Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Sorry if this has already been covered but I'm struggling to come up with the right search to find this info.

I have a single 200 litre blue barrel system

cut length ways -half FT half GB (look mum i used the lingo!)
100(ish) litres of FT and 85 litres of scoria
small fishtank pump (continuous) takes 22 minutes to flood
autosyphon takes 23 minutes to drain

Is there some ratio to be aimed for regarding the amount of time the bed takes to dump?

Does anyone know any science on this?

Should I be aiming for 45 mins to flood 15 mins to dump or something other than what I have (I'm struggling to find the words to even ask the question)

Am I better off having a pause at dry(ish) stage? Or the flooded stage?
ie. should I be aiming for 10 minutes to fill then leave it full for 20 minutes then dump and repeat?

Or will everything be just fine as long as it doesn't get too dry no matter what I do?

I want to make sure I get it right because my next system will be a bit more permanent and hard to change.

My blue barrel system will be my herb garden and fingerling tank when we build our veggie garden system.*

I'm just starting to think about the design of the veggie garden which will be half a 5000 litre rainwater tank (hopeful for next week) and a 1000 litre firefighting plastic cube on a pallet as a FT (I cant remember what you call them)

*notice its "I" this and "me" that till the mention of building (read gravel washing) then its "we" sorry Karina

thanks in advance to anyone feeling generous enough

-craig

Personally (no science, just 'the vibe') i prefer a quicker drain time, ive actually taken my inner stand pipes out.

But really dude, it doesn't matter, AP is a very fluid thing, Food and Fish fills in 3 mins and drains over an hour (from memory) and there aint no problem with his!

Can you link me to your system thread? would love to see the siphon.

Steve.

LOL, just had a think about it and there probably is a basis AGAINST my quick drain................ less contact time with the growbed media and hence bacteria...........but as yours is on an auto syphon it begins to fill straight away after the end of the dump, so no problems. But once again, just go with the flow, short of having the bed stagnant and filled i dont think any one has had a problem with various fill / drain time.

>"Can you link me to your system thread? would love to see the siphon.

Steve."<

don't have one of those

and I think I'll wait till the bluetac seals are replaced before posting any pictures

I will post this pic. Its my big breakthrough tech that allowed me to stop pulling apart and rebuilding the siphon

don't try this at home

I wish I had read something on this the day before I started ... thought I had it sussed.

It turned out the siphon worked just fine but it was the outlet hose that had bubble issues ... Someone changed the laws of physics again while I wasn't looking.

make your siphons dump straight down kids!

I will fix it but I wanted to start the life in the growing medium

I need a beginner pitfalls list called

"You think you know better, butt"


-craig

As Steve said, don't stress about flood/drain and pause times. What is absolute best will vary by so many things that there probably is no "best" so go with what works. We have people that leave the beds drained for like 2 hours while Creative 1 runs constant flood/flow through the gravel beds. Each method is going to have it's pros and cons. I ran Loop siphons for a long time and my pump runs constantly. The siphons really mean a lot of water gets filtered all the time since the beds are filling again as soon as they finish draining. This is great for the fish and bacteria though some plants are not as happy with wet feet.

Now I have an indexing valve running (though since my pump is still constant I had to get creative to make the indexing valve work since it needs the flow to stop and start in order to move through the sequence.) The greater dry time seems to have helped me this spring with my plants, and since my new grow beds are stock tanks, I don't really have the fall between the beds and the sump tank to make siphons work well anyway.

Anyway, if you got your siphons working well, then whatever the timing is that they are working with is probably just fine

my system thread should be in my signature (i hope)