrees. I want the beds to be set up the same between the two tanks so I will run 4 tests at once (1. Constant flood water temp @ 65F, 2. flood/drain water temp @ 65F, 3. constant flood water temp @ 80F, 4. flood/drain water temp @ 80F). Then I can play around with different plants in each to get more experience with what plants grow best in what manner.

So with that, my drain from the flood/drains will go out the bed and I'll put 3 (or 4) 90's on it just to be able to create a P trap because I won't have a very long run before going back into the tank (the P will actually be above/in the tank... once I have both beds running for a little bit I can quit using my HOB filter and use the beds for filtration instead but I'll wait a bit to make sure I have bacteria colonized before I remove the filter).

Brian, that video was my second flight. My first flight was at my in-laws and it was pretty windy so I didn't fly very long because I was worried about breaking it. Now I've flown in some pretty steady wind and taken it up about as high as I can see and doesn't really bother me too much flying in the wind...

Picked some tomatoes, kale, Swiss chard and basil to toss in dinner last night.


Cooking dinner... Also had asparagus, polish sausage, I forget what the little cheese filled pasta stuff is called and pesto mixed in...

I ordered a bunch of seeds to start dwarf trees for in the greenhouse/hoophouse. I received the first pack of key limes today, I have another lime, two different lemons, two different mandarins, two different peaches, and cherries on the way. Just reading it sounds like it takes them about 5 years to produce when started from seed, so this will be a long term thing, I will probably try to buy a prestarted 3 year old trees in the spring to give me a heads start on some and the rest will work their way in a few years later. I think I might need a second hoop house just to house trees once I get these all going. I will have to move them in the greenhouse or the house in winter though so I can go too crazy. These are all supposed to be dwarf plants, I don't know how true that is or if you just keep them trimmed back to a small size so you can move them in pots but all supposed to work well in containers.

Indoor aquaponics part two. Got the second bed operational for the 75 gal tilapia tank. The water is really bad so I will give it a few days and see if running the second system helps to clear up the water before I do a water change... Don't want to waste good water if I don't have to.



The first indoor AP bed the plants are growing nicely. I can see roots growing through the hydroton... Kind of a nice benefit of see through grow beds... I might run to the local fish store to get some blackworms. They would probably be a nice addition to these beds, I've tried raising them before for my saltwater fish to eat but they like cold water and I always kept them too warm or didn't change their water often enough. They could go crazy in these grow beds because the water temp is only about 64f and they could help break down the fish sludge and be a tasty treat for the fish if they make it to the tank.

I like the way you think and carry out plans. Stunning system.

Does anyone see the design flaw with this plumbing? Specifically the supply line coming from my pump that splits at a T at the top that I have a shutoff valve to turn the NOT NFT pipes off when not in use so water only flows to the right to the main fish tank... I knew this was a flaw but haven't done anything to fix it.... We will take this as a pop quiz... What is the design flaw?