Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey all,
Ive been trying to chase leaks on my system recently with no success.

So ive started wondering if my water use is just normal evap plus upatake though the vegies.

My system has about ... 2100Lish of gardenbed ((6x350)? 1000L FT and up to 1800L in the sump.

All gardenbeds are pretty full, some big tomato plants, lots of radishes, capsicums cucumbers ect

So would 100L-200L a day be way to high?

I really thought I had a leak... but as i said, Im having no luck tracking it down! been filling the pipes one by one, and none of them seemed to have the level drop over 10mins...

Looking forward to hearing from you all. This is doing my head in haha. Last time i bury pipes!

Thanks!
Trent

If it has been hot and windy, and the system gets a lot of sun, then it is within the realms of possibility. My small system can lose over 100l per day in hot weather

Hard to say. On the cooler days water loss would be minimal I suspect. Best bet would be to monitor what happens in the cooler weather.

I have similar amount of water in my system,maybe a little more, but only 800 lt of media. Water loss on cool,cloudy days is not noticable, but on 30+ sunny days I am seeing 30-50 lts a day.

Plants can be big water suckers it wouldnt surprize me.

how deep is your water level below the media and how do your outlets work ?

loss is higher if water is too close to surface (at least 5cm recommended),
and sometimes if water pooling at outlets or outlets small you can get losses there.

But 100L-200L a day would be high IMO - particularly if it is still happening regularly now as things have cooled and got some rain. 50-100 L/day and some variability with temp may be evaporation.

However you have 6 grow beds ?
2100L is quite a bit but will be surface area /size and amount of veg (not volume) that affects evap.

Thanks guys,
Lvl is normally about 20-30mm under the surface. 5 beds are constant flood, one is siphon.
That's the only one you can get an easy photo of haha, it was full of corn, but pulled out and reseeded recently

I guess it could be normal.. just around 150L seemed excessive. Pity I can't find anything!

Wow very nice looking system. I love the way most of the plumbing is underground. My trouble-shooting technique has altered with time. These days in places I can inspect, are last on the checklist, simply because they are harder to check off. As the other possible problem areas are checked off a certain dread develops. You probably already know this.