Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Oh, but you have some additional aesthetics to take care of....

hmmm, im sure there are some hollow plastic bird heads out there could replace the top bottle, lol, i will see what i can find. Once it is functioning well i will work on aesthetics

thinking about connecting two together (not sure how yet) but so it can alternate flow to two beds, eg while one is draining, the other one is filling
also a sort of venturi nossle to hopefully saturate it with o2 on the way out (of the birds beak)

For some reason i keep thinking Japanese Deer Scarer.

Still, it is a good idea and it is working for you so well done.

Yeah, i was thinking of including one of those in my system somewhere when i came up with this

Oh and got one gb (50L tub) up and running today with 2 strawberry plants, 1 chive plant and a lettuce, all from the old ap system. used just an autosyphon this time...

Also added the last of the goldies from the old system....



And theres a pic here for you John, its a 360 wraparound shot, the left and right edge overlap abit...... You can see whats left of my 2nd system, and where im standing there is room for a 500L growbed or two (looks nicer in real life, the pic is well abit flat)

Daniel you have done the hard yards and got a prototype to work, the mods to improve the design will come easily


I have one fault to pick you on (seeing that you brought up the spelling thing )
fulcrum is spelt correctly.....however there is only one "m" in similar

Good work, looking forward to the pics of the mods

Lol, i'll remember that


Me too, after Janets suggestion, i have thought of other novelty heads to replace the top bottle (drunk throwing up, etc)

Hi Dan:

How slow does the flow have to be for the thing to stop then tilt and start refilling again?

at the moment the flow (guessing) has to prob be less than 100 L/h. I believe the pump i am using to experiment is 500l, and needed to split the flow, so i could use a valve to reduce the flow down. But with abit of fiddling and new parts i am hoping it will tilt back and refill at a much greater flow

update (which will be pretty common for a while, since stuff is changing every day):

filled up a second pot with mature gravel, and pumped up the last 200L or so of system water from old system (which is now off, and half gone)
Just using autosyphons atm....

Found a bunch of worms in the gravel when i transferred it from system 2 to current system(didn't add any ever)

unfortunately i didn't have time to go hunting for the pivot fitting, so couldn't work on the antiflout (hopefully tomorrow)

The outer flouter will work a couple of meters away from the grow bed it is servicing which gives me more opportunities to use it once it works well...

No luck as yet, went to a hardware store, hydroponics shop and irrigation shop. The irrigation shop had the swivel fitting but only with a hose winder setup, and they don't stock nor can they get in spare/replacement swivel fittings, the guy suggested i go to a hydraulics spot......

Daniel... an idea... if you used a stiff piece of tubing, maybe a piece of garden hose and inserted it through two steel/stainless ball-bearing bearing...or similar....

You know the ones I meant.... outer steel ring, with ball bearings between that and an inner ring.......

Mount one bearing inside/against the barrel wall, another against the outer wall... maybe if needed add a third a little disance out to support the "flout"...

Might have to find a way of securing both bearings.... mount the "flout" on the end.... not sure how you'd waterproof it all, maybe enclosed in a housing of some sort.

Making any sense??

dan if you want to experiment with this let me know as I can get you free bearings

Yeah it makes sense, if it was fully encased, the water would lubricate the bearings nicely



Thats handy, i will hold off at this stage, but will let you know if i change my mind, because....

Just finished making something that will hopefully do it. I used a piece of poly pipe, a 19mm rubber gasket, and a right angle and it rotates nicely, will test if it is water proof once the rain stops

No pics (brother has the camera) but the piece of poly pipe is flared at one end, and the flared end is inserted into one end of the rubber gasket. The right angle has had its barb filed down abit, and it goes into the other end, amd clips into the flared part of the poly pipe. It has good rotational movement, and the horizontal axis (perpendicular to the rotational axis) is nice and stiff and easily supports the weight of the apparatus........oop rains stopped off to test it

The pivot point as described above weeped a little, so i added an O ring made out of abit of 19mm black poly, and now its too stiff....

Im trying to figure out how to enclose Rupe's suggestion in a watertight box, the way i see it i will still need a simmilar thing to seal the end, that the pipe would rotate in......the ballbearings would make it frictionless.......but watertighting it would cancel out the frictionlessness <- think thats a madeup word

Warren from minnamurra made a swivel fitting for their bio-filters so the spray arm would rotate, i THINK it was made from a modified barrel union.............

can anyone remember?