Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Things are still moving along slowly. The growbeds are actually finished and working now. I was able to source some explanded slate which was most cost effective compared to hydroton or expanded shale, even lava rock isn't available in my area. I built these sifting pans for cleaning the stalite, just filling them and shaking them off in a kiddie pool and dumping them into the GBs.



As an experiment I set 2" foam on top of the gray DWC beds instead of floating in the water so there is an automatic air gap and no air stone in them. I think the natural humidity and incoming water will keep the net pots wet enough for seeds to start and grow until their roots can get down to the water, we'll see if it works though. My other main concern is if any condensation starts leaking through the top of the GB/bottom of the foam.





I also have the tanks roughly where they go now.

We're finally live, been running on ammonia for a bit over a month and getting fish this week. I wish I would have thought about getting pictures from before the tanks were wrapped



From foreground to background: 2x IBC fish tanks, AST bead filter, mineralization tank (which is a riff on the one Web4Deb built in his new system so full credit to him there), and a MBBR with K1 media. The bead filter separates out the solids and ejects them into the MT automatically, at the same time overflowing out a bit of water back into the output from the SLOs to run through the bead filter again so any solids that escape should be filtered back out in a loop.



When I saw nitrates I put in some pole beans and lettuce and those are coming up. This is a semi-split system with 2 pumps in the sump, one for the fish and filtration and one for the growbeds so they can be turned on and off independently.


This is just a bit more of a close up of the bead filter and MT.

Looks awesome. I am jealous.

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WOW, things are coming together really well. What a great system! Do you have trouble with solids collecting on the bottom of your IBC tanks? I have really good success with the inlet water along one long edge and a horizontal SLO pickup along the opposite bottom edge.

Previously I used a cross-shaped SLO and never had any issues, this time I'm just using a straight pipe that sits in/over the drain valley so hopefully it works fine too.

Update, this is what my old cross-shaped SLO looked like:

I've had very good results with this setup.

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Nice, definitely keeps it simple and also functional.

Just an update on that. One IBC has goldfish and they keep it stirred up enough that that tank is about spotless on the bottom. The other one has Bluegill/Bream and it collects a fair bit, I'm thinking of putting 1-2 goldfish in with them to see if that helps.