Gab's IBC + barrels

[Gab]

G'day,

This is my first system, essentially to get some hands-on experience with aquaponics and to demonstrate to the missus that you can grow fish and veggies symbiotically.

I am blessed with a near limitless supply of food grade barrels for free, you may see in the background that I even use them as big pots to grow all sorts of veggies. I was at the right pace at the right time and scored that IBC for $20. It was previously used to hold cooking oil from fish'n'chip shops.

It's not quite finished yet, as you can see. I want to connect another barrel to the sump in order to have greater flood/drain volume capacity and add another two 1/2-barrel beds. I still need to make up syphons for two of these GB's and get some growing medium in, as well as making up baskets to hold filter media to filter the solids out of the incoming water from the FT, and the aerator isn't here yet.

See that black tub over the FT? well, I want to bring the pump outlet up into it and make that either a raft or duckweed tank, then overflow it into a few NFT channels running along the fence, which then empty into the FT.

I'll be stocking with silvers and yabbies, not sure how many yet but I'm in no hurry to get into trouble with overstocking so I'll need to do some more research and work it out. I'd love to figure out how to make some sort of multi-storey structure to increase my yabby capacity (I love yabbies!) as tank floor area rather than water volume is the limiting factor, but I have no idea how to do that right now.

The other wonderful idea I've recently discovered is the wicking bed... what an ingenious concept! With the scarcity of potable water in Australia the only question is why wouldn't you convert all your beds to wicking beds instead of throwing huge ammounts of good drinking water on them as we do? ...wish I'd discovered it years ago. I've been wondering if it's possible to convert a conventional dirt garden bed to a wicking bed but then use that wicking bed as a continuous flow bed in an aquaponics system? I have a whole bunch of beds in the dirt garden that I want to convert to wicking beds after the current crops are harvested.

Anyhow, here's the pics......

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Cheers,
Gab.

[drewb]

well done looks like it going to be a great system.

cheers Drew and Bec

[GaryD]

Hi Gab,

I still need to make up syphons for two of these GB's and get some growing medium in.......

By the time you throw some gravel into the GB's they will be much heavier than they are just full of water. Will those support barrels bear the weight? You may be able to fill the support barrels with sand if it's an issue......or you could use them as raft tanks perhaps.

A very tidy job of putting all of that together.

Gary

[MarkEinOz]

Gab,

I really like your set-up, and is pretty much the same as I would like to do. And I am big into yabbies and trying to nut out the same capacity issues as yourself. Lets collaborate!