Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi earthbound
Thanks for the comments you made all taken on board this is what I love about this site all the feed back
when I started to go this way IE grow fish out and veggies I thought of a hydroponics system for the veggies and just filter out the fish water then I had a look at a TV program and found I could do both at the same time thanks to Joel so I started to draw it up
and the pit falls are coming in thick and fast
I could go for 4/5 round grow bins but I wanted to keep it in one line allowing me to have double the take in one shed. I thought I could get over it by putting in a larger pump and drilling wholes in the pipe work on the grow system thus by flooding it out .
The tanks are large holding a lot of water so I have to filter it .
I am trying to use what I have on the farm at this time
IE no cost except for the pumps
Trev

Hi Veggie boy Yep I am going to put black Polly on the tin thought that would be the best way to line it
Trev

Hi Daniel
Thanks for that
At that rate it will take 95 seconds to flood out the 19 meters I can cope with that and the 30 % fall if I had to that would save one pump on each tank system
Trev

Are you sure that it's 30 degrees off the horizontal Daniel? That is huge, and would mean that a 19m grow bed would be 7 m in the air on one end.

With an incline of only 5 degrees over 19 m the far end of the growbed will be 1.5 metres higher than the other end.. ( I love autocad )

The problem is that the water isn't just going into the end of the bed, water is being pumped into the whole length of the growbed, so there will be a degree of congestion.. I don't think you should use round tanks, they aren't the most efficient use of space, but I think that you will run into troubles with one long 19m bed trying to flow through gravel from one end to the other, especial when the bed is also full of plant roots.......

He is using those silos EB - so the round part is the only bit that is not adaptable.

I was meaning for growbeds VB.....

HI earthbound

very interesting thoughts
how do you get the run with two tanks would you have to have two other pumps to get the flood system to work
Trev

missed that post

Water will flow easily when there's no gravel and roots restricting the flow, so you can have a pipe running down the side of the growbeds, or underneath the beds, with very little incline, just as house gutters have very little incline..

If you could have 5 seperate rectangular growbeds 5m long all on a bit of an incline draining individually into your main drain... heres my simple way to try and draw it, if you could imagine these on less of an angle, almost horizontal...

\ \ \ \ \
O

with a drain running under them all and into the fish tank... Might be a bit hard to visualize.....

Hi
earthbound
I think I have the idea the squar one is the fish tank flowing to the round tank via the 5 grow beds Trev

Hi Q:
You can still use one pump and one common drain if you use tees to split the water flow to several divded parts of your long bed. Each division can have its own drain, into a large common pipe back to the tank. This would avoid the problems of trying to flood and drain the whole thing with one drain. You would still see a big drop in the water level though.
To mitigate the water level drop perhaps putting siphons in each bed (division of your long bed) running at different phases (#1 filling, #2 draining, etc.) would allow it to not be one huge flood and one huge drain at a time.

(Edit: um, yeah, like in the picture.)

hmmm, sorry, no not quite...... I thinkk..... I'll try and draw it up....

HI Dave
thanks for the input I need all I can get hold of to get it working properly
I see that your in PA how far is that from Worchester in New York state we were there only a few weeks ago great place to have a look at Trev

Thanks you will do a better job than i could
Trev

Hi Q:
Looks like Worchester is about 300 miles from here. We don't get up that way much, although we camped close to New York at the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon this summer.
Check out this thread for some fun:
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... .php?t=241

In your picture just eliminate the round sump, instead the grow beds will drain back directly to the fish tank, because the fish tank would be sunken into the ground and the grow beds are high enough to allow it to drain back by gravity.