Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Greeting AP Gurus;

I’m located on the Gold Coast Hinterland and would like to build our first system at the north end of the house in a narrow space that gets maximum sunshine. Anything bigger than this will need me to invest in a car port or greenhouse so I thought we’d have a fiddle first with a smaller system.

The space I’ve chosen (received permission to use by my significant other) is north-north-west facing which is great but it’s not particularly large. I bought a 1000 water tank on ebay and would like to put the system into pipes as shown in the attached drawings. I have access to cheap 210mm PVC pipes so my intention was to cut them in half to make 2 beds out of one supported at 4 points. The wall is 7 meters long so I calculate 5 rows will give me about 200 litres of medium to play with. There would be room for some more at a later date if the system can handle it.

If I understand correctly, I can only run a 1 pump system if my fish tank is below my lowest bed. I don’t really fancy digging a large hole next to the foundations of the house so I believe I’ll need two pumps. One to go from the tank to the pipes and another from the sump back up to the tank.

What I don’t quite understand is the method that I will use. If I had a big flat bed I would flood and drain on 15 minutes cycles or something like that but if my pipes are only 105mm high and set at a slight angle for drainage, I don’t think that’s possible because the bottom of one end might be above the top of the other end….so I believe I need to just pump the water up the top of the pipes and drain it simultaneously and continously out the bottom. Is that right? Is that what they call NFT? Under these conditions I think my medium has to be able to draw water upwards to the roots. Would a fine gravel to that or would it have to be something like vermiculite? What suggestions would you make to ensure success of this fledgling effort?

All inputs greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Arran

Hi monkey, nice sketch up.
Water has positive adhesion to itself, so the pipes can be level and it will drain fine.
You will need a pre filter b4 the water hits ur nft pipes otherwise they will clog with solids in time. You might use one of the existing pipes, put end caps on and fill it with something to filter the solids, eg, shadecloth.
You will need a few airstones along each row, it helps nutrient uptake for the plants.
Use hydroton as ur grow media, much lighter than gravel.
Jay McClellan, I think, had some outstanding nft stuff he built himself. Look in his thread for pics, they are terrific.
Best thing will be to run ur pump continuous.
Most importantly, have fun and we love pics.

Graphics look sweet, nice job

What do you have in mind for:

Fish
Stocking density
feeding rates
aeration

Cheers

Easiest way to do it, would be leave the pipes full size, just cut a V out of the top. 105mm is simply not enough to support plants, I have been there done that, have a look at my system thread.

Fill with media, not quite to the top, and run your pump 15mins on, 45 mins off. This timing can be modified once the system is cycled, to suit your plant / fish requirements.

The way you have it set up in the drawings is great, but the top plants are going to be a bit hard to reach? The way you have it plumbed up is great, it is the way to do it. However I would use 19mm pipe for the water supplies.

Hello again:

Jay McClellan - did a search but it came up blank...perhaps not using the search function correctly so will try again later.
airstones - is that the stones with the bubbles as seen in aquariums? Are you saying these would go underneath the growing media inside the pipes?
Fish - I assumed someone had already asked this question in the forum somewhere so was going to find out what was best/quickest/toughest...perch maybe?
Stocking density and feeding rates - again, going to cross that bridge once the system was assembled. I figured something like 100 fingerlings and hope that 50 or 60 made it to adulthood. Again, we add grow beds if needed for more filtration later.
Aeration - I had hoped that having the return water falling into the tank from a height would have provide sufficient aeration. Would this not do?
Hydronton - 200 liters looks like it's going to cost about $175 but gravel is going to cost maybe $30...is hydroton really going to be worth the difference?
I'll look to see if I can get larger pipe...if I can't use this pipe cut in half I'll have to buy twice as much length! I would use salvaged materials but being right against the house it has to look tidy...this ought to be one of the tidiest setups you've seen when I'm finished and have my wife's seal of approval.
Thanks for your input!!
Cheers,
Arran

As long as you can support it against the wall (heavy) gravel is fine. You probably want gravel in 200mm pipe to support the plants also, hydroton is a bit light.

You wont need aeration in the 210mm pipe, the water falling back into the tank will aerate it all fine.

Fish - "best/quickest/toughest" You cant have all three Silver perch are tough once they are a decent size (100mm +) but they cant handle temperatures over 30 deg c or under 10 deg c (especially when small). Your pipes will get quite hot in summer, and cold in winter, so you may need to have summer barra, and winter trout as your fish for the seasons. 900l of water will result in quite large temperature swings. I recommend starting your system with whatever fish you can get cheaply, because you will probably loose some intially. Of course there is always fishless cycling.

There is absolutely no way that 200 liters of growbed gravel can support 100 fish. Dont even think about it. Planning to add more growbeds later is the wrong way to go about it, and you will end up killing fish. 25 fish is more suitable for that amount of media, and once you have more beds, then add more fish.

Because of the way that small (210mm) pipe behave, they will become blocked quite quickly, so as tt says - you will need some sort of filter before the beds.

You really need to have a big browse through the members systems section - it will save you a lot of time later.

Good luck

try jade perch, they wouldn't mind hinterland temps? which part?

my fubar on the airstones. I was thinking u were running nft, but ur using pipes filled with media, different.

The nursery up here refers to Jade perch as bullet proof fish - they will hopefully be my next order too
ps: nice images!

If you want to run only one pump, you can do what they call a CHIFT PIST (constant height in fish tank pump in sump tank) system. Then having your fish tank up out of the ground is actually a benefit.

Here is my quick recommendation as to how you can solve several of your possible problems in one item. Add a standard flood and drain gravel filled grow bed right next to your fish tank. Perhaps setting it up on a small support so it is just slightly above your sump. This should be low enough that the high water line in the fish tank is a few inches above the top of the grow bed and so can gravity drain into the grow bed, this grow bed can either slow drain or auto siphon into the sump (sump tank should be sized to hold at least 60% of the volume of whatever you use as the grow bed if not more. Actually since you will probably need constant pumping with the tubes, you might want the sump tank to be 100% of the volume of the grow bed.) Your pump will go into the sump tank where it can pump up to your gravel filled tubes. (I personally don't really recommend gravel filled tubes unless they are really really large-like barrel size pipes-but do some reading about what problems others have run into with them and make your own choices.) The tubes that are higher than the fish tank will drain back to the fish tank, the tubes that are lower than the fish tank, can drain to the grow bed or sump tank. The pump should also pump a share of the water up to the fish tank.

The benefits of doing it this way, the fish tank stays at a constant depth (no risk of your pump leaving your fish high and dry if something goes wrong in the plumbing.) The gunk and solids go into the flood and drain grow bed (look up venturi drain as a way to get solids off the bottom of fish tank without risk of siphoning the fish tank dry.) The pump is in a sump tank with relatively clean water and thus will experience less clogging. This set up could be run with a timer but might be better to get a small efficient pump that can run all the time, the flood and drain grow bed could operate with an auto siphon of some sort and the flow from the pump just needs to be good enough to split between the tubes and the fish tank and give enough flow at those heights to keep things flowing and aerated.

These are not major changes to the overall design other than adding one normal grow bed.

TCL again takes the cake...
(I hope that translates to be a good thing, coz it is here)

oops for some reason the last drawing with the side view didn't get the grow bed in it.

Anyway, it give you some more options of things you will want to look up.

CHIFT PIST (sometimes also called CLIFT PIST or CLIFT PIS or variations there of)
Venturi Drain (there are two types, one that exits the fish tank at aprox the water line, the other type uses a hole in the bottom of the tank and a stand pipe kind of configuration.)

Pump should be sized to move at least the volume of your fish tank each hour at the height you will be pumping but oversizing the pump some is usually a good idea.

Good luck and welcome to the madness, there is not cure.

Can I have my cake and eat it too?

Done!

Having read through Outback Ozzies HUGE (48+ pages) system thread I am not only embarrassed at the small scale of my project but also convinced that half pipes are not the way to go due to blocking issues with roots etc and the need for filtration.
I really want the system to be as little maintenance as possible and the thought of cleaning out a mucky filter every week fills me with dread.
So, onto the next design!
Please see below. A rack of plastic bins from Bunnings supported fairly high off the ground. The tank will be very slightly buried, just enough to ensure that the TOP of the water level when full is below the bottom of the water level in the grow beds. The water pumps through 1.5" pipe into the beds for long enough to almost fill the beds. Each bed is connected to the one beside it with another 1.5" pipe and they all drain out into the fish tank. The main drain will be throttled back so that they drain slower than they fill. I don't think I need to worry about ensuring the water flows into each bed at the same rate with a manifold because they are connected and the water level will equalize quickly.
So...flaws with this plan?
Am I correct in thinking that a pump than can handle small solids will remove the need for a venturi drain?