Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

G'day all,

Been lurking around this forum for some time, but only joined back in June. Hopefully all the reading I have done from all the great posts on this forum will help me reduce the number of mistakes which are bound to be made.

From all the reading I have done I have decided to build a CHIFT PIST system.

I picked up some IBCs a while ago which I have cut down to make a fish tank and a sump. Managed to catch enough rain water to fill them from the rain received back in September.


The fish tank and sump are located in my garage to protect them from the sun and to try and reduce the evaporation from them - I have already lost about 300 litres of water due to evaporation but have since covered the tanks. Fortunately with the last lot of rain we received I managed to top them up again. Need to build some more permanent, nicer looking covers, but the carpet will do for now.

I have used 40mm pipe which will hopefully be large enough.

Spent last weekend building a Red Beard inspired cover for the area which my grow beds will be located. Thanks for the idea Red Beard.

This weekend will be spent tidying up the brick paving near the fence and time permitting building grow bed frames for which I ordered the steel for today - should be delivered tomorrow.

The fish tank is approximately 750 litres so I am going to install 1500 litres of grow beds - 3 beds of 500 litres each. The plan is to stock it with 30 fish with a harvest size of 500 grams each.

Having said that, I was planning on having two beds (1000 litres) filled with media, with a third bed trialing floating raft – will this be enough media/filtration?

More to come...

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ArBe
My Home System
My Country Backyard
My Suburban Backyard

Gday arbe

shade house looks great its all starting to come together

G'day arbe, decent area you have to fill up with AP gear

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Unattended children will be given an Espresso and a free puppy


http://www.backyardfarming.com.au/phpbb ... f=24&t=270

Yeah, nice little shade house...

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>

Fresh By Nature - Distributor of Aquaponic Systems and Products in NSW
http://www.freshbynature.com.au

noice
BYAP GB's or DYI's???

i think 30 fish on 1000L of gravel will be at the upper end of ok?/

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Science: An attempt to understand the world.
Often contains big words that are unnecessary

Freo system | Spearwood

I have done a lot of research into grow beds and have decided to go for BYAP ones which I will hopefully be picking up this weekend or next.

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ArBe
My Home System
My Country Backyard
My Suburban Backyard

good chioce

_________________
Science: An attempt to understand the world.
Often contains big words that are unnecessary

Freo system | Spearwood

Yes, very good choice
Well thought out system

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IBC system
Bigger system
Greenhouse system
Horsham Aquaponics

3 Growbeds paid for - I pick them up on Sunday.

Steel arrived on Wednesday.

Will hopefully have enough progress on the weekend to take some more pictures

_________________
ArBe
My Home System
My Country Backyard
My Suburban Backyard

Cool

_________________
Unattended children will be given an Espresso and a free puppy


http://www.backyardfarming.com.au/phpbb ... f=24&t=270

No pics as my daughter has stolen the camera for the night.

Picked up the grow beds on Sunday and took a look around at BYAP - it is like Bunnings - I could spend a lot of money in there.

The brick paving under the 'shade house' has been finsihed off and the edges cemeted in. The grow beds have been set out where I plan to set them up permanently.

Have begun cutting the steel up to make the stands. Have cut up enough for the first stand. Will get the this one welded up before cutting the rest just in case I have stuffed up.

Will hopefully get some pictures tomorrow morning.

_________________
ArBe
My Home System
My Country Backyard
My Suburban Backyard

I think its 20-25 fish per 500L GB.

Either way, that is a killer shade house! Well done

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GB volume has everything to do with how many fish you can grow out not how big your FT can be. The whole 2:1 ratio thing is misleading and impractical on CHIFT PIST unless your ST is bigger than your FT. So don't stress about how big your growbeds are, you should be asking how many fish you can keep instead

Also, you wont be able to flood your GB's with that sized sump using CHIFT PIST... I learnt the hard way;
- With CHIFT you need to pump considerable water into the FT before you get equal flow in and out. For you that will probably mean your water level in your FT reaches the top of your outlet because your outlet is pretty small (to reduce this problem, increase the cross sectional area of the outlet on the horizontal plane - ie. put in a 80/90mm outlet, you can drop it straight back to 40mm once you've rounded the 90deg).

- To fill 3 * 500L GB's (full of gravel) you will need 200L water each (I was geek enough to actually measure this ), so 600L

- You can't get the full volume out of the ST because the pump pickup isn't right on the bottom and its never filled 100%..

All these things plagued me when I first setup CHIFT.. The larger the surface area of your FT, the more water is needed from the ST before output matches input. Then I had the issue of 4 * 500L beds, and finally, the pump pickup was like 15cm from the bottom (150L i couldnt use)..

So I would say you will need 800L ST as a minimum (that doesnt give much leeway for evap either - 1000L would be better) to flood 3 500L growbeds at the sime time using CHIFT PIST.

If you're hell bent on 3 GB's, and are stuck with that sized ST, then you will need to incorporate one of Rupe's indexing valves somehow.

Good luck! Best to find these things out early.. you should see the work I've had to do to fix mine heh.

I have always been concerned with the size of my ST and have been thinking of how I can increase it.

I have some plastic 44 gallon drums I may plumb into the sump to increase the volume.

The indexing valves are another option I have been considering.

_________________
ArBe
My Home System
My Country Backyard
My Suburban Backyard

Not a lot of progress has been made with my system of late. Had to rebuild the 'shade house' as the couple of days of strong easterly winds made me worry the whole thing would come down on top of my growbeds.

That has been done (no pics yet) and it is much stronger.

Have got one grow bed frame welded up. Now that that one is good, I can take the measurements off it and cut the rest of the steel. Only problem now is my friend with the welder will be away for a month

I also got my self a new helper:



I have time off between Xmas and New Years so hopefully I can get my system working over this time - my damn job is delaying me! Come on Saturday 31st December Lotto (BTW - There is no point any of you buying a ticket as I already have the winning one )