Aquaponic Barrel System Build, Chop & Flip Style.

how's it going folks it's Rob here I knocked together the little aquaponic system you can see behind me it's a little chop and flip Barrel jobby for an aquaponic Workshop I held with Sav youra permaculture a couple of weeks back and it's been pretty chuffed with the results um I posted a couple of pictures to social media Facebook and Instagram and whatnot and have quite a few people wanting to know you know how you put one of these little jobbies together so this this is basically a scaled down version of the chop and flip aquaponic IBC system I posted a clip on a couple of weeks back the beauty of this one though is it's small enough that you could pretty much well tuck it away anywhere and it would fit on a small balcony in a small um Courtyard or even on a front Landing if it's large enough for you and it pretty much all gives anyone a chance to grow a couple of greens or herbs aquaponically I mean you could toss a couple ornamentals in there if you just wanted to make a nice floral arrangement with a couple of goldfish swimming underneath just quickly the plumbing path for today's bill should be available from most pling irrigation or hardware supply stores the tools I'm going to use are a rechargeable drill jigsaw hacka utility knife ruler marker pen and a few other rods and ends like my little PVC pipe cutter so this drum here was picked up from a local feed store if you're in a more urban setting you might want to try online trading groups and sites like Gumtree or Craigslist as they often have drums and barrels and containers offered on there the best containers to use for aquaponics are ones that have had food stuffs orid Goods that are easy to clean out I'm not too worried about this one is it smelt pretty fruity and sweet so it's probably some sort of a drink concentrate I'll still be giving it another good clean out once the grow bed's been cut off the top when looking at barrels if you get a chance just check out the bungs and make sure they got a good Rubber seal it just saves you having to seal them later this one here had a pressure relief valve in it so I unscrewed it took out the little valve and siliconed it up with a fish grade silicone um just check your A at the hardware or plumbing store for fish grade one suitable for aquariums to Mark out the grow bit itself I came down from the top roughly around about 19 CM or 7 and a half in and just placed a few dots with a permanent marker I then went along and just joined them up using my flexible metal ruler if you don't have a you know a flexible metal ruler maybe some sort of flexible plastic straight edge would do the same job next I drilled through a hole for the jigsaw blade to be started off in with the barrel itself um I'm using a Timber Blade with this one here I just find that they don't clog up as fast as the metal blades but do be careful when you're using it if you push too hard you will cut outside the lines I'm also cutting as you can see on a blue top here because I don't want these little blue plastic flecks all through the lawn and aquaponics area once the cuts were made I cleaned up the burs along the edges using the side of my utility knife blade do be careful if you use the blade because these little fellas are very sharp I've actually gone out and purchased a deuring tool to make this job a lot easier and slightly safer in the future now as for Access ports so you can get into knck around with the the plumbing and look at the fish and feed the fish and whatnot I'm using a very basic little template um for the access port at the rear I'm just going to use a takeaway container lid and what I'm going to do is pop it roughly 50 mil or 2 in from the top lip just going to get this lid and draw a line around I'm going to put a couple of pilot holes here around the front what I'm going to be doing is marking down 50 mil in two spots because here I've made up a bit of a template using the takeway lid just to form the two sides here and then join them together using a ruler so that will be our front viewing Port now you don't have to go with something like this a lot of people as you would have seen if you've searched around Barrel ponics online um you'd see people cut in a little fish shape in the front here um little bit of a novelty idea I think that's fantastic you could do like a whale or you know whatever you want really um but I'm just sticking with this just give a a larger area a larger viewing Port um for kids to have a bit of a gander at the fish inside so there we go a bit of a um a rough Mark out there just to make it easier to cut with the jigsaw I'm going to put a couple of pilot holes here and then we'll get to cutting it up so I'm starting off the jigsaw in the pilot holes and again just be careful how hard you push the jigsaw through because it doesn't take much for you to go offline and end up with a slightly larger hole just a bit of a tip it does help if you can straddle the barrel when you make the cuts it just helps keep it steady if you're a oneman show so once the cuts were made I went around all the surfaces with the edge of my utility knife blade just to knock off any of the loose burs that were hanging around so now we got to drill a couple of holes in the grow bed one to allow water to come up from the pump and the other to allow it to fall back down into the fish tank via the Bell siphon so the first cut I'm going to make it we'll need to take this little tank fitting or bulkhead fitting it's a 20 mm or 3/4 in one for that I'm using a 29 mm or 1 and 1/8 Hol saw it's just large enough to take the thread and should give us a nice cozy fit so the bulkhead fitting needs to be far away enough from the side of the grow bed so a 90 mm media guard made from a storm water pipe can be placed over the top of it clear up the edges with the tber for the water coming into the from the pump I'm using this little 20 mm or 3/4 in PVC fitting it's got a thread on the end uh that will allow another fitting to thread onto it underneath the bed there's just a little o-ring there that'll help give it a nice watertight seal now for this jobby here I'm using a 25 mm or 1-in hle saw it's going to be a very snug fit so once the hole was drilled I just got in there with my new little deuring tool and just gave it a bit of a clean up there's actually a snug enough fit that I got to screw the valve fitting in so I'm ready to connect the grow bed on top of the fish tank and what I'll be using today are these little zip ties they're a UV stabilized zip ties so they shouldn't break down in the Sun at all and they'll they're going to be more than secure just to hold a grow Bed full of light clay media uh especially since the grow bed itself will be sitting on this little lip here on top of the edge of the fish tank below so the the weight will be taken by the fish tank itself I've already drilled six holes through unfortunately I thought I'd press record on the camera but I haven't but basically what I've done is I've come along and in six positions around the top of the grow bed and fish tank I've Zapped um the holes and that'll pretty much will be what takes these um UV stabilized zip tires so with these zip tires I'm going to be feeding them in from the inside so the little locking mechanism is out of sight s through this hole here and down around again we have the grow bed on and just go around and tighten these guys up also too uh these little Tails you can just get under there with a pair of scissors or your your utility knife and just chop them off so now that the grow bed's on nice and securely and we've got the holes Zapped through the top we can start to work on the plumbing so to begin with we'll start with the pump now this one here is a 1200 L hour job the other one I have in in the existing barrel system is a 750 lph pump I just don't think it has quite enough oomph that's why I've decided to upgrade to this one for this system and I'll be swapping one of these into the other barrel system once I'm done so to begin with we need to run the water from here up into the grow bed what I'm going to be using is this um flexible aquarium grade pipe so it's pretty easy to attach just push it straight onto the fitting on top of the pump now what I'm going to be doing is insert inserting one of these te's above the waterline here and what that's going to do is it's going to allow me to place on a little valve here and this valve will allow water to shoot over the surface of the water of the fish tank oxygenating it and it'll also give me some level of flow control to the inlet in the grow bed so I think that's a pretty decent height there um so what I might do is I'll just cut this pipe here you might find you need to heat up this hose a little bit just so it stretches so take the fitting so I'm just going to run a little section of Hose from this part of the tea into the valve and now we only want a little bit here just enough to get over that barb so we'll cut him off round about there I think move the finger and then we'll just push him onto the side of the tea piece so this section here will go into another piece of hose that will then be pushed onto this nut and tail fitting that will screw onto the valve socket that comes through the grow bed just just to give you a quick look at this nut and tail it's a 20 mil Barbed one that screws onto a standard hose tap via a little adapter that screws into the top the valve socket that's going through the top of the grow bed also has an o-ring on there just to make sure it's a watertight seal all sorted out so now I'm just going to pop this little valve connector through this hole if I can find it need to screw them down a little bit so now we're just going to screw the nut onto the adapter that's on the valve socket and then connect it to the pump that little lead will end up going through the little Service Port we have up the back there once we have all the rest of the plumbing sorted out now this valve socket needs a section of pipe pushed into it to take the water to the top of the grow bed and on top of that I'm just going to be pushing on a little 20 M or 3/4 in tea and we'll just have a little bit of water coming out over either side now you can go go and get ornamental Fountain heads and that sort of thing make sure it's not something that's going to spray all around the place just drop the water back into the top of the grow bed now for the height of this standpipe I'm pretty much well coming up probably about 30 m or an inch and a/4 just above the top of the grow bed there popping a mark now I'm going to use my pvc pipe cutters but you can also just use a hacksaw so that now just gets pushed into there to secure with the standpipe into the valve socket I'm running through a pilot hole and then zapping in a 316 stainless steel screw you could glue it in place if you want I just figure using the stainless steel screw method means that I can reclaim the parts if I decide to modify the system later now just on top of that we're just going to have this little fitting here so to begin with the drain side of the build we'll have a look at the Shroud first this is the media guard that will stop the media from getting in and clogging up the Bell siphon the medor Shroud for this siphon was is a 200 mm length or just under 8 in length of 90 mm or 3 1/2 in storm water pipe now I've cut it at that length so it's standing proud of the top of the grow bed by about a centimeter or just half an inch that gives you a bit of extra room to um take the lid on and off when you need to inspect the Bell siphon something I'd like to add onto the base of the meteor guards of these Bell siphons is and endcap with some holes drilled in the base and a couple of 316 stainless steel screws wrapped through what that does is it stops the Shroud from being lifted out allowing media get to get into the Bell siphon workings and just gumming it all up for this media shroud I'm drilling a series of holes all around it and what that will do is allow water to pass through into the Bell siphon but it will keep the meteor out so it doesn't gum up the works to begin with what I've done is drilled a series of pilot holes just in a rough pattern and then I've come back through and I finished them off with an 8 mm or 5/16 drill bit the 8 mil hole is small enough that will stop any of the small bits of clay passing through but still allow a nice amount of water to come through and activate the siphon so after all the 8 mil holes were drilled into the Shroud and the end cap I've just come around with the utility knife and just cleaned up any sharp edges or any loose burs that around the edge of the cut then I flipped the whole unit over so the end Cap's facing up I've taken a 29 mm or 1 and 1/8 in Hol s saw and just run that through the bottom after I've drilled in a little pilot hole through the this hole we're going to be placing a bulkhead fitting or a water tank fitting which will take the water from the siphon back into the fish tank below so on top of my shrouds I like to pop on an end cap just to stop any debris getting in there and fouling up the works now this one fits on fairly Loosely but different brand pipes you might find that the lid sticks um on another Bell siphon I've built what I've done is I've cut out little sections on the side of this end cap here and that just makes it a little bit looser and and it fits on a lot easier what you don't want is the cap to be stuck on there and very hard for you to pull off so for the install we start with the Shroud and what we're going to do is pop a rubber washer just down around the hole then we're going to pop down our um shroud base plate just making sure that one of the holes is pointing towards the middle so it'll be easy to get the um screw in then another washer then in goes the tank fitting and then on the underside we're just going to screw up the nut just do him up hand tight so next I like to screw on a foret elbow or a foret socket on the tail end of the tank fitting the reason being is when you tighten it up you can actually undo the nut that holds this in position and it's a lot easier to tighten up now than when the grow bed's full of metor and you may loosen it off and cause all sorts of issues this forced elbow is a great one if you can find it um our large hardware chains don't stock them anymore so I bought this from a plumbing supply alternatively you can get a um foret socket what this is is a threaded fitting to go on to the tank fitting and then on the other side you can just push on a normal slip 20 M or 3/4 in elbow the reason you want an elbow at the end here is the water will come down here get a little bit of a resistance to it it will help create the water lock in the Bell siphon and help the Bell siphon to initiate so on this build today I'm just going to use this little jobby here just cuz it looks nice and neat so we'll get down there and we'll screw him in I'm not using any Teflon Plumbing tape on these fittings mainly because the seal is so tight I don't think it will ever leak just make sure that the tank fitting is all nice and tight still now into that I'm just going to push a small section of pipe with a 90° elbow and that will help just redirect the water down onto the surface of the fish tank there we go so now onto the stand pipe for the Bell what we've got here is a little valve socket it's just is going to screw straight into the tank fitting like such and then we need a section of pipe to act as a stand pipe and on the very top of that what we're going to do is pop on a 25 mm to 20 mil reducer what that does is allows a greater volume of water to enter over the top of the stand pipe create a water lock in there and initiate your siphons a lot easier now what I like to do is have the top of the stand pipe roughly about 50 mm from the top of the grow bed what that means is that will be as far as the water comes up and it allows for about 20 to 25 mil of dry media above the top of the water line in the bed when it's full and also gives you a bit of a lip just to stop the media from falling out so I've already measured up the stand pipe for this one I need to cut it off at roughly 75 mil so now that little stand pipe just gets pushed into there and the reducer on top over the top of the stand pipe we need a bell this is actually the one from the other Barrel system I've made up it's a section of 50 mm or 2in drain pipe with a couple of legs cut out this just allows water into the stand pipe and a very tight fitting end cap on there and all that does is sit over the top there for this build though I've made one out of a clear plastic drink bottle just to keep it a little bit cheaper less Parts you have to buy um and also too it looks groovy to see the siphon initiate and then break to make the little clear Bell it was very easy I took a 50 mm or 2in diameter drink bottle measured down roughly 170 m which is around about 6 1/2 in popped a series of dots around the bottle itself and then cut off the top using my utility knife and then in three positions around that cut Edge I marked up roughly half an inch or 15 mm drew a couple of lines across and then cut out the three sections those three sections will allow water through to the stand pipe and allow the bed to drain so now I'm just going to pop the Shroud in there just make sure these little marks down here line up that means the screw will go through neatly pop the screw in pop the bell in and we're all ready to go so I'm just going to clean out the clay in this large tub of water give it a bit of a swish around just to remove any dust particles from it that could wreak havoc with the fish's gills then I'm just going to ladle it straight into the grow bed using an old Sie that with the handle that's broken off if you don't have something like that that you can use drill a couple of holes in the base of an old um ice cream container or some other sort of plastic container and they make a perfect C for something like this if you're going to use rock it does pay to give it a bit of a clean first as well and I'd also probably give it a bit of a vinegar test just to see if it's going to release any carbonates into the water you can check out that clip up there or in the description just to see how I've done that previously so there you go folks she came together really well looking rather Shmo there next to her sister the siphon just fine so I think I've pretty much all got that all sorted out so what we might do is we might pop down underneath and I'll show you how you can adjust the flow rates to get your siphon firing correctly so here's a bit of a look at the fish tank as you can see first off the water is pretty clear you can see the pump down there there's still a little bit of dust down there but yeah that should settle within a couple of days I have made one alteration to the plumbing on this side over here I've added a small section of hose and a 90° angle mainly because I sort of miscalculated it the back there and some of the water was splashing out that access port so I thought it better to redirect it down the side so you can see there's water coming out of that valve over the back there that's because if I had it totally closed off there'd be far too much water running up to the grow bed and the bell siphon it initiate and never break conversely if I didn't have enough water running up into the grow bed you get a little trickle over the top of the stamp pipe it just keep running out through the drain down the bottom here and never actually initiate so all you need to do is just play around with that valve setting um just turn it on and off just a little bit at a time and it should be able to have the Bell siphon initiating and breaking within about 15 to 20 minutes and the siphon is initiated and there's the burp and she's done so that took a minute 15 seconds from the first dribble till the burp on the siphon so that's not too bad at all so once you got the Bell siphon firing and you're pretty happy with the way it's going you can pop some plants straight into the system I've got a little clip up there you can sus out just showing you a bit of a shortcut of how I like to plant plants out in our larger aquaponic system you could probably use it here as well once those plants are in though it does pay to give them a little bit of nutrients just to help kick them off what I like to do is just add a little bit of seaweed solution you don't need much in a system this size probably about or quarter to half a teaspoon would be more than you need to add some nutrients in there for some young seedlings I actually use a little kelp powder concentrate so pretty much well i' add only about4 of a teaspoon of that in there it will discolor the water slightly but it won't harm the fish at all speaking of fish for a system this size you're pretty much all looking around about 10 to 12 fish I actually asked the folks down at the local aquarium and um they recommended no more than 12 for a system this size goldfish that is if you haven't kept fish before it might pay for you to ask them just you know how to release goldfish into a system like this I've got a clip up there on how we've done it in larger Agriculture and aquaponic systems but yeah just with goldfish you might as well ask the experts why you're there buying the fish now some people have said that the goldfish food doesn't have enough crude protein in it to um run a system like this I actually asked the guys down there at the aquarium how much protein was in their feeds and most of them came in round about between 30 to 40% which is roughly the same amount as commercial feeds as well that we use for our silver perch and Jade perch in those large tanks up there so as for nutrients going into the system goldfish will run something like this no problem whatsoever so as you can see it's a pretty easy little system to build you can probably knock it together in half a day to a day depending on if you got to run around and buy tools and bits and pieces you forgot like myself if you're interested in a slightly larger version of this I've posted a chop and flip IBC build clip you can check that out up there that's using one of those large 1,000 l or 250 Gall cage tanks that you see floating around so if you enjoyed the clip and you're into backyard farming and aquaponics and whatnot feel free to share this around the online communities you can also subscribe if you want you can hit that little button up there then you can check a little box and you'll be send an email every time we upload a clip to YouTube and you can come along and see what's going on I'll pop a couple of thumbnails there for you to sus out on a few other bits and pieces we do around the place as well I do hope everyone is well and happy and that you've enjoyed the clip and I will catch you next time cheers folks so I thought I'd give you a bit of a look at how the Bell siphon works I've got the Shroud removed and just the clear bottle over the top and as you can see the water's slowly moving up the side of the stand pipe till it reaches the point where it starts to Cascade over there's so much water coming over the lip there that it creates a water lock and a siphon is initiated now as there's no meteor in this bed it's going to take a lot longer than it normally would to drain as the water level reaches the base and the cutouts down there air is started to suck through and eventually the siphon is broken with a big burp so there you go I thought I'd just give you a bit of a quick look at how the Bell Sion itself works

Channel: Rob Bob's Aquaponics & Backyard Farm

Views: 524,361

Keywords: How to build an aquaponic system, aquaponic system, chop & flip aquaponic system, how to aquaponics, backyard aquaponics, barrel aquaponics, barrelponics, DIY aquaponics, aquaponic system start to finish, rob bob aquaponics, how to set up aquaponic system, how to make a aquaponic system, bell siphon aquaponics, aquaponics, IBC, backyard farming, Bits out the back, urban homesteading, rob bob's backyard, نظام الأكوابونيك, الأكوابونيك, aquaponik, ਇਕਵਾਪੋਨਿਕਸ, acuaponia, アクアポニックス, 鱼菜共生

Id: Z2tgrUvSnbM

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 12 2016