Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Greetings everyone!
This is my first post! I am new to aquaponics, and I have just made small system with my limited knowledge. What I know, came from the internet. My brother, who thought is was the coolest thing since disposable diapers, wants to go big. Here are a few photos of my setup. Its 2 weeks old, but I planted after one week. We already have sprouts, the tomatoes germinated first. I planted some stuff with roots too, just to get the system going. The fish are doing great, I have 3 "pintados", they a sort of catfish, and 4 tilapia. It was originally supposed to be a flood and drain system, but the auto-syphon doesnt work. It just keeps syphoning out water, so I was sort of forced to make it and NFT system. Here are the photos, tell me if I missed anything. Cheers dudes!

Welcome! Its good to see you getting a start!

You can just do a stand pipe if you have a timer. This will flood and drain. Also, loop siphons never fail (well they have never failed for me).

Hello DanDman! My loop syphon is having issues...Any does and donts? I suspect it would be alot easier than making a timed flood and drain toilet valve. I love simplicity as well. Thank you! Cheers!

Is your pump moving enough water? I cant imagine a loop siphon not starting unless its because of air leaks. You might see what you can do to pull the bottom of the loop up a bit more and lower the output end.

The loop siphon does work, but I think I might be pumping too much water into the channels...therefore the siphoning action doesnt stop. I'm not entirely sure. Here is another photo... I have about a 3mm pipe sticking into the pipe, could that be the problem? Thanks for your time and help! Much appreciated =]

Once the inflow to a grow bed is balanced properly, I've never had a loop siphon fail. However, one needs to get it balanced first.

There is the challenge with siphons, you only have a narrow window of flow rate that will work properly. If the inflow is too fast, the siphon will kick in but will never shut off. If the inflow is too slow, the siphon will never quite fully start but trickle over the top staying constantly flooded. You can try bypassing some of the flow from the pump back into the fish tank if your problem is too much inflow.

I suspect you will have a better time with that system if you add a gravel filled grow bed to filter the water before sending it to the pipes since having solid fish waste going into pipes like that can clog up the plant roots and cause root rot on some plants over time.

Good start though

+1 on the gravel. Without it your roots will get coated with junk and the plants will not thrive.

So its just a matter of tweeking the siphon...good to know. I have a sort of synthetic wool filter as the water goes in, and another on the way back into the tank. Thank you all very much!

Just to help you out a little bit, here are some of the figures for how much fish can be supported by an amount of flood and drain gravel. For each 3 kg of fish you want to grow out, 100 liters of flood and drain gravel will support them.

FYI An Aquaponics system needs a few key things.
1-Water for fish
2-Bio-filtration (to convert the Ammonia into Nitrite and the Nitrite into plant usable Nitrate)
3-Solids filtration
4-Enough aeration to support the fish, the bio-filter, any breakdown of solids that is going on in the system and the plants.
5-Plant growing space/support
6-A way to move the water through all these things

Most of us here use the flood and drain gravel bed method to take care of # 2,3,4, and 5. NFT pipes usually require a separate solids filter (your filter material may take care of some of this but will need regular cleaning), bio-filter (the gravel in the cups won't handle more than a couple little fish so you will probably need to add some sort of external bio-filter to support any additional fish.)

Thank you TCLynx! Sorry to be bugging, but, do you have any pictures, plans, or advice to make a simple bio-filter? That would be awsome, as it is the key piece in my setup I think. Remember that I live in a third world country and any high tec stuff is hard to come by. Thank you very much!!! God bless!

Gravel is cheap effective bio & mechanical filter. Thats why it is recommended to use twice the volume of gravel as fish water. Now if you just want a bio filter then japanese matting, plastic pot scrubbers, and easter grass provide lots of surface area and there for bio filtration the easter grass being 800:1 ratio. Just stuff this into a section of wide pipe and pump your water through it; though flood and drain is better for the bacteria as it provides oxygen. As to how much of this you need, that depends on how many pounds of fish you want to keep.

I think the simplest (low tech) bio filter would be a barrel or two of gravel or any other food safe material that you can have water flow through. I've heard of people using things like plastic drink bottle caps for bio-filters. To keep the bio-filter from getting too gunked up with solids, you might want to filter out solids before the water runs into the bio-filter. The more heavily you load your system with fish, the more aeration the fish tank and bio-filter will need which means more pumping or perhaps air pumps and air stones. If that gets too high tech for you, perhaps look into standard flood and drain gravel beds as your bio-filter since the flood and drain action tends to provide enough aeration for the bio-filter and plants and often even enough extra for the fish.

Personally, I would probably simply hook up a regular flood and drain gravel bed and then feed the pipes from that if you want to stay relatively low tech. You might search the term CHIFT PIST for more info about how to deal with water level fluctuations do to flood and drain gravel beds and still keep things pretty low tech.

Thank you DanDMan! You guys have been a big help!

To tweek that siphon, I don't think the little pit of hose poking up into the pipe is the problem. The length of the hose running back to the fish tank is probably the real problem. If you could allow the hose to drain into a pipe a little below the NFT pipe that leads back to the fish tank (shortening the hose) you will be more likely to get the siphon to stop more easily. The hose is probably just having difficulty getting a good gulp of air to stop the siphon.

Thanks TCLynx! Might be it! I'll give it a go and see. I have also just added a sort of biofilter to the system on the right, I just cut the bottom of a coke bottle up, drilled a few holes, placed the synthetic cotton in, and put some gravle on top. Lets see how it does its job...does it take a while for bio filter to get going? Sorry for all of the questions, round these parts its impossible to get info like this, so, many thanks!!!!!!

P.S- I just checked the pH, a healthy 7,2