Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I'm working on my first AP system.. spot picked, ground leveled and some holes dug..
I've had the idea running around in my head for a few weeks, and finally got to the point in SketchUp where I can show you what I'm thinking

The idea springs from :
- I wanted a simple on/off Chift Pist system, without using valves, just regulating the draining speed of the GBs
- I loved the floating lettuce bed idea on the top of the barrelponics system
- The pump I currently have is HUGE (3500 GPH Little Giant NP-950) so I want to move around as much water as possible with it, and restrict its output
- I would like to use catfish or bluegill but may end up with tilapia (the FT's are linked by a pipe)

Please let me know what you think !!


This is the whole system. Everything in white is a traditional CHIFT PIST. The green parts are a "floating lettuce tank" a la barrelponics, with overflows that drain into the fishtank.
The Red parts will have large holes drilled in for short plants like strawberries. (it should be mentioned that the pump has two outlets, that's why there's two pipes coming out of the ST) just noticed that the GB has no legs ..



Here is a closeup of the lettuce tank

I'm not sure I understand. What is the white part? A grow bed or a fish tank?
What are the upright blue barrels?

About all I understand is the green being the floating raft bed and the sump tank.

Since I don't quite understand, I'm not really able to critique very well.

Points to keep in mind.
Some sort of solids filtration needs to be between fish tank and the floating raft tank. Same holds true for things like strawberry pipes/towers.
Pipes and towers are best for short term plants as roots can block them up if not trimmed or removed regularly.

A sump tank needs to be big enough to handle the quantity of water required to flood any flood and drain portion of the system. That sump tank looks like it is drawn as 1/3rd of a 55 gallon barrel. I doubt that is big enough if the white thing is a grow bed. Also, I think your pump is way to powerful for such a small sump tank. Put it this way, that pump could empty a 50 gallon barrel in a minute. Imagine dumping a 3rd of a barrel into any one of your containers and imagine the splashing and disturbance it is gonna cause, I'm not sure you really want to be running a 50 gallon per minute pump on a system with only 100 gallons of fish tank and one gravel bed. Doesn't seem very efficient to me though it would be a great pump for a 600 gallon fish tank system. (I'm running a pump that does around 60 gallons per minute and it is actually oversized for my 700+ gallon fish tank and 1400 gallons of gravel with 600+ gallons of sump tank. I could probably get away nicely with 30 gallons per minute. I'm running continuous pumping as my pump isn't suited to repeating on/off cycles.)

If the two upright blue barrels are the fish tanks, it might be kinda hard to net your fish under the raft tank. I also don't think a barrel is big enough to grow out eating size catfish, catfish are long fish and they don't seem to fair so well in really small containers enough though I've heard of people writing books about raising catfish in barrels, I seriously doubt it would be that successful.

Good Luck with it all though. Looks like you got the bug so welcome to the addiction and I hope you can sort out a suitable design for yourself!!!!!!!!

Hey TC - Thanks for the reply !
The pump is a little giant NP950 that is listed at 3500-4000 GPH.. I wondered how they arrive at these numbers because I put the pump in the creek, and attached a garden hose to it, and it took 42 seconds to fill a 5 gallon bucket, so I guess it would be 428 GPH..

The sump is a whole 55gal drum buried 2/3 of the way (you can't see it in the photo)

The white thing is the GB, about 25 sq feet (2.5x10, 12inches deep)

What do people use for filtration between the sump and the lettuce bed/strawberries ?

I could make a rack that would allow the lettuce bed to be slid out of the way to snoop around in the fishtank ..

Again, thanks for the advice, much quicker that building it, cussing, tearing it apart, and crying for two weeks - no stubbed toes either

The lettuce tank is pretty high up there. I have a 2/3 IBC tank elevated up on blocks. The top of the tank is 5 feet up. I have found it to be pretty unmanagable. I am pretty tall, but find I need some steps to do anything up there.

Mark

I agree Mark.. I figured a step or two would be necessary !

What is the size of the plumbing on the outlet of that pump? If you go hooking a pump up to a garden hose, it will only be able to move so much water because it is restricted. Hopefully there should be a pump curve you can look at to tell you how much water the pump can provide at different heights. This will only be accurate if you are using plumbing of the same size or larger than the outlet of your pump. I have a sump pump that is designed to be hooked to 1.5" plumbing and it provides a huge gush of water through that size plumbing, but if I use the adapter to hook it to a garden hose, it doesn't only gives a pitiful flow of water. I have even taken a pump that had fairly small plumbing connections on it and hooked it to even larger plumbing and the flow rate out of the little pump was definitely improved.

Restricting a pump is generally very bad for the pump too.

As to filtering. If the water in your sump is clean because it has all gone through a flood and drain gravel bed then you might not really need to filter it before sending it to NFT or DWC tanks.

You don't necessarily have to have the DWC above the fish tanks, you could have them fed off the water from the sump and let it drain directly back to the sump. Same with the red pipe so that will free up some flexibility of where you put those so they don't have to be only reachable from ladders.

The important height issues are that the overflow or SLO drain from the fish tank has to be a little bit above (a few inches might be enough depending on distance) the surface of the grow bed and the bottom of the grow bed needs to be above the top of the sump tank to drain easily.

So lets see, if your sump tank is 55 gallons, you might be able to flood and drain a 100 gallon grow bed but the levels might be really tight depending on how low to the bottom of the barrel the pump is able to draw. Some pumps need to stay submerged or they overheat.

Anyway a grow bed that is 30 inches by 120 inches by 12 inches is 43200 cubic inches which equals over 180 gallons and for sump size estimation I always say it takes 50% of the grow bed space to flood with water (yea, many medias it is more like 40% but as noted, your pump can't actually pump the sump tank completely dry so ya want a measure of safety to keep from killing your pumps regularly.) And I personally like a little higher margin of extra sump space so I can install and automatic top up valve so I don't have to be checking every day to see if I need more water or not. I personally think you will need to tie in a second barrel to expand your sump capacity in order for that size grow bed to work well for you.

That sounds good TC - A second sump barrel shouldn't be too tough.. but It does have me thinking about switching to IBC's.. it would be better for the fish, the sump would be more than adequate for that bed, and I could even add a second bed on the other side later..

Does anyone bury or partially bury an IBC ??
What should I avoid as far as previous contents go.. they all seem to have had oils, detergents, or an acid in them..

Outbackozzie has cleaned oils out of IBC'c before, might have a search to see how he did it. I would avoid any that had detergent or soaps of any kind as they can be very difficult to rinse clean. Acids, you will want to research the exact kind of acid as some are incredibly toxic while others would be just fine with sufficient leaching and dilution. Chlorine can also be outgassed so with sufficient rinsing and running of water through the system for a while before cycling or adding fish something that once contained chlorine should be fine too.

When burying an IBC, make sure to put something rigid around the outside of the cage to keep soils from collapsing in on the plastic.

Yes I agree that an IBC may be a more appropriate fish tank and sump tank. Big fish in a barrel, seems to me they might come out rather bent from circling too tight.

Fit on a plate better that way.

I just found some pretty cheap IBC containers, they were used to store Sunflower methyl ester, I wondered if anyone had cleaned and used them for a AP system.. The fact that it starts with the word sunflower makes it seem cute and cuddly !!

Sounds like bio-diesel.... made from sunflower oil...

Joey,

A larger FT is good, although one can get large fish from a small container: I just ate an 11" trout that I pulled from a 12"x48"x20" aquarium this morning. And only one of the ten remaining trout has a bent tail.

Some folks do bury IBCs, but soil tends to collapse in on them, so some reinforcement (like plywood) is a good idea.

As far as heights go, I've found that, as TCL says, you only need a drop of a few inches from fishtank to growbed if pipes are large enough. If your system has a timed pump, then you can get away with only a few inch drop to the sump, while you would need more like 8" with a siphon-based system. So really, you could have your fish tank water less than 2' above the sump (high level) water.

+1: pumps do far better with a larger pipe. My main system pump has a 1/2" outlet I've increased to 1.5", although 1" would probably have been fine. Highly efficient, low pressure pumps are probably especially affected by friction from undersized pipes, elbows, long pipes, and bio-gunk buildup.

I believe any of the biodiesels are fairly safe, but you would want to wash out what you can and fishless cycling and a test goldfish might be advisable.

And there is nothing wrong with a growbed without supports. Please, please let me know how you do it..

I'm going to buy the first IBC on Wed.. It's great to hear your success growing fish in a relatively small environment..

I'll let you know how the washout of the biodiesel goes..

My plan for a growbed with no supports is - fill the growbed with media, plants and water / lift it 3 feet / then just let go and leave it there, in the air..

let me know if you think it'll work, or try it yourself !

Hum, sounds a little like what the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy says about flying. Apparently the knack is forgetting to hit the ground at just the right point after throwing yourself at it fulling intending to hit it even knowing that it is gonna hurt. So I guess you should just tell the grow bed to forget to hit the ground.

Yep, should work... as they use to say in our skydiving school.... "falling has never killed anyone... it's just impact that's a potential problem"...

Not impacting is the key...