Installed pump

We installed the pump on the weekend, the first photo is the flow at the top tank and the second is the return from the grow beds. I will have to enlarge the outlet as the flow is too fast and slowly creeps up the side to almost overflowing. It already is 20mm but I think I will increase it to 1 1/2 inch just to be on the safe side. So we are now ready to install a air pump and air stones and then add gravel fish and plants.

Wed 15 Apr

Today I went shopping for a pump, I have settled for a Aquapro AP3000. Cost was approx $80. The pump runs at 75 watts and will pump 3000lts per hour, but the height I want to pump maybe 750lts per hour, needing approx 350ltrs per siphon I should be able to get 3 well spaced flushes per day. 120 watts per day, supplied through a 80 watt solar panel. Hopefully the battery should stay well charged. I will have to go and purchase the pipework maybe $20 worth to pipe it from the fish tanks to the top tank and will test the flow rate and adjust as required.

More on the siphon

A lot of people on youtube, have a toilet cistern flushing unit to flood their grow beds, I was thinking of doing the same but came to the conclusion that a siphon would be superior as there are no moving parts, no seals or washers to replace and no way for this part of the system to "not function" as it relies solely on gravity alone, unless of course gravity just disappears. We have the PVC pipe about 1 foot long inside the tank, so the siphon drops about 350lts and then automatically resets itself for the next siphon. As you can see my nice tea coloured water from the Loddon River is just about half way up the tank, it will drop about half way before it resets, which is as long as the pipe inside the tank, as I mentioned earlier.

Siphon

This is a photo of the siphon, We started off with approx 10 inches in length but reduced it to about3 inches as it was taking too long to start the siphon, We will finalize the exact length when we put the gravel in the beds, which will displace the water and raise the water level in the grow beds.

Sun 12 Apr

Back from Easter break, have been very busy on Aquaponics system, We got a water delivery for10,000 lts from the Loddon River, and set siphon to work, it took a lot of playing around but we got to it roughly where we need to be, It was a very hot 4 days no rain in sight, so I arrived home a little sunburnt (the things we do). Next step is adding the gravel, pump, battery, inverter and solar to operate this free from any power supply. Then finally the fish and plants..

Sunday 5 Apr

Hi, Spent my morning in Bunnings buying Pipe fittings, actually trying to find fittings, every time I go there they seem to have everything but what I'm looking for. Anyhoo we will sort it out later at the local plumbing shop. I spent $77 on a 2500 litre per hour pump, which should be enough for stage 1 of the system, I will buy another pump shortly for the hydroponic style tubes we will run continuously with strawberry's and lettuce and maybe some silverbeet. Also I spent $20 on some plastic fittings for the overflow lines on the growbeds. Roll on Easter so I can get into it.

Side on view

Still in assembly layout, but from side view, 4 half drums each side and 1000 lt tank for the flood cycle.

Coming soon

Also over Easter weekend we will take some photographs of where we are at, showing all the pipework and siphon, also when it is all up and running we will submit a video to youtube for you all to see this operating, fish plants and all, actually I can't wait to see it myself.

Easter weekend

I can't wait for Easter weekend 2009 so we can get stuck in and finish off the rest of the building side of things , also we will be running our first water trials to even out the flow rates to the beds, The following weekend we will be adding the bedding material, we will be using different material in each of the beds to see which gives the best results. Our property has a ready supply of volcanic rock so we will use that in a couple of beds, Vermiculite in another couple, River sand in 2 beds and the last 2 will have the clay balls that they have in the commercial systems. The siphon will also have to be tested to make sure it starts first time every time, and setting the flood and drain heights for the beds and also the return to the fish tanks. Once this is all proven to be okay we will add duck weed to the top tank along with some yabbies which we will relocate from our dam. and in the 4 1000 lt fish tanks we are thinking of using a few different species of fish in each tank, thinking at present is silver perch, yellow belly, redfin, and coy but will check with fisheries dept first just to be sure. The system should be up and running by Queens birthday weekend and hopefully by then the fish are happy and plantlife will be on its way.

Another early system photograph

This system I have decided to use a siphon instead of a cistern flush unit as I am trying to make this to use as little moving parts as possible. I was even thinking of adding a Savonious rotor to the top of the shade house to drive another air pump whilst the wind is blowing, or maybe a water pump to circulate extra water around the system for free.

Early photo

After watching various videos on youtube and trying to take ideas from all over, drawing a rough plan and trying to figure out the necessity's and the gimmicks, this is what we came up with for the items we already had. This was early day 1 roughing out how it was going to work, tricky stuff trying to put a rough plan into action.

Costs so far

Building these systems can be expensive but ours we have made out of generous donations from employers, the 1000 lt tanks were bulk caustic tanks which were very easy to clean out,as with the 200 litre drums which we cut in half with a jigsaw and then cleaned out the insides, the shade cloth was free from a previous job at a plastic recycling factory, and it is held up with poly pipe hoops which was also donated by a previous employer, mind you the star pickets which hold the poly pipe up now cost $9 each so there goes $90 for 10. We have spent approx $200 on plumbing pipe and fittings, after buying the wrong size pipe first up. Also $120 on pine poles and timber for the stand. As we have no power to this system we are going to use an inverter off a truck battery or maybe a deep cycle battery, with a solar panel to keep the battery full, we estimate a 80 watt panel should be able to run this system on and off 4 times per day. Price for solar panel is approx $600 so this will add a huge cost, but as the rest of the system didn't cost much its still not a bad price, we have estimated that it will come in around $1200. so it can actually be an expensive exercise. Anyhoo we will see what happens. I forgot about the price of an air pump which has 4 outlets 1 for each tank and airstones, it cost $80.

Day 7

This was the next weekends work as we only get a chance to play on the weekend hence the week between drinks. As you can see we needed a little shade just to slow down evaporation and try to keep the tank water cooler. A few more days of work and it should be ready to start circulating the water around and balancing the system.

Day 1

This was our rough layout, we got 4 x 1000 bladders for our fish tanks, so far we only have 8 half drums as grow beds but this is just the beginning and it will be added to as we go. There is a 1000 litre Shultz bladder on a pine pole stand, with another bladder cut for a settlement tank on top, which we will fill with Yabbies and duck weed.