Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

With a CHIFT PIST system, including 20 goldies in the sump and 20 good sized barra in the FT. Sump 900L, FT 1500L, GBs 1000L. The other barra have made it to the plate, max number was 30.

The problem is that water visibility is almost zero. The block filter on the sump pump gets blocked every 5-7 days without fail. The pump does about 2000lph and lift only to 150cm, easy for the pump. All fish are thriving, goldies breeding like .... this time last year there were 4. Granted Goldies are dirty

If more fish are introduced into this mature system, it may be too much for everything. My understanding was that the GBs held and filtered the ammonia and fish solids for the worms. However, the solids seem to be passing through or remaining suspended in the tank.

Any suggestions to clean up and clear the water. Benefits that boost plant growth also wellcome.
regards from someone who is lost for ideas
F

very odd. What colour is the water?
how do you have your tanks arranged?
Do you have an SLO on the FT?

If large amounts of solids /muck and fish poo are making it through your beds I think something is very wrong.
Are you sure your beds are empying?

which filter???
the only filter you need is bio, in the form of gravel or expanded clay...
I wonder if your pump is drawing enough volume of water out of the FT?

Pictures.

Are the grow beds flood and drain? Are you doing flood and drain using auto siphons or a timer? What shape are the grow beds?

What size is good size for the barra? Remember 3 kg of fish per 100 liter of grow bed, if you are at the capacity of your filtration with the barra and have the additional goldfish in the sump to cause you to need to clean your pump filter all the time, this might be part of the problem.

If you are running the pump on a timer, then that 2000 lph pump is probably not managing to turn over enough water in the fraction of an hour. If you are running the pump continuous, then I suspect something about the grow beds is keeping them from catching and holding onto as much of the solids as we would like.

I do know that a fine light silt of solids can make it through the grow beds but I've also found that this doesn't seem to hinder visibility in my system which is probably functioning right near filtration capacity.

If your grow beds are not flood and drain, I would suspect that's the problem.

Are you using a good quality of food?

Pictures may help, do you have the beds full of plants or are they sparsely planted?

Thanks for the numerous responses. The colour is reddish/brown. The pump is continous, flood & drain using syphons and the GBs are circular, actually kiddies splash pond. The fish are 500+ gms

The first thing to try might be moving the goldies to see if the flow is enough to clear things up. I suspect this might be the root problem as the flow isn't that great. There is definitely no swirling action in the FT, just water in/out.

Also, with this much poo how long would it take before the GBs silt up? Or is that the job for the worms? Just thinking/rambling.

What way would you suggest?
F

Remove the block filter from the pump, As C1 said the only filter youneed is the grow beds.

Himzo.

ok, my best suggestion is a temporary thing. build an SLO using flexible hose, then vacuum out the crap. you can dump the vacuumed crud into the GB or drain... These are commonly used in the aquarium world and are called gravel cleaners.
That will get rid of the sitting crud.
Your GB should remove the fines from the water, but not if the filter is getting blocked all the time. If there's no risk of fish or small sticks going into the pump, then as Himzol said: remove the filter, it's a waste of time.

In relation to your sump and FT, where is your GB. My water goes from GB to FT to ST, so my Sump gets filthy, as my pumps aren't great at lifting those solids out, but my water is still crystal clear. I manually clean my sumps and dump crud in FT.

If you have composting worms living in your grow beds, then I wouldn't worry about them silting up. That said, take note of the flow rate of the water through your gravel, if your beds are showing signs of water logging near the inlet and the siphons are cutting out while the bed is still mostly full, then you might have an abundance of gunk building up. I've noted this happening in one or another of my beds and the problem seemed to go away when I moved some worms around to the problem beds.

My "nursery bed" has been having issues being at the end of a pump line (therefore getting an extra ration of solids) and being too shallow to flood and drain properly with the auto siphon. Yesterday I emptied that bed and it had a lot of gunk in it. I expect that the worms will do a better job now that it is hooked up to a FLOUT that is housed in a container who's bottom is lower than the nursery bed.

I'm suprized that you are having such visibility problems in your fish tank. I suppose I will second that question about the flow order. Does it go sump up to fish tank and then trough the grow beds before back to sump?

I would probably try to find a new home for the goldies and remove the sponge filter from the pump and see if things get better.

The process is FT->GB->sump(pump)->FT......

The filter on the pump isn't needed, just as an added precaution.
I thought garden worms would be just as good, maybe not.
There isn't a localised problem in the GB.

The goldies will be moved and composting worms added.
Maintenance to suck the crap from the FT and sumps will be added to the weekly program.

Once you guys(gals) laid it all out it is crystal clear (unintended) what has to be done. I'll pass this along to my brother when I see him and definitely keep this in my toolbox too. I'll let you know how it goes. Perhaps whith before/after pix.
Many Thanks.
F