Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello all,

i'm currently running a small system a 400-500 litre pond with only 1 small 100litre growbed and was thinking of increasing the number of grow beds. The first thing I was go and buy a dirty water submersible pump but i'm not sure if i went overboard or not i bought

a 550W 10,000lph pump, is this too powerful for my size pond? when I put it into the water its spins around like mad how do I get these crazy things to stay in the one spot

and also how many growbeds can I have with a 500litre pond?

Sounds like overkill to me!

You could try growing tuna in there! They like swimmimg fast.

1000l/h would be plenty, depending on the height of your grow bed of course...the general idea is to turn over the volume of your fish tank once every hour.

OMG - thats the biggest laugh I have had in a while

You need to be able to turn the water over once per hour, not per minute.

A small 1000lph pump would have been a much better choice, put that one aside for when you expand your system.

you could support a couple of 1/2 blue barrels with that amount of water quite easily.

Does sound like something I would do.
Power down until you expand.

Whilst everybody is amazed and shocked, a pump of this size may be necessary, but only if your GB are much higher or very distant from your pond.
10,000 l/hr (166 l/min) is at 0 head.
you need no more than 1000l/hr (16.6 l/min).

That said, your pumps is probably too big. besides, 550W is expensive! that's 13kWHr per day. Which is about $2.50 per day or $220 per quarter.
If you were to get a 100W pump, it'd be more like $45 per quarter.

so have a look at the pump and it's rating. It will have a curve to show flow vs head or it will have a table. Look up the head you want and see if it will provide the flow.

also look at submersible pumps, these are easier to install in ponds, are quieter, and use less power.

PS the guys aren't laughing at you so much as imagining the water spout that pump may produce, also how quick the pond might empty

In answering your second question, we like a ratio of 1:1 but the ideal is 2:1, so you could, with the right setup run 1000 litres of GB. but with just a pump and simple operation, without draining your pond each flood cycle, I'd say about 600 l might pull you up.

suggestion: - Dig another pond to use as a sump,
or - bury a tank as a sump
or - use your pond as a sump and add a FT elsewhere

Then you can use your MEGA pump, and get value for money for those kWh you'll use.

Mind you if you use your 550w pump on a 15 min off 45 min on cycle which is very common with flood and drain, the cost would be more like 1/4 of $220, which is not far off $45. (Or have you taken this into consideration already Kuda?)

I use a 550w pump on a 3000L system and it is more than big enough. Once you connect the pump up with PVC pipe, it will sit fairly still. Don't worry about not using this pump on this system, because you will be guaranteed to want to make a bigger system before too much longer!

I use a pump that moves 18927 liter per hour. It fills my large grow bed in 13 min. No problem when it comes to starting siphons! In my case its not over kill because I need to exchange the whole volume of my system at least once per hour(8365 liters).

I find that larger pumps are really more efficient. If you do use this large pump make sure you distribute the water over the grow bed or you will wash a hole in the gravel pretty fast.

I'm not a fan of timers. No i hadn't tilen that into account. A timer would allow for the use of a larger pump, you are correct.

hehe glad I gave some people a good laugh the main reason i went for the powerful pump was to suck up all the dead leaves and gunk thats building up at the bottom of the pond:P

and was going to do pump on for 1 minute off for 2 hours, but yes its way too powerful plugged it in for a test run and it watered my neighbors fence it does sound too pricy for me to run too

I currently have a 1000lph pump but its a bit weak as I want to add some more grow tubs

judicious use of a timer and ball valves will regulate your flow nicely.
timer will reduce the time your pump runs for ant therefore quarter your costs, or even cheaper depending on how fast your beds fill.