Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Aunty Jack must be an Oz thing. I've never heard of her either, although I figure it must be like the Boogie Man.

http://www.auntyjack.org/
Enter
look in Home movies

Aunty Jack is definitely an Oz thing! She is the creation of an actor/comedian/writer, Grahame Bond, have a look here
Aunty Jack is the one at the back in the blue/purple dress.
Her signature line is "I'll rip yer bloody arms off!"

Ron's got a much better link than mine, well done Ron!

I was watching Aunty Jack yesterday, introducing the young'uns to her! hehehe

OK, nothing at all like the Boogie Man.
Pretty cool.

nah, she's better looking!

I think many of us here grew up watching Aunty Jack.

Certainly did me little lovlies !!!

got to go watch another ep now!

Lifes not all bad eh Jaymie

Hi,

About flouride toxicity......

Since everyone else is off topic in this thread, I'll throw my two bob's worth in on the fluoride debate.

I'm a former South Australian who grew up on fluoridated mains water. South Australians live just as long as people in other states and they have much better teeth (on average) than those from other states who do not have fluoridated water.

Now that I live in Queensland, I regularly encounter scary stories of what flouride in water will do.

Personally, I'm more frightened of what the sun will do (Queenslanders suffer the highest incidence of some skin cancers in the world) and I believe that people who drink mains water have much more to fear from chlorinated (Google trihalomethanes) water than they do from fluoridated water.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that fluoride is not poisonous......but not at the concentration that you're likely to encounter in the mains water.supply.

True, true Gary.... and up there in QLD they're still worry that their curtains will fade from an extra hour of sunlight if they go to daylight saving

Debates been and gone. Theres nothing new to bring to the table.

If you like flouride then don't worry about the HF in the hydrocloric acid it will be instantly converted to a flouride salt and your fish's and tommies teeth with thank you.

If you don't like flouride then don't use commercial hydrocloric acid.

Done.

I was wondering if anyone has gone any further with this? I've been looking into windmill driven air pumps for a while, but hadn't thought about trying a DIY approach.

The big ones I've found in the U.S. are:

http://www.koenderswindmills.com/

http://www.pondaeration.com/

and the new style of dyno aire

http://www.advanced-dynamics.com/dynoaire.htm

But in aquaculture, the surface aerators are considered the best for large tanks and ponds. Even some of the larger hatcheries use them hooked up to generators for emergency use.

But the idea of a homemade windmill was intimidating to me, we get some pretty good winds and one bad design could turn the windmill into a flying knife of death. However the cage fan design is a lot more stable and I'm thinking easier to build.

The next challenge was a compressor, but why turn a compressor when the shaft could drive a paddle wheel?

My concerns right now are about materials. I need to avoid metals, with the exception of stainless steel or titanium. I don't think it's cost effect to buy a custom titanium drive shaft for this project! So I'll have to come up with something.

I would also like to address the issue of why avoiding the grid. Simply set up costs for me. The equipment needed to go solar and wind driven power is just cost prohibitive. True, that would be ideal, I also like mechanical approaches. For me they are easier to tinker with.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but as I go through the forum, I'm sure I'll find others to discuss. I'm trying to bring up ones that I hope have not been duplicated.

resurrecting these threads is good

IMHO I think that electrically generating wind mills are the way to go. The power can be used for anything. It can be stored for when there is no wind and you don't have to worry about mechanical failure.