Aquaponics - Float Valve Mod

I installed a float valve on my aquaponics system because I grow a huge sphere of slime in there as free food for my Golden Comets.

I'm currently making a half hearted attempt at breeding them.

My Float valve looks exactly like this pictured to the left.



I bought it on eBay for two dollars I think.

It works pretty well but it doesn't put out a lot of water. I'm guessing it was designed to keep a dog bowl full or something, and for this it would be perfect. But I need a little extra flow.

Here it is in it's full "on" position.




And here in it's "off" position.

It does "off" pretty well, although I'm not overly fussed about it's "off" state. I dont really care if it leaks a little.

As you can see from the black pipe leading into it, there are some holes to make a spray to add a little aeration, but also to make sure there is never a situation where there is zero flow.



I only have a dozen or so adult goldfish in my system, and it is capable of holding a lot more.

 It could cope without any flow for a day or two, but the fish seem to enjoy their water moving around a bit.

The problem is that the slimeball I'm cultivating in the tank can sometimes find it's way into the outlet. The result is an overflow, and the sump tank running dry. The pump hates it when that happens, and I was lucky enough to catch it just before it ran dry a couple of days ago.

The point of the float valve was to slow the amount of water entering the fishtank if the water level gets too high. But because the flow through the device isn't very high, it isnt quite doing the task I assigned it.

I decided to make it flow a little faster.

To this end, I taped out the pin that holds it all together with a chopstick.

As expected, everything fell apart nicely, and I found that the thing worked by the float levering a small slide with a silicone stopper on the end. This blocked the water outlet when the float was
... floating

The bottom bit has the float on the end and fits into the box section on the next bit up. The lowest bit of green slimy plastic is the silicone stopper that presses against the next higher up bit of green slimy plastic.


I should write operating manuals.

The inlet hole did indeed turn out to be pretty small. Perhaps this is so the silicone stopper has a nice large surface area to stop leaks.

But I dont care about leaks because even when the slime blocks my system, it always lets some water through.

It never blocks it perfectly.

So I drilled it out to a size that should let more water through, but still allow the float to shut down the flow.

I had to do it by hand because the chuck on my drill has decided that it likes having the 13mm drill in it and refuses to surrender it no matter how I try to persuade the thing otherwise.

Thats what you get for running water all over the chuck when drilling stainless hinges and trying not to overheat the drill bit.

Somewhat surprisingly, the thing all fell back together as easily as it fell apart.

A few taps of the pin and it was all good.









So now the flow looks like this when it's in the "off" position.

Not a bad result.

Most of that flow is because I didnt bother to clean up the hole I drilled.

"Drilled" is probably a bit of a fantasy really.

Lets just say I made a hole with a drill bit.

In the "on" position I get a lot more flow now.

All in all I think this can be called a complete success.

And perhaps more importantly, it  shows that maybe I can still do stuff.

It's been a while.




If I care enough, I'll clean up the hole and make it so the flow actually stops when the float is floating.

Trying to drill by hand is fine until you actually make it through the thing your drilling. Then it becomes very difficult to make a clean hole because the drill bit just tries to screw itself into the item.

This is the "before" shot.






And this is the "after" shot.

The result is you get three quarters of a hole as you brake through the plastic.

I'll file it back to something like round if it turns out to matter.





So...

I did something.


120ThingsIn20Years Some of the photos were even in focus!

Entomology - Maggot harvest

My maggot self harvester works.

Which is nice.

I found a stack of lines radiating out from the collector on the table.

I'm guessing that means its been working pretty well for the last 12 hours or so.

Working well, except for the "not letting them get away" bit. So I can enjoy a few extra flies over the coming days.

I think it's safe to assume we all knew that was going to happen.

The ramp even worked, although it has to be said that this particular maggot is actually using it to go back down.

It must have changed it's mind.









But eventually it seems, the little beasties find their way to the exit, and drop down into the container of   horrible tasting breakfast cereal that I gave them.

I dusted the wall of the orange collection container with flour, and that seems to have stopped them escaping, but who knows.

What this does mean is that I can make a better device that's sealed where it should be, and make some  fish food out of stuff that would otherwise go to landfill.

The stink factor was essentially zero, so no problems what-so-ever about doing it in a suburban back yard. From more than six inches away, there was no detectable smell at all. Basically you had to put your nose to it, and we had some very hot, dry days, some hot humid days, and half way through I added a stack of water, so it wasn't stink free because it was dry. (I added water because the dead fish was starting to turn into a dried fish, and wanted to keep it fly friendly)

And they were big and healthy looking.

This one, just big.

It's one of the escaped ones that was foolish enough to escape my cereal feed lot. I watched it being kissed by a black house spider, as it stumbled into it's web.

The upshot of this was a very obedient maggot who was happy to stand still on a ruler for as log as it took to get a nice photo of it's length.

Thanks nature.


The perfect house warming present for a fishing buddy, has got to be a lifetime supply of fresh maggots, via a lovingly hand crafted, self harvesting, suburban suitable, stink free, maggot growing, fish head recycling, bait farm. And I have just such a fishing buddy, who recently relocated to a place where you cant buy maggots for bait, and he just bought a boat.




120 Things in 20 years - Turning fish heads back into fish, with entomology and a maggot harvester.

Aquaponics - Overfeeding

When I was even more of a kid, my favorite book was about overfeeding fish. It looked like fun.

Uneaten fish food (not poop)

One of the problems with overfeeding isn't that your fish sit in your bath tub and get uncomfortably large and interesting, but rather that the uneaten food sits in the corner going rancid.

A mature system can handle a certain amount of excess food as it breaks down into plant food via the normal nitrogen cycle. My grow bed media is kind of mature, but my water is almost all new from a few days ago when I moved the system.

Most of the nitrifying beasties live in the gravel, but I think there are some living in the water, the slime layer on the sides of the fish tank, and on things like my pump, and pump inlet screen etc. This can mean that, after an upset like a washout and water change, the system might not be quite as capable of turning ammonia into nitrates. I think.

fish so well hidden you cant really see anything

When I changed the water and location of the fish tank there was some inevitable stressing of the fish. Shown here is an image depicting not really being able to quite see the fish because they are still hiding.

As a result of the upheaval, they went off their food.

I think the amount of ammonia introduced into the system by feeding should be similar regardless of the fish eating it or it rotting in the corner, but because I had the option of removing the uneaten food, I removed it.

why do chickens have to stand on whatever you are taking a photo of?

A few days ago I finally tracked down a product I remembered seeing in the shed when I was a kid. It's a siphon for fuel etc, but it has a squishy hand pump so you don't need to drink so much petrol. I thought it would be perfect to vacuum up any uneaten food.

It wasn't.

It didn't work very well at all. That might be why nobody sells them any more.