Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Wasn't feeling right, took the day off, by eve things had settled down so I got a bit of work done.

Changed out 30 gallons:
pH now in range 7.8 Nitrite 0
upgraded the pump output from 1/2" to 1" and rerouted the new fatter pipe so it runs lower. Pump output much stronger, I'm guessing the tank now turns over twice an hour instead of once.
Took out the temp little filter and made a screen filter bag, filled it with hydroton and dropped it in the barrel.
Took the flter material out of the overflow pipe because of the harder flow

This is the overflow into the barrel now:

Still having some problems with the pH drifting to the high side, it wants to go up to around 8.5. Although I rinsed the cinderblock I remember when I was working with it, it tapped the side of the tank and the corner crumbled off, the whole thing was very crumbly in the tank and there's probably some silt on the bottom. I'm not sure if it's possible that my rain barrels are altering the pH. I cut up some lemons and able to get the pH to stabilize at 8. I can make it go lower but not sure I want to keep swinging the pH around. I'm hoping as the system matures it will drift lower.

I've built another 100 gallon simple back up system, two barrels. I had to jury rig the plumbing a bit. No growbeds are attached to anything yet. The plan is to move the fish to the back up system, shut down the main tank now that I know where I want the greenhouse to be, move it out of the way (I can clean out any cinder block silt at this time), build the greenhouse, put the system back inside and add growbeds etc. My builder has promised to build the greenhouse in Sept, I hope this works out, if not I have a back up plan but it's not ideal.

Will post photos of buildsite before breaking it down, and pics of backup system later.

oh:
had a meeting last night with local non profit which provides gardening space and instruction to troubled youths. I've been tapped to advise on aquaponics setup. The greenhouse design looks good and they've assembled a good team. They're hoping to have the greenhouse up by end of year, we can work on testing the aquaponics this winter with luck. If this works they want to build 10 more next year, and more after that.

The design is for a GH that can be broken down and assembled using only 4 people. It sits on pillars and is designed to be packed up and shipped to another location if necessary. This project has a lot of potential, I think. very exciting

Say Buddy, looks like you're going to have a visitor Sunday.
http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/tr ... ml#a_topad

_________________
There is room for all God's creatures,
Right next to the mashed potatos
The purpose of government is to provide service,
The purpose of the media is to provide vasoline.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6945

oh I hope not. We've just had several days of record thunderstorms last week. That looks like it will pass directly over N.S. but I'm in Toronto now. I'll have to give my parents a call this weekend though.

pH today was down to 7.8 on it's own, either that lemon worked better than I expected or maybe it's self regulating?

more pictures of the site and system....

The wind flipped up part of the landscaping cloth at the top, so it got some sun for two days and right away the algae bloomed again. I took a photo at night from just above the tank. You can see the bamboo frame I made, I put plastic, styrofoam, and some plexiglass as a cover for insulation and weather protection, I mean to tie some thick netting and screen to the bamboo frame to make sure no small animals or rats can get in and drown.

Oh I think I forgot to mention:
the inside diameter of the hole in the glass on the main system tank ended up being 1 1/2 inches if I recall. The outflow pipe diameter was 2". The line from the pump is 1" and I intend to upgrade as much of it as I can to 2", if I can't find a 2" fitting for the pump. The lines over the eventual growbed will likely all be 2"

Backup system is going to be all 1"
although I know that's a bit on the small side, that's what I have

Baton Rouge, you were right:

It came from the West and Thor dropped his hammer on us last night over and over again, lightning strike after strike, at times it seemed like there was a boom every second, 10 in a row, and then a minute later another 10. we only occasionally get tornadoes and they never really hit the city but last night I think we had multiple touchdowns in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) over a hundred homes destroyed if I understand correclty. City of Vaughn declared a state of emergency while they assess the damage. I think the edge of it just brushed us, it got dark very suddenly, in seconds, and then a wall of wind hit us, and it started pouring and strike after strike. Never seen anything quite that bad, they said it was probably the worst in a decade. I think I got a few minutes of footage. At the front of the house there was no visibility due to rain and high winds, we had to close all the windows, at the back of the house there was almost no wind and good visibility. The power kept coming on and off and we could hear multiple bangs and sparks, I think the transformers overloaded and took damage or something, there was no actual smoke or fire on our street. Our sister in law was working around the house in Vaughn, she heard nothing but every other house on the street had it's roof ripped off.

Then the sky got bright again, rainbows came out and it was over. A few hours later the power came back. I checked on the systems and they both started up fine on their own, there was nothing visibly out of place. A lot of people weren't so lucky.

Next comes the crooked insurance adjusters and flyby night price gouging roofers.
Sorry for your losses. Hopfully the ins. co's didn't play with the deductables up there.

_________________
There is room for all God's creatures,
Right next to the mashed potatos
The purpose of government is to provide service,
The purpose of the media is to provide vasoline.
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6945

On those temporary set ups you might be able to rig some filter material in the tops of the "sump" barrels so that the water going from the fish tanks into the sump can get filtered a bit on their way into the sump. This should also help keep the sump cleaner.

I've found that I can run a small pump with 1/2" plumbing just fine if it is in a clean sump tank. Same pump in a fish tank is completely blocked with gunk in a matter of day and needs the plumbing and the pump cleaned.

Hang in there.

As to checking the gender of tilapia, I've now mostly forgotten. I find it easier to tell gender by how the fish behave. I can tell a female that has a mouth full of fry ready to be released, they are generally very angry and violent to any other fish that comes near. With my blue tilapia, it seems to the most dominant males seem to have the lightest coloring. As for breeding, I've had the best luck putting 5-12 tilapia into a rather big tank (probably 300 or so gallons) with access to the bottom of the tank and leaving them alone. To keep them from breeding, I just put them in a cage within a larger tank to keep them from accessing the bottom of the tank. If they can't pick the eggs back up, there won't be babies. However, that is a bit trickier if your only tank is 120 gallons.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Yes I mean to do this



Yes something must be done about this. I'm planning to dig for my next system... all in good time =)

Since my last post I've built a basic winter grow house to shelter my fish. I'm not sure it's really a greenhouse because the walls are solid, but the roof is polycarbonate, it's a stand alone shelter with a spruce frame, plywood walls, and R20 fiberglass insulation. The North wall is 10 ft high, the South is 6 ft high. It's built on a pre existing concrete pad, for this shelter nothing will be buried in the ground and I'll be insulating the floor.

There are two doors, one East and one West, on a day when the basic structure was completed the inside temp went up over 10 degree Celsius and maintained very well, even with one door uninsulated and partly open. I'm lookng forward to refining this structure and seeing how the end product works to retain heat.

I thought I was going to be very hard up for sun, the site is shaded by existing structures to the east and west, and there are some very large trees to the south west, but now the leaves are falling off and I think I'm still gettng 5 hours direct sunlight at the shortest days of the year, this will help to reduce my heating cost.

The plan for the winter it to build a polycarb mini house inside the greenhouse, one for the tank and one for the growbeds, and insulate insulate everything, so in effect I only need to heat a smaller insulated box inside an insulated room. I haven't done detailed sketches or calculations, which is unusual for me, I am trusting to find a way and so far everything seems to be falling in place, we shall see how the end product turns out.

I got a real deal on a supply of polycarb.

I have since realized previous discussions on water volumes may have been confused, I am in Canadian and we have Canadian measurements, when I think gallons I think of US gallons but there may be times I think in Cdn. The Cdn gallon might be different from a UK gallon which might? be different from an Aussie gallon? I've no idear. Also I started out in school learning UK style Imperial measures and later on they switched to metric. Basically some of my previous assertions re: flow rate calculations may not sound right because it's not clear what I meant by a gallon.and I'm too lazy to go back and figure it out.

on the the pics: