Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I have just caught up on your thread and iam glad I did,everything is looking mighty fine,that is some great looking peppers.

Thanks Andy,

Those peppers are Habanero and Candy Cane Capsicum, the Candy Cane is an interesting one, it's a sweet pepper that is Green and white striped until fruit ripens to solid a red. They are quite quick growing and ripen very quickly, they don't stay green for very long at all, if you want them green you need to harvest them pretty quickly. It's the first time I've grown them and we've had some pretty hot days, they might not ripen so quick in milder weather.

I like hot Chilli's and I grew 5 or 6 varitities of the hot Scopians last year and found them all way too hot for me, I don't know how you can eat those guys, the Habanero are the very top of my range.

I tried some Hot Turkish Bush Chilli, Sivri Biber Turkish Chilli and Skinny Indian Chilli seeds and couldn't get a single seed to germinate, I don't know what happened there, too cold or bad seeds. I've got a few seeds left so I'll try again and see how they go this time.

Andy your Tomatoes and Lettuce are all looking great, that hot house is working a treat, and how did your C1 Bio Media go?.

Those are beautiful. Nice job Joeblow.

Thanks Boss.

The Trout centainly improved the water quality for the plants, even with the Trout gone the nutrients are still hanging in there and I can't wait to get the next batch of Trout into the fish tank.

All the years with Silver Perch, the plants were never this productive.

A great batch of Cucumbers this year, and Bitter Melon growing in dirt, wicking beds and aquaponics have all done well, the Bitter Melon in the grow bed has done very well even growing out into the fernery and over the fish tank.

The Sweet Potatoe in the wicking bed has come on fairly quickly, I've been dumping fish water in there and that has made a big difference.

Not sure on the available height above your beds but I can recommend stringing the cucumbers and pruning suckers so you just leave the main stem, fruit production is increased and with nothing touching the ground I feel there’s less chance of problems.
Still keep looking at those peppers they look gorgeous.

I know exactly what you are saying, they just took off and caught me on the hop, I bought 200 plastic clips on eBay to tie them all up and by the time they arrived it was a jungle.

I was pruning suckers daily and not winning, there is plenty of height above the grow beds and there are quite a lot up high hanging from the bird netting still covered with suckers. They are too high to reach and I keep forgetting to take a ladder down there. I've got a lot of Cherry Tomatoes that have also gone wild and I'm sick of pruning them back, it's time to pull the whole lot out, they are a pain in the grow beds I won't plant them in the aquaponics again it's not worth the trouble.

The Cucumbers and Apple Cucumbers are nearly finished so they'll be coming out in the next week or so and then my next batch of Rainbow Trout fingerlings should be close to being ready to pick up from the hackery so everything be all starting off new and fresh again.

Gee I love your Tomatoes, well done with those, I grew a few in wicking pots this year and had good yealds from each of them but I didn't like the variety or taste of any of them, I don't remember what they were but I'll stick with Tomatoes I know next year.

Andy I might have mislead you with those last two photos of the Candy Cane Capsicums, I didn't grow those, they were just to show you the colour before they rippen. I forgot to mention that they were images off the net.

All the other photos are stuff I've grown, and my Candy Cane Capsicums didn't stay green very long at all, I never got a chance to take pictures while they were that colour.

Howdy JoeBlow. I keep coming back to your upgrades as I feel the need to do the same.
I've got a couple questions for you.

Is this part of the solids uplift system.
With the irregular shape bottom on our 10Kl system the dual SLO I built last year needs improvement.
I can't see the bottom where the dual SLO inlets are, but I have a feeling there is still a lot of gunk in the low places in the tank. I'm wondering if this is the flat plate I read about but currently can not locate?
Have you measured the flow though the filters?

Hi Brian,

No that isn't part of the SLO, it's the lid of my RFF, it's laying upside down which may have confused you. The diagram and photos at the bottom have been turned up the right way and will explain it a bit clearer.

Brian I have recently changed the design of my SLO, it was OK with the Silver Perch over the years but it just couldn't cope with the extra load from the Trout solids, the mesh kept blocking up with solids and needed cleaning daily and even sometimes twice daily. The extra Trout solids also caught me out with the filtration and that was the reason for an upgrade on both the RFF and the MBBF.

On the SLO Porter from Macedon Ranges Aquaponics designed me a far better setup that runs perfectly, I don't know how you would get it to fit the irregular shape bottom in fish tank. I have lost small fish being drawn up through slots on SLO's and I was very apprehensive about using slots again but starting off with 3mm slots and working up in size until it cleared all the fish solids it allowed me to get it right and not have any worries about losing any more fish.

Brian if there is a way of shaping the bottom of your SLO to fit the contour on the bottom of your fish tank similar to Porter's design it would give you efficient and trouble free solids removal.

I haven't measured the water flow though the filters, that's all to technical for me and I wouldn't know what to do with the information, it must be the same velocity as what is being pumped into the the fish tank or there would be an overflow. I do restrict the flow up to the fish tank with a "Tee" in the sump to slow it all down so the bacteria can colonise. Because I now run my grow beds constant flow I can see how just fast everything is running but I have no idea of the actual velocity.

That looks the ticket! What diameter pipes are you running off the dual bases? Thank you so much. Yeah all I need to do is get the divers suit on and mark the bottoms
Are these secured by the plumbing?
This gives me great ideas. Thank you so much for the effort you put into this reply
Brian

Both the vertical pipes are 90mm and the bases are 90mm diam. and 100mm square.

They reduce down to a pair of 50mm "Tee" pieces forming a manifold on the outside of the tank then into a single 50mm pipe down to the filters, and both going into one pipe works well.

The SLO's sit on the bottom of the fish tank by their own weight and just to make sure the stay tight down on the bottom I have a small wooden wedge between the cross member on the lid of the fish tank and the top of the SLO's that keeps them hard down.

Brian you don't need to use square fittings a pair of 90mm to 100mm round fittings would probably be easier to fit the contoured bottom of your fish tank. You'll need to scribe the shape onto the fittings, and it wont be easy, I scribed mine with a small block of wood and a pencil in the bottom of the sump before I tried it in the fish tank. The sump only had 300mm of water in it at the time, it was still a 2 man job, one to hold the SLO down and one to scribe.

Brian you'll need to do a Lloyd Bridges or a Jacques Cousteau impersonation to scribe yours.

You betcha and thanks

If you have time I would love to see a picture of the manifold. Do the 90 mm pipes go through the side?

I will need to work out heights of the filters in the new system as well. Currently I have one 38 mm pass-through of the wall to work with.
I've tried to get water up and over the side of the fish tank, as the side is masonry, but with my current air lift system it would only come out at the surface of the water.

I have communicated with the friend who first described air lift pumps to me. He has suggested using smaller bubbles as the lift.
He uses an air lift in a well to pump water up to a tank on the surface.
It must be possible to add over the side plumbing from the SLO.
Getting more ideas and options thanks to you.

The 90mm PVC pipes are reduced to 50mm just before leaving the tank, I think it's far more ridgid having tank fittings with their screw thread tightened up on the fish tank wall than a using Uniseals.

Here in Australia the tank fittings are the same price as the uniseals so it was not a price decision, I just think having the tank fittings and the 90mm to 50mm reducers secured firmly to the tank wall makes it a lot easier to remove the SLO when harvesting your fish, just remove the 2 x stainless steel screws on the top and pull the SLO out. Using Uniseals there's allways a chance of leaks if you are pushing and pulling things about.

I'm sure with the dual SLO's you can pump a lot harder if you need to, I run 2 x small air stones down in the bottom of each SLO to help with a bit of lift, I don't know how effective they are but they must help. I agree with the finer bubbles working better, I use rubber air stones in the fish tank, sump and MBBF because of their finer bubbles plus the fish love swimming through the finer bubbles.

The 2 x strings hanging down in the photos have 2 x 90mm PVC Caps that I put over the reducers when I take the SLO's out to stop any smaller fish getting into the reducers.

Brian with your 38mm pass-through the wall outlet you could manifold it on the inside of the tank using dual SLO's and you would get more water flowing through the 38mm outlet than you would using a single SLO, it gives you the option of using the extra volume of water or throttling it back with a Tee in the fish tank if you don't need it. I think you'll find the extra volume very handy.

I designed an airlift SLO and purchased all parts but never finished it, the SLO was 90mm PVC pipe with a 100mm PVC pipe sleeve on the outside capped top and bottom with 2 x 90mm to 100mm reducers forming an air chamber, one of the reducers had a connection for an air hose (shown in the photo). Inside the sleeve the SLO had fine holes drilled around the circumference close to the bottom that allowed the air to rise equally inside the SLO without having an air line restricting the flow and gunking up with fish solids.

Cleaning up recently I found an old photo of a Hydroponic Growing Kit I was selling by mail order, advertised in the "Truth Newspaper" back in 70's, I'm not a 100% on the exact date. The cover was designed by Jon Dowding who was the Art Director on Mad Max 1977, so it would have been around 1977, 1978, and well before the internet in Australia in June 1989. It certainly bought back a few old memories.

The main feature of the kit was the "Baguley Growing Tray", the tray was designed in Australia for Carnation growing and had 2 compartments, each compartment had a drainage hole high enough to allow a reservoir of 1 litre liquid to remain in each of the bases. Watering was via a trickle system on a timed pump and the growing medium was scoria. Seedlings or seeds were started of in Vermiculite or Perlite in the hole in the Growool Cube sitting on top of the Scoria and then watered with a watering can until the roots reached the reservoir in the bottom of the tray.

The tray was designed by Frank Baguley for his Carnation and Chrysanthemum wholesale nursery and it was an early version of a dutch bucket.

https://www.actahort.org/books/141/141_25.htm
https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/agrib ... dafb844dea

The kit contained:
1 x Baguley Growing Tray
12 x months supply of Phostrogen Nutrient
8 x Growool Cubes
Perlite
Vermiculite
Scoria
Growing instructions

The kit sold for $20 plus freight, and I had to buy a minimum of 1,000 of the cardboard covers to have them die cut. I'd found a freight company that delivered the kits for $2 each, then the company went belly up after about 6 months and I couldn't find another company that would deliver anywhere near that price and my sales had dropped so it was time close it all down. I remember having to pack and shrink wrap the kits though the night after a long day at work so I wasn't sorry the close it down.

I setup a hot house and ran 20 trays for my own personal use, it was before dutch buckets were heard of and I grew all my veggies in those 20 trays for several years and when I came across BYAP, that was when my interest in vegetable growing was re-kindled once again.