Prangey's DIY System

prangey

Thought I would finally post my system. It's been running for just over 12 mths now with only minor hiccups. As I work FIFO the system has been built with redundancy and simple operation in mind.
FISH TANK: Recycled industrial sand filter 25mm thick 2m Dia 2 Deep spun fibre glass required the top to be removed and some fibre glass repairs to the side wall. Installed a flange on the parabolic bottom and a removable pool strainer in the oulet which can be removed. The water level is controlled by a stilling well with stand pipe on the side of the tank which also provides a sediment trap which is flushed fortnightly. Tank is covered with a shadcloth cover which prevents fish suicide and algae build up.

GROW BEDS: 3 Cattle troughs supported by a unistrut frame on a treated timber subframe. Troughs are 300 deep with river gravel as the grow medium. Continuos flow with a Bell Syphon. The unistrut frame is used as it supports a simple bolt and clamp arrangement for the growing trellis and can be moved easily to suit the plants grown.

SUMP: The sump is the same size trough as the grow beds and has a floating raft on its surface which supplies another growing area and prevents toads entering the system. The water is topped up with a float.

NFT: Is mounted above the sump and uses a kick back of the return water pump to the fish tank. The NFT's are 90mm down pipe with 50mm holes at 200mm centres by memory, the water transfers by a 1" line between NFT's which is adjustable by pipe within a grommet arrangement which allows the water height to be adjusted in the NFT. Having the sump directly below if the NFT overflow the water is caught by the sump.

PUMPS: The return pumps are by memory HQ7000 as the head is a little over 2.2m there are 2 pumps in the sump set up with non-returns so as in the event of an issue with the pump my wife can switch of A and switch on B as a final back up there is a 12 v pump.

AIR: Air is provided by a Pond One 8000 which has a high discharge pressure to get the air to the bottom of the 2 m fish tank. Air is provide in the tank by 2 air stones and air is provided to the sump /floating raft by 2x 1m air curtains.

BACKUP/CONTROL: The system is 240V with a 300W inverter backup for outages, in the event the inverter fails the 12v water pump is final defence. The system control has a feeding option which at the press of a button the timer disables the air and water pump for 10 minutes once timed down the system returns to normal operation. Preventing the forgotten pumps.
Also the controller has an inline temperature controller which currently is used as a temp display.

FISH: Currently the system is supporting 200 Silver Perch which are 6-8 inches the system is showing some spikes in ammonia usually when I overfeed them when I'm home. Otherwise the system is stable ph runs constantly at 7.2 no adjustment in over 9mths and nitrates and nitrites are usually undetectable. Running less than 1PPM of salt

Plants: About the only weak point in the system as the insects usually get more than the family but currently the system is overloaded with strawberry plants so should see a good crop. Usually plant 2 punnets of salad plants every 3 weeks and add seed directly to the pots in the NFT every so often to prop up the salad.

Pictures will be added as soon as I work out how to attach them "Too big".

Wal

Excellent, well done. Can we please have some pictures?

gorotsuki69

best way is to use an external picture host like imageshack then link them here, using the Img tab

earthbound

Please upload them here if you can.. Uploading them to the forum means they will always be here for everyone, using other image storage sites means they show up here for now, but may be gone in the future..

Simplest image resizer is the power toy..

Download windows XP version here http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... s-xp?T1=PT

Or win7 here http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/

800 x 600 is best image size... Or medium on the above..