Ornamental Aquaponics - Saga Continues

Make changes to the set, making it more compact and presentable at the same time practical. It's obvious the first alteration needed is the way the growbed is mounted. So I cut the stand and have it on top of the flower pot.

It is still a prototype, I need to make improvement to the stand so that it is secure. In the condition above it will be prone to tumble due to the very narrow pot area to have the stand placed on.

Hydroton added and some guppies as the starter fish to get things booted up on this set. Plants will be added later, still figuring out what type to use. I am getting another pot which is bigger to pair with this growbed and make improvement on the stand by making some bracket to help secure it to the pot.

Guppies as above getting use to the siphon cycle, aeration and water cycling is good with the slightly redesign 20 mm "Bell Less" siphon. Water feed using clear PVC tubes from a small 500 liter/hr pump. Later on I will change the clear tube to a more opaque colour to ensure no algae growth within. This is a test unit so I need to see what happening to it as much as I can.

The siphon down wash, plenty of bubbles and those holes on the down pipe help to aerate and reduce noise. I need to timed the cycle and probably make a walk through video showing the small set.

I use the pump on the left above for this set, no particular brand recommended just that I have this in hand and might as well use it. It is a very low cost pump something like seven dollar with low power requirements.

The other pump is the one that I use on my daughter's requested Micro Aquaponics set, for school "Show and Tell"

That's about it on this Ornamental Aquaponics, I will continue testing it and make improvement along the way. The most important is to address the safety issue, the reliability part of the set I can say it's good to go.

Ornamental Aquaponics

It all started with my daughter request to make a small aquaponics unit for demonstration purpose, then it strike me that people are more interested in Ornamental than Practical Aquaponics. Made a small kit, it is undergoing testing to see whether the siphon will work without hiccups.

Ornamental Aquaponics something new to thinker about, I specialise in flood and drain so it will be no brainier to figure out that I must do it with a siphon. The problem is to get a reliable siphon at such a small inflow, I did made a tiny siphon with 15 mm pvc but at that size it is unreliable. I had also made a 20 mm siphon, but it is too big for this tiny unit, so I decide to try a hybrid of 20 and 15.

It works !!! video below as I post yesterday.

Okay, now let do it seriously, to be ornamental it must be pretty... right.. that one factor that cost money. Anything pretty must cost money... so.. since I manage to get the siphon works really well.. now to get the pretty factor.

 First try below... , still ugly.. well.. it doesn't cost a bomb.. what do you expect... once I know it work.. then I will do a make over.

I use mini "strainer bell" or "bell less" siphon for this set at the moment, will revise to a different design. It is difficult to get parts at this size. The siphon below is the shorter version from above.

Growbed is a water plants flower pot, they do not have holes on the bottom. I make a hole for the 20 mm stand pipe and an outlet as usual.

Bricks were use as a ballast, so that not much water needed to fill the grow bowl since it is not filled with LECA yet. Water pump is at 500 liter per hour rating, from the flow it looks much less that that. Ideally the grow bowl should be directly above the fish tank, I must modified the stand to make it stand on top of the fish tank.

Will test this for next few months and on the mean time I hope it will get prettier by itself.

Micro Set for my Daughter

Making one micro set, it is very difficult. Need to test to ensure it work.

This micro set is made using two cookie jar, with siphon holding cap in place. One jar were cut to make the growbed and the other I made access hole for water feed outlet and fish feeding.

Video above is the testing of this prototype, need more work on it to make it presentable.