Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

EB, It has a removable handle !!! I missed the obvious !!! How often is that the case......... The pumps are sitting on some house bricks, they are tall.

Muzza, that gravel looks bigger than 10mm - did you put some bigger stuff on top, or is just the photo making it look bigger?

VB, It is 10mm drainage gravel. The river stones I had in the strawberry tower I put into the bottom of the grow bed to "seed" it. I hope that is what happens, "seed" it I mean.

I have just made an accurate measurement of the water needed to fill the grow bed , it is 187 ltrs. So that is a 600 ltr grow bed empty and looks like there is 400 ltrs of gravel in the bed if it had no spaces between each stone.

That water sure is dirty from that gravel. I have just carried out a water change , about 400 ltrs of new tank water to try and clear it up a bit, and the fish are still there !!!! Have not been able to see them for a few days!!!

This is a weakness in the system I feel, the need to get the water clean again, the garbage that is in the gravel. I would hate to guess how many hundreds of litres of water I have now wasted trying to get the gravel clean. The grow bed has been connected since Sunday morning and in 4 days I have not seen any improvement in the water clarity. Am I too impatient ???
I think for the next grow bed I will try and source a better quality gravel or washed river stones or something like that.

Good one Muzza,
spent this morning washing gravel and I only have 80 litre grow bed, found lots of excuses to sideline it too

Les

Les, I've got 2200 litres to wash to have both grow beds up and running, will be well and truly initiated by then I reckon!

Muzz

Have you tried pumping the water into a container filled with polywool or something of that nature as an interim measure Muzza. It is the way to go as you can remove the stuff and clean it out on a regular basis. With the capacity of your pump it shouldn't take too long to see a difference if you did something along those lines.

You realise mate that after we have finished, some mongrel is gonna put up this simplistic gravel wash system which will just blow us away - like a cement mixer with perferations that recycles the water back into the drum and spews the gravel straight into the grow bed in one motion
I say to him

I say you have just invented it! Exactly what you said would be GOLD

LOL, go figure... I toyed with the idea of retro fitting a washing machiene to do something like that

It's not too late AM

gotta find one at the buy back shop that at least has the drum working....

make sure your cleaned gravel is away from anywhere wind can blow dirt onto it.

After cleaning around 500kg, it got some dust and leaves blown onto it

myt loving kids dump handfuls of potting mix into the tubs with the cleaned gravel

I'll post a pic tomorrow of a stainless washing machine drum that I salvaged yesterday for this exact purpose. Dad was going to get it welded into a brazier, but he wouldn't have gotten around to it for ages....

i have visions of a motor and pulley assembly spinning the drum at break neck speeds while a smiling aquaponist sprays water into the top and has a 1m shower of water and gravel dust centrifuged out the sides of the drum. i like it