Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

What size is the pump?
So it is the holes for the 1" fittings between the blue barrels that make up the sump that you miss drilled?
Interconnection between "sump" containers is definitely gravity plumbing and if your pump sucks water out fast, you might have a pump running dry if those connections are slow or get blocked up. I think I would recommend up-sizing that plumbing. 1 1/2" would be better or perhaps even redundant 1 1/2" in case you get clogging in one, you won't be as at risk of burning up a pump or overflowing one of the barrels.

Thanks for this TC.

I made my trip last night and picked up the 1 1/2 pipe and fittings for the sump barrels.

I have a 2800 gallon per hour sump that has a float switch on it. It's going to be running through about 20' of pipe along with my air pump to try and increase the oxygenation so I expect that the pressure shouldn't be too bad by the time the water makes it into the FT.

Do you see anything that could cause a disaster in this setup?

By the way... for fishless cycling, is there anyplace that talks to how much ammonia I should be putting into my 250 gallon tank that you know of?

Please let me know,
Thefishingangler

I believe there is a fishless cycling thread in either basic info or useful info.

As for if you buy ammonia, I don't know how much to tell you to put in.

I cycled up my big system just fine using about 500 ml of aged urine (humonia) every 2-4 days or whenever the ammonia and nitrite levels dropped low enough. I recommend aged urine since leaving it sealed up in a bottle lets the urea convert to ammonia so making overdosing less likely (when you dose with urea, it will take days for the ammonia to show up and people tend to get impatient thinking they didn't add enough and then before they realize it the ammonia levels are off the chart and still rising which tends to actually slow cycling down.) Also, sealing the urine in a bottle for a few weeks also allows the pH to rise along with the converting ammonia which tends to kill off things like e. coli which will show up in the urine of even a healthy person.

Anyway, it doesn't really take very much. You essentially want to dose up to between 1 and 2 ppm of ammonia and then wait till the level drops and repeat. Watch the nitrite levels too though since once they start to spike you will want to wait till both the ammonia and nitrite levels drop below 1 ppm before dosing again. Once you can reach a point where you can dose to 1 ppm ammonia and have both the ammonia and nitrite levels drop to 0 within 24 hours, you are fishlessly cycled. How much does it take to reach 1 or 2 ppm, well for that I usually guess low and then increase the dose till I get it right. It isn't rocket science and there are studies out there that say dosing to 5 ppm ammonia will cycle quicker but remember that too much ammonia can inhibit the next step which is usually harder to get past and that is the nitrite spike.

As to the air pump running with the water pump, just make sure there is a check valve so as not to pump water through your air pump if something goes wrong.

good Luck there