How to Build an Aquaponic System - Chop & Flip IBC Build

how's it going folks Rob here making up a chop and flip aquaponic system today thought I'd bring you along had loads of people ask me you know how do I make up a basic aquaponic system so hopefully this will help you guys out now it's based around an IBC uh IBC is an intermediate bult container um they're the cage tanks you see around YouTube on loads of people's aquaponic systems this one is very basic as the name describes you chop the top off you flip it over over you got a grow bed sitting on top of a fish tank we've made one of these actually turned into the sum tank in the system we're running at the moment um I had a a tank down the bottom about 600 Lish grow bed on top and I threw a whole heap of goldfish in there and later expanded by adding on a fish tank and then another grow bed 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 Ning 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 a 600 L tank but generally you know you're only going to be able to raise about 10 fish to table size or 500 G or 1 pound in a system like this so anything over 600 L is you know more than enough water for those guys to swim around in the main concern uh for me is if you're going to expand later on you want the sump to be as large as possible um it just you know helps save you doing topups all the time mainly just along the front wall here of the IBC there's a series of volume markings in both gallons and l so just keep them in mind when you're trying to work out how big your sum tank and your grow beds are going to be the 600 L 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 ibcs uh on this tank here it's a t40 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 Philips 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 uh 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 of the top of the OBC 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 aquaponic 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 hacka or grinder whatever you want um 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 around about the 750 L 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 L worth of media into the grow bed so I know it's going to be a fairly ible grow bed so to mark it out I'm measuring up from the line I Mark for the top of the sum 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 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 sum tank on the left one more job to do before these guys are ready and that is to take off the sarf 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 burs off and dispose of them in the bin then I'm going to head up for some lunch 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 just grabb 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 a grinder and then I'll just touch them up with a bit of the gal pane 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 kg of weight inside this system once it's all set up and 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 um 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 to the framework so no one can lift it up so for the grow we need some supports that will go across the top and hold the cage and also the base of the grow bed itself so I think hardwood is the best way to go I've seen people use treated pine um you've just got to look into what would work best in your situation I know some people are a bit concerned about leeching from treated Timbers I just prefer to use hardwood if I can so once we have these Timbers on we can pop the cage on and it's basically spun around around 90° 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 um it just means you can drop the grow bed down on it and they'll sit nice and flush also to these tops here um some of them have a pressure release valve on it uh 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 there when I was testing the Bell Sion 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 saves 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 grow bed itself over the top I like it back at least this far because it gives you enough room to get a fish net in there to fish out dinner or uh 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 um BAS 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 um 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 frame work down which means it'll be easier to um 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 him 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 pip work through if you are to expand so you can have drains coming through here if this turns into a su tank in the future just something to think about so I won't be painting or cladding this IBC is someone else will um 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 the like getting in um 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 um 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 um how you're going to stop like getting into the system and um letting algae basically take over so we're ready to plumber up now very simple the pump down in the fish tank pip workk takes the water to the left rearand 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 so 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 is just a basic little 3,000 L hour uh magnetic Drive pump it's got a little float uh in the back here so if the water level drops too far the um circuit is tripped and basically you don't burn out your pump so I think this one runs around about 85 wats 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 while 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 5 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 lot or not Irrigation Supply uh place have this rural or EG 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 uh 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 um 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 1in 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 pip 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 um 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 like the one I did for Michael at Savor soil permaculture I definitely put those stainless steel um CL 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 taple do um it's 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 oh we'll count to 15 Hy and then when it's softened a bit just come out and push it on I like to try and um screw it on the same way the spiral of the pipe is going and there you go that's pretty much well it you have your pipe onto 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 3,000 lph pump that's running up via the 25 mil or 1 in 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 air rates the water in the fish tank by um sending out a spray over the top now the pipe from the top of that tea 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° elbows just the Barb fittings push together with a bit of pipe to join them and 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 100 Mil or 4 in storm water pipe it's got a load of slits in there that allow water in but holds the meteor 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 um 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 this shroud in place so people can't lift it out meteor doesn't get under there and foul up the works it's happened in an earlier Builder Val 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 uh that just means it fits on here Loosely but it's enough to keep any debris out of the um siphon Arrangement inside uh 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 stand pipe 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 the minute the total length of this um siphon here or stamp pipe I should say is 250 mil or just shy of 10 in so because the bed is 300 M deep or 12 in deep that means there's going to be about 50 m or 2 in of dry space above the high tide Mark when the bed is full so this allows for 25 mm 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 mm of dry media above the high tide mark this will stop any AE from growing on the surface of the metor so the Bell is made up of 65 mil or 2 1/2 in pipe it's got a cap on the top of it it's pushed on there airtight um 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 stand pipe and the cap of the bell of roughly around about 30 m or just under an inch and a quar and that's just to allow good water flow through the Bell down the stamp pipe 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 Bell 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 use just used a normal old Hol 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 grow bed 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 cap through pop a washer underneath and tighten up the nut at this point too I like to thread on a little 90° 1 in or 25 mil elbow just screws onto the base of the bulkhead fitting uh the reason I do it now is when you tighten it up it actually slackens off the nuts on the bulkhead fitting so it's good to do it now uh 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 the watertight seal so just going to rrange 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° or a 45° 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 plumber tape needed you might find it might leak leak a bit through that thread but you know no big drama then on 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 ide idea to give the system a wet run before adding the media uh the main reason being is you might find you have some leaks or adjustments that need to be made once the metor is in it's a whole lot of work to remove the metor to fix it case in point uh the cap in the base of the grow bed leaked uh 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 meteor in here now I'm not adding meteor to this bed but we'll go through how I added it to my parents give you a bit of a look now the clay for my parents I pretty much will use my compost green I set it over the top of a wheel barrow 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 gens later on I think I use two wheelbarrows for just over 290 L worth of clay I just find that washing the clay go before it goes into the grow bed saves you a lot of water especially for you folks who are on either tank water or are on tight water restrictions but I mean if you've got enough water um 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 anded 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 a section of Shea cloth inside a wheelbarrow or a large container that's 3/4 full of water just make sure the Sha 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 Sie 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 and when you're selecting your rock there's a couple of points you need to keep in mind I won't go into them here but I posted a clip earlier on that if you want to check it out 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 the um cage it had been chopped up a little bit differently but we'll cover that in a different clip 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 soil 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 sum tank I've open 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 ating 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 it 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 um 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 L an hour somewhere in there and it's taking just under 9 minutes for the bed to fill and roughly about 3 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 it better biofiltration 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 biofiltration which is your grow bed media at least once an hour so you can process all those Wast into um plant available nitrate and the water's nice and clear for the fish just something I wanted to show you that dad's done and I think is a great idea with the end of these pipes here he's actually put some filler in there and what that does is it stops any water accumulating and it rusting out also stops ants from making up little nest in there which is a problem I've had in um our build at home and I have to keep trying to flood them out to discourage them from the system so it might be something to think about with your own um dad's actually covered them up with tape I've just ripped this one off uh to sort of blend them into the build for the time being so I just wanted to show you down in here as you can see there's a little bit of um green growth on top of the clay that's because I haven't added enough clay to this bed it really should be another bag in here to bring it up to around about 350 L of clay but as you can see we're sitting about 40 mil down I need to come up about another 20 M or 3/4 of an inch so I just didn't have the clay at the time I got to go and buy another bag and the reason why we're getting the algae is because I've still got the stand pipe set at 250 mil oh we did until a couple of minutes ago I just chopped a bit off so now the water won't come up right to the surface here so we won't have the algae um basically growing on this clay um not a big drama um at this point in time but if it was to happen for you know weeks and weeks at a time you would end up with just a green growth right over the top here so as you can see it's a very tidy little system that doesn't take up a lot of room and also too if you get the bug it's very adaptable you can throw another fish tank on there couple more grow beds and Away you go now this isn't the only way you can set up one of these little chop and flip jobbies my parents we set theirs up slightly differently so I'll post a little bit of a clip on that one just showing you a few of the differences also too there is the iconic IBC of aquaponics put out by backyard aquaponics I'll put a link to that page in the description below and you'll also find a ton of different variations on YouTube blogs forums and whatnot so you know have a bit of a look around and see what suits you for your back back yard this is just one way to do it as for how many fish you can stock in a system like this I wouldn't probably go more than 10 or 12 not until you get a little bit more experience under your belt the reason being is there's only enough biofiltration in the system to look after the waste of approximately 10 to 12 fish as you get more experience and you learn a little bit more about aquaponics you might be able to tweak those numbers but yeah you just don't want to push the biofiltration of the bed so I hope you've enjoyed the clip and it's giving you a couple of useful ideas especially you folks looking at building your first aquaponic system or you know the others who are just curious on how they go together if you hit that little subscribe button up there and check a little notification box you'll be sent an email whenever I post one of the upcoming aquaponic Clips or maybe just one of the other Clips on our small little Urban backyard farm I really do hope everyone is well and happy and I will catch you next time cheers folks it's a tad hard to film with these guys circling you all day

Channel: Rob Bob's Aquaponics & Backyard Farm

Views: 1,196,313

Keywords: How to build a chop & flip aquaponic system, how to aquaponic system, Aquaponics System, how to build a aquaponic system, aquaponics system start to finish, how to set up aquaponic system, how to make a aquaponic system, IBC aquaponic system, how to aquaponic, aquaponics, IBC, urban farming, backyard farm, backyard farming, Bits out the back, organic gardening, rob bob's backyard, rob bob aquaponics, نظام الأكوابونيك, الأكوابونيك, aquaponik, ਇਕਵਾਪੋਨਿਕਸ, acuaponia, アクアポニックス, 鱼菜共生

Id: b_VROMhAoSs

Length: 26min 59sec (1619 seconds)

Published: Sun May 01 2016