Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Greetings,
We are downsizing to a smaller house and yard, and I am going to have a koi pond, and my wife wants to have her a part of the yard to grow vegetables and flowers, and I was looking at ways to combine them together in a constant flood or flow system. Is this possible or should I do my project a different way, thoughts, suggestions?
Thanks

it would work. Usually the main choice for a small feature pond over a typical AP setup is whether you have a gravel bed and aquatic vegetation in the pond. In your case it is massive so you will need some form of bio-filtering within the pond.

For a pond this large you cannot run it along AP lines (ie. AP rules do not apply)
I calculate your design at around 4000 Gals ?

A media or filter based AP will still convert ammonia and nitrites efficiently and any solids that get into the beds will breakdown as plant food and be available for the roots. Aquatic veg will use nitrates, but in a large pond that will not worry you too much and in fact you need it.

From experience with a 1500 Litre feature pond it is much cheaper and easier to run the AP as a simple pond filter than it is to spend lots of money on commercial pond filters and UV sterilisers etc. So having the gardens will provide some benefit to the pond, though wont be able to meet all its management needs.

The basic rule is that your beds must be able to cope with the level of crap being pumped from the pond by the fish and other pond processes (eg. plant and algal decay etc). One thing I would do is make sure my grow beds can be drained from the bottom, particularly if running CF or some prolonged period of CF under a timer (as opposed to a classic F&D).

I find with couple of my normal grow beds that having the ability to flush out the bottom of the grow beds stops excessive build up of crud in the bottom of the media beds. You can simply drain to a bucket and use on other plants / wicking beds / citrus etc. This is no different but much cheaper and less frequent than doing the same thing for pond backflow filters etc.

20' x 8' x 4' = 6m x 2.4m x 1.2m (or thereabouts) = 17 m3 = 17,000 Litres. (~4000 US Gallons)

[edit] one thing to keep in mind is that once you are using pond water for irrigation of a garden (which is basically the case) you will get water loss - so you need some plan for topping the pond water up particularly in warm-hot weather.

Welcome to the forum KnH . Lots of possibilities . Which way is South?

Do you have any plans to add fruit trees to your backyard? You might want to look into Backyard Orchard Culture which is a high density planting system as explained by Dave Wilson Nursery - http://www.davewilson.com/home-gardens/backyard-orchard-culture

Considered having chickens or Bees? Just thinking you might want to plan ahead for these kinds of things.

You can connect everything but I think you should use a mix of Aquaponic beds and Wicking beds for both the flower and vegetable portions of the garden. They warm up at different times and work well together. I'd do the AP portion as Constant Flood and the Wicking portion either with a manual top up valve or an automatic valve.

Plants along the South side in your scheme will be without much light at certain times of the year if there is a solid fence around the backyard. The beds should probably be about 2 ft but not much wider if you don't have access from the back side of them (looks like you've thought this through ).

I like a less symmetrical layout, I think it adds visual interest. Repetition and variation of size are also good for adding visual interest. Think about what you like or want this landscape to feel like and do. I have my fish tank higher and a bit away from my porch so I can't do this but it sure would be nice to sit in a chair on the back porch and watch the fish.

For example - Might be kind of neat if there were some tall plantings as a backdrop for the pond . I also like to arrange the plantings based on height so trees would mostly be toward the north end of the property (more light for the flowers and vegetables further south this way). The tank might also benefit from being in the partial shade of the porch area (less algae growth although this probably won't be a problem after the initial greenwater phase)..

Take your time getting the layout figured

Cheers

Thanks for the response, Hmmm My goal for the pond originally was around 2k gallons,

I have been following the Dave Wilson fruit tree culture for a while, maybe take off the two short sides and put in some dwarf fruit trees in there instead, thanks for the reminder.

In regards the grow bed media, I am not far from where they make expanded shale so I was planning on using it as the grow media. So when using some sort of grow media, how much space is needed between the water level and the top of the media or root crown.

I am going to have to put up some sort of shade cloth or trellis with some type of vine over the pond to keep it from overheating in the summer.

On filtration, what size would the two grow beds need to be to handle filtration?

Good idea about the drain in the beds, I can run a perforated PVC pipe to inject compressed air to clean the crud out, and an auto top off also.

That brings up another point, my water has chloramines in it, do I need to dechlorinate the auto top off before in goes into the system?

simply using you 20' x 8' x 4' I get over 4000 gallons (as per above - but neeeded to do it via metric).
I dropped it back to allow for water being lower etc.
Maybe your curved shape makes a bit of difference ?

But 2000 Gallons sounds too low.


related to number fish rather than water volume, but even at 1:2 (FT:GB) you would need a lot of grow bed and media... so my advice would be a combination of AP and within-pond bio-filtration. I would also have a large pump for a waterfeature and/or fountain for additional aeration.

AP alone simply wont cut it at this scale, but it will help [quite significantly]

Water level is usually an inch or two below the surface of the media. The main thing is you don't want the surface to stay wet or you'll grow algae. Try to keep the crown above water.

Yea it works out to be over 4K gallons, my goal was around 2-2.5k gaollons
I will have to see how the size works out in scale with the total area of the back yard, may have to downsize it.

+1 pond bio filtration. And use the grow beds to help control/use up nitrates but dont use grow beds to break down solids.