How to Build a Chop & Flip IBC Aquaponics System

g'day folks it's rob here and today's video is a bit of a rework of a classic how to build a ibc chop and flip aquaponics system uh the reason i'm re-releasing it is i've added some extra content in which i people have asked me to do over the years so i do hope you enjoy this uh re-released version making up a chop and flip aquaponics system today thought i'd bring you along now it's based around an ibc uh ibc is an intermediate bulk container this one is very basic as the name describes you chop the top off you flip it over over you've got a grow bed sitting on top of a fish tank we've made one of these actually turned into the sump tank in the system we're running at the moment i had a tank down the bottom about 600 litre ish grow bit on top and later expanded by adding on a fish tank and then other grow beds so it's a great little system to cut your teeth on not only that if you get the bug fully expandable so anyway i'll stop nattering on and i'll bring you over to the ibc and show you my take on the little system so this is the ibc that is the victim for today's clip now one thing i'll just mention quickly is when you're picking or selecting your ibc or drums or barrels or whatever it is for your aquaponics please be aware of what was in what chemical was in it beforehand now i like to try and stick with things that are definitely food grade so the first thing we're going to do is work out how big a tank we want for the fish now i'm pretty happy with the 600 liter tank but generally you know you're only going to be able to raise about 10 fish to table size or 500 grams or one pound in a system like this so anything over 600 liters is you know more enough water for those guys to swim around in the main concern for me is if you're going to expand later on you want the sump to be as large as possible it just you know helps save you doing top ups all the time mainly just along the front wall here of the ibc there's a series of volume markings in both gallons and liters so just keep that in mind when you're trying to work out how big your sump tank and your grow beds are going to be the 600 liter mark is just below the top edge of this bar here so what i can do is take this felt pen run around the outside and that'll give me a line to cut the tank off once the bladder's out of the cage so now we've marked off the tank line around that bar there what we need to do is take the tank out so we can get to a couple of nuts and bolts down the bottom here you'll find you've got the little star-shaped tech bolts on these ibc's uh on this tank here it's a t-40 piece i need to undo it as well as a t30 for the little nut and bolt jobbies down there um some ibcs will have phillips screw heads um you know but most i've come across you need a um t40 bit for so they cost a couple of bucks at the hardware store um and they're handy to have especially if you're going to be working with a few of these things so i'm going to undo the bolts and pull those bars off at the top of the ibc we save these guys for later and then i'll just roll it over and pull the tank out so now the tank's out all i need to do is remove the screws holding the frame into the base and also the nuts and bolts from around the valve fitting there we go and the cage can now be taken off of the base now i'm just going to run the screws back through the base plate into the skids and set the aquaponics system up on top of this pallet so we'll just move this out of the way for the time being and work on the cage and the tank now these little black plastic corner bits you don't need these in here anymore they can come out so the next job is to chop off these top two rungs these will be the frame for the grow bed itself to keep it in place and we'll also put those bars back across the top and they'll act as a bottom support for the grow bed now we're just going to cut them off under there i'll be using a saber saw or reciprocating saw you could use a hacksaw or a grinder whatever you want i just like my reciprocating saw so once the cuts are made it's a good idea at this point to run around with an angle grinder or a file of some sort just clean up the edges and then give them a bit of a spray with some gal paint or some other sort of sealant yeah just to keep the rust out so while that paint dries we'll get into cutting up the ibc so i'm just going to mark the line on here now for the grow bed cut so i'm going to come down roughly 300 mil or about a foot from the top that's going to put it round about the 750 liter mark on the side of the ibc but i know from my parent system i cut it at the same height and we got just under 300 liters worth of media into the grow bed so i know it's going to be a fairly sizable grow bed so to mark it out i'm measuring up from the line i mark for the top of the sump tank just to make it easy and i'm joining the dots using an old venetian blind slat i just find they make a great flexible straight edge for just such a job so i'm putting a couple of holes next to the lines on each side of the ibc and that's where i'll be starting the jigsaw from i'm not going to cut in one continuous cut all around the ibc i'll be cutting to the corners on each side it just makes spinning the ibc and making the other cuts a lot easier if the corners are still intact and then at the end i'll just go around and finish off the corner cuts so there's the grow bed on the right and the thumb tank on the left one more job to do before these guys are ready and that is to take off the swarf from around where they're cut so to do that i like to use just my little um craft knife or utility knife blade i'm just going to whip around the edges of these take all these little burrs off and dispose of them in the bin then i'm going to head up for some lunch just a quick heads up for you folks before we go any further i do have a diy beginner's aquaponics playlist that you can scroll through it's got loads of information including this video and a few others like the bell siphon mentioned in this one and also the little canister filter build that we'll get to in a little while so check that out after you've seen this video if you are interested and you'll also find a number of these helpful videos have been added to our backyard aquaponics beginners guide as well what sets the guide apart though is it's an online fully interactive guide basically you can look up a phrase by talking into the phone then tap on text and it takes you to the exact position in different videos that you're interested in not only that it's transcribed and translated into spanish portuguese chinese and hindi for you folks who have problems understanding my aussie accent so yeah check that out if you're interested uh links to those will all be down in the description i just need to make a couple of cuts i forgot about when i was cutting up the cage but first i need to remove this valve cover but we don't want to throw it out i'm just going to set it aside to use later so this part of the cage here is going to be the access to the fish tank underneath so what we want to do is just make it a little bit larger so i'll just grab my safety glasses and saw and we'll cut out these little sections of the cage i'm also going to clean up around the sharp edges with the grinder and then i'll just touch them up with a bit of the gall paint again and on we go to setting up the system so we're right to put all these components together now one last thing i probably would do is just give the fish tank and the grow bed just one more little hose out and clean just to make sure they're fish and plant friendly so when you're setting up your system i think it's a good idea to leave the ibc on top of the tray even if you're setting it up on concrete mainly because the base of the valve actually sits a little bit lower than the base of the ibc itself and if it was sitting flat on concrete there'd be a lot of pressure just on that point considering there's over you know 600 kilograms of weight inside this system once it's all set up at my father's place we decided to take the legs off the pallet unscrew them and we put the base plate on the ground and dug a little recess for the valve fitting and that sits nice and flat and then we put the cage on top and built it up from there so today i'll be building it on the pallet itself because i don't know where this system is going to end up eventually so first of all we'll get this um pallet base down and then on top of it we'll pop the cage that holds the fish tank and as you can see the legs are sitting on the lip of the cage here so as long as they're nice and secure you should be right if you are concerned what you can do is just drill a hole through there and then put a self-tapping screw into the base tray itself or maybe even a little bolt and that'll just help secure them on so after that in goes the fish tank so you can see down the front here that the valves exposed that i don't think is a good idea to have that open mainly because you don't know who's going to come along and open the valve on your little fingers and all so what i like to do is put the plate back over the front just use some wire or zip ties just to secure this onto the framework so no one can lift it up so for the grow bed we need some that will go across the top and hold the cage and also the base of the grow bed itself once we have these timbers on we can pop the cage on and it's basically spun around 90 degrees from the way it was originally cut from the top and flipped over so the top edge is on the base the reason i've done that is the top bars that came out to begin with to let the ibc come out of the tank they're going back in to act as a support for the base so before the grow bed goes back in i just snip out these little loops that were holding the bars in place originally it just means you can drop the grow bed down on it and they'll sit nice and flush also too these tops here some of them have a pressure release valve on it it's basically to stop the ibcs exploding if too much gas is built up inside them so i don't find they leak so i'm just going to leave it on when i was testing the bell siphon for another clip i actually realized that the little valve was leaking a little bit too much for my liking so what i've done is i've come back and i've filled up those little gaps with some aquarium grade silicone and also put some around the other edges of the cap just to make sure we've got a nice watertight seal definitely something i'd probably recommend doing before setting up the system just says you're having to wait for the grow bed to dry back out again and seal it up later if it does leak too much now as to locating the growbed itself over the top i like it back at least this far because it gives you enough room to get a fishnet in there to fish out dinner or to get down there and work on the pump without you know having to squeeze in and out now just something to point out as you can see there's a fairly large gap here i've left it these bottom legs the full length that i chopped off from the base here at the top mainly because i'm not too sure how this system will be set up in the end what you can do though if you're not as tall as me and can't reach over the top what you can do is you can chop off bits of this pipe work this will bring this framework down which means it'll be easier to access the top one thing you don't want to do is chop off above this line here and make it shorter again if you do you will have to trim off more of the fish tank to make it sit properly now one thing to keep in mind if you are going to trim the legs it would be a good idea not to take them too far if you think that this system might be built upon in the future and have extra grow beds or tanks added to it because having a gap here over the top of this tank makes it easy to run pipe work through if you are to expand so you can have drains coming through here if this turns into a sun tank in the future just something to think about so i won't be painting or cladding this ibc is someone else will end up with it eventually and they may want to paint it to fit in with their landscape so normally what you would do is cover up the tank itself and the grow bed with either a paint or some sort of wrap or some sort of timber or tin cladding that stops light getting in which helps feed algae algae will also feed off the nutrients in the water and yeah you end up with a big green soupy mess if it's left unchecked so i won't be covering them i won't be painting them but it is a good idea for you folks out there to look into how you're going to stop like getting into the system and letting algae basically take over so we're ready to plumber up now very simple the pump down in the fish tank pipework takes the water to the left rear hand side of the grow bed the grow bed fills and then the water leaves it via a bell siphon in this corner down into the fish tank again for it to cycle round and round where we'll start is with the pump sending the water up into the grow bed so for the pump i'm using on the build it's just a basic little 3000 liter an hour magnetic drive pump i think this one runs around about 85 watts there's a whole heap of different ones out there so you know shop around to see what suits your needs now the plumbing or the pipe work i'm pretty much all using this reinforced um kink free hose it's uh fairly durable i've had some out now in the sun for or coming up to four or five years and it still hasn't cracked i have heard that some brands will crack so i don't know whether i'm just lucky with this a lot or not irrigation supply places have this rural or rag stores as well the little fittings themselves they're just the little barbed fittings that you'll find in your irrigation supply or hardware store they're very cheap and very easy to get the taps they are a little bit more expensive but there's only two for this build so it's not a lot um the only other fitting we have here is a little nut and tail jobby with an adapter and this pretty much will just go straight onto the pump these parts also too they're readily available with all your other irrigation fittings just need this little bit as a step down for the 25 mil or one inch barb fitting that goes on top now for measurements i can't give you accurate measurements it depends where you want to situate the pump and where you want the inlet as to how long bits of pipe work you're going to be i tend to eyeball it anyway i don't you know mark out exact lengths now i'm not using the little stainless steel hose clamps that i've used on other builds mainly because there's not going to be enough pressure in this pipe and as you'll see these guys fit in fairly firmly so i'm not too worried if i was going to step it up a notch and build a larger system i'd definitely put those stainless steel clamp hose clamps on there because you just never know when you know something's going to go pear-shaped so when working with this pipe um it's a good idea to have a little container with some hot water just hot water from the tap will do it just helps to soften the pipe a bit so you can get it over these fittings here so all i do is just pop it in here for um oh we'll count to 15 hey and then when it's softened a bit just come out and push it on i like to try and screw it on the same way the spiral of the pipe is going and there you go that's pretty much all it you have your pipe on to the fitting so we'll just pop this little pump in the fish tank and we'll follow the build on from there so just down here in the fish tank we have the pump already set up what we have is the 3000 liter an hour pump that's running up via the 25 mil or one inch line to a little bit of hose with another valve in it so this valve here has got two purposes one it relieves some of the flow from the slightly oversized pump and two it also aerates the water in the fish tank by um sending out a spray over the top now the pipe from the top of that tee comes around the corner here is held on to the ibc in a few positions using zip ties just one down there and there's another one down there and then it flows up to another valve and then from that valve there it goes into a couple of 90 degree elbows just the barbed fittings pushed together with a bit of pipe to join them and then the water goes down on top of the media that's the basic setup onto the bell siphon i've already posted a clip that runs through how this actual siphon was made so check that one out for a more in-depth look so what we have to begin with is the shroud the shroud is a hundred mil or four inch storm water pipe it's got a load of slits in there that allow water in but holds the media out from the bell siphon itself stops it from gumming up the work so to speak down the bottom here i have an end cap why i like to include this is it sits underneath the bulkhead fitting which goes through the base of the grow bed and it just holds the shroud in place so people can't lift it out media doesn't get under there and foul up the works it's happened in an earlier builder valve so it's something i like to include but it's not necessary you don't need it on there on the top here i have another end cap that i've cut a couple of slots out of that just means it fits on here loosely but it's enough to keep any debris out of the siphon arrangement inside and fouling up the works so in the center of the siphon we have the stand pipe and this is actually sits underneath the little bell there the standpipe is what sets the maximum water level in the grow bed so water won't go any further up the sides of the bed than here it falls over and then drains back through into the fish tank this one's made up of a section of pipe as well as some other fittings here and it basically screws into the bulkhead fitting there which is in the base of the grow bed we'll get to that one in a minute the total length of this siphon here or standpipe i should say is 250 mil or just shy of 10 inches so because the bed is 300 mil deep or 12 inches deep that means there's going to be about 50 mil or 2 inches of dry space above the high tide mark when the bed is full so this allows for 25 millimeters of lip around the edge of the grow bed to stop any media falling out and it also means that there'll be roughly 25 millimeters of dry media above the high tide mark this will stop any algae from growing on the surface of the media so the bell is made up of 65 mil or two and a half inch pipe it's got a cap on the top of it it's pushed on there airtight if it doesn't fit on airtight you need to glue it on now this one has a section of legs basically cut into the base of it you can drill holes as well these gaps allow water in underneath the bell so it can initiate a siphon and then later on as the bed drains and water comes down it allows air in to break the siphon there's also a gap between the top of the standpipe and the cap of the bell of roughly around about 30 mil or just under an inch and a quarter and that's just to allow good water flow through the bell down the standpipe and out into the fish tank we also have the bulkhead fitting this is basically what plums all the works through the grow bed and allows the water to travel down into the fish tank so we'll just drill the hole and install this jobby now now all we need to do is work out where exactly we want this bell siphon to be set up now one thing to point out is it's a good idea to have it so it's sitting directly over the fish tank not too far over to one side where it could be running into problems with the plumbing underneath with the cage and all that sort of things i like to use the base of the belt siphon shroud to see where the hole needs to be placed but if you're not going to use one you can just eyeball it the hole i drilled was a 32 mil or inch and a quarter one i used just use a normal old hole saw i like to start the pilot drill going forwards and then switch the drill into reverse when it starts to cut with the saw blade itself it just gives you a cleaner cut and it reduces the chance of the teeth grabbing and tearing the thin wall the ibc i also like to clean up any swarf around the hole using my utility knife blade it just ensures that the washers get a nice watertight seal on the growbed itself now to install this is really easy all you need to do is pop down your washer then your end cap base if you're going to use one pop your bolt through pop a washer underneath and tighten up the nut so just quickly i have had a few people notify me and tell me they're having issues keeping this little section here watertight they're just using the washer the base for the shroud and then popping the bulkhead through i think what the issue could be is a little bit of debris between the base of the bulkhead and this section of shroud and also too i was told that um depending on where these are made around the world there may be some relief in here from the moulding or a um a maker's mark or something along those lines so if this doesn't sit nice and flat on there some water may get through an easy fix for that is the washer down the bottom then your end cap then just another washer there and then your bulkhead fitting and then just tighten up the nut from below and away you go at this point too i like to thread on a little 90 degree 1 inch or 25 mil elbow it just screws onto the base of the bulkhead fitting the reason i do it now is when you tighten it up it actually slackens off the nut on the bulkhead fitting so it's good to do it now if you do it after it's all set up you might end up with a leak that's very hard to do up by putting your hand down through the shrouds i also find there's no need to put any white plumbing tape on here because the thread is so tight that it yeah pretty much will makes a watertight seal so i'm just going to arrange that so it splashes out towards the middle of the fish tank and now we can tighten up the bulkhead fitting using some pliers the other point to remember too is if this bulkhead does leak it's going to drip directly into the fish tank i mean as long as it's not a constant trickle you should be all right i also like to add a section of pipe into that fitting with another 90 degree or a 45 degree fitting pushed onto the other end that just directs the flow down onto the surface of the water in the fish tank so that looks pretty good now next bit's really easy you're just screwing in the stand pipe no plumbers tape needed you might find it might leaks leak a bit through that thread but you know no big drama then one goes the bell and then we pop on the shroud with this one here i've just got little marks so it matches up nicely with this base plate and there we go so from here i think it's a good idea to give the system a wet run before adding the media the main reason being is you might find you have some leaks or adjustments that need to be made once the media is in it's a whole lot of work to remove the media to fix it case in point the cap in the base of the grow bed leaked when i tested it out the first time for the bell siphon clip so yeah definitely something you want to do before you end up with a whole heap of media in here so once you're happy with the way the grow bed set up you can add some media in here now the clay for my parents i pretty much will use my compost screen i set it over the top of a wheelbarrow popped some clay in and gave it a quick blast with some water and moved it around a bit and that removed any of the dust into the water below that was just used on one of their gardens later on i think i used two wheelbarrows for just over 290 liters worth of clay i just find that washing the cray before it goes into the grow bed saves you a lot of water especially for you folks who are on either tank water or on tight water restrictions but i mean if you've got enough water you can wash it out in the bed itself just fill it and drain it a few times i found in the past it took about three or four flood and drain cycles to get the majority of the clay dust out that way another idea if you don't have a compost screen and you do want to wash it out before it goes in to save some water you could use a section of shea cloth inside a wheelbarrow or a large container that's three quarters full of water just make sure the shade cloth is hanging out over the sides tip your clay in give it a bit of a wash around gather the sides of the shade cloth or fly screen or whatever you're using pull it up out of the water drain any of the excess water out and then just put the media straight into the grow bed you could even just throw the clay straight into the wheelbarrow give it a bit of a wash and scoop it out with a sieve now for those who want to use rock i think it's a good idea to wash it first and also make sure that the supports under the grow bed on top of the fish tank are going to be um sturdy enough to be able to hold the weight so no matter how you've cleaned your rock or your clay you will find the water will be a little bit cloudy once you fire up the system nothing to stress about though it normally settles down within 24 to 48 hours the small solids just deposit out in the base of the grow bed or in the fish tank so no big drama at all so this is the little chop and flip system i built with my father the other week plumbing wise it's fairly much well identical to the one i've just built so at the moment there's no fish in this one they've just been cycling the tank by adding a little bit of fish food every day and popping a couple of caps full of sea salt in there every now and then just to give those lettuce some nutrients just to run through how we've set up the flow in this little jobby down here in the sun tank i've opened the valve about a third of the way and as you can see it's sending out a nice little jet of water over the top of the fish tank adding a lot of dissolved oxygen in there as it splashes around and disturbs the surface so this one here is pretty much all just aerating the water as well as relieving some of the pressure from the pump because just like the other one it's a little bit oversized for this job so just up here at the grow bed we have the valve that we do the fine adjustments with now this one here can take a little bit of tweaking you might have to fill and drain the bed three or four times to get it all right i find i don't really have a problem with the siphon initiating my problem is getting the siphon to break and that's due to too much water going into the grow bed so you need to um turn the valve down a little bit so just to give you some idea with the flow rates with this system the water's coming in at roughly about 650 to 670 liters an hour somewhere in there and it's taking just under nine minutes for the bed to fill and roughly about three minutes for it to drain on the drain cycle so it's it's pretty much all in the sweet spot we could increase the flow a little bit better to give a better bio filtration but that's not really required at the moment the general rule of thumb with the backyard system is you want the volume of the water in your fish tank to pass through your bio filtration which is your grow bed media at least once an hour so you can process all those wastes into um plant available nitrate and the water's nice and clear for the fish now just quickly one thing i would recommend you do is try and remove as many solids as you can from the grow bed and a very easy way to do that is just pop one of those little washing up scrubbers underneath the inlet into the grow bed itself if you want to get more elaborate and probably something i'd run with is knock together a little diy canister filter basically it's a way for the solids to be picked up by the pump deposited at the base of a container with something like bird netting or shade cloth over the top of it that picks up the debris and all the clear water then flows out into the grow bed itself that video is also listed in that diy aquaponics playlist down in the description below if you aren't going to run solids filtration one thing i'd suggest is cleaning out the grow bed at least after the harvest of the fish just stops the build-up of all those solars that can cause you a few problems down the line so as you can see folks it is a very tidy little build and very adaptable as well i mean at this size you could probably fit around about 10 to 12 fish in there just mainly because of the biofiltration offered by the grow bed but as i mentioned at the start of the video you can add on some extra grow beds another whole ibc is a fish tank and you've got yourself a cracker of a little system and for you folks who can't lay your hands on an ibc to knock together one of these little systems there are loads of different ways you can put them together and i've recently published a video that looks at that there will be a link down in the description below and one will pop up here towards the end i would like to thank you all for coming along and thumbing up these videos and sharing them around on your different social groups to family and friends if you think they're helpful many thanks to those folks who have purchased the guide remember there is a link down in the description below if you want to learn more about that and many thanks as well to those folks supporting us on our youtube membership program and also those patrons over on our farm your own yard website many thanks for the continuing support folks but i will pretty much well leave it there i do hope you're all well and happy and your own gardens and aquaponics systems are booming and i will catch you next video cheers folks and happy growing

Channel: Rob Bob's Aquaponics & Backyard Farm

Views: 36,051

Keywords: Chop & Flip aquaponics, How to build aquaponics system, how to build aquaponics system step by step, aquaponics, aquaponics Australia, aquaponics setup, rob bob aquaponics, rob bob's backyard, aquaponics systems, aquaponics system, how to aquaponics, نظام الأكوابونيك, aquaponik, ਇਕਵਾਪੋਨਿਕਸ, acuaponia, アクアポニックス, 鱼菜共生, aq, aquaponics diy, diy aquaponics, അക്വാപോണിക്സ്, akwabunik, Аквапоника, Akuaponik, how to set up aquaponic system, how to make a aquaponic system

Id: jS9uAmfWVpE

Length: 27min 3sec (1623 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 12 2022