Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So, the neighbour had a little whinge about the splashing water noise at night. Reckons it makes him think it's raining when it's not! He could have told me this before he watched me installing to new IBCs closer to his fence than the current offending system... How that matters is beyond me, but he's not a bad old bloke so I'm considering other options.

I think I remember reading here about some people only running air pumps at night. Is this a feasible option, i.e. do the plants or fish suffer at all?

Hum, would it work to just shut off the two new beds at night?

While many people manage to get away with not running the system at night, this is often during the cold months when the fish are not eating as much anyway so metabolism is low and buildup of ammonia overnight is unlikely. And also the water cooler so ammonia toxicity and oxygen saturation are at their best situation anyway.

About all I can say is perhaps test it out, making sure to run some early morning ammonia tests before starting the system back up to make sure you are not pushing things.

It will depend on your fish/feed rates and probably a few other factors to know how well it would work.

I have been running my system during the day and off at night with just aipump going and everything has been fine. plants healthy, fish healthy me happy!

I, too, shut my pumps off at night and run only air, however my reason is to conserve heat in the tank until the weather warms... (this global warming is killing me!! Coldest Spring in 20-30 years!!) I have low stocking density by weight right now and probably would not try it late Summer when the system has several hundred pounds of fish in the tank...

Are there other ways to silence it a bit? What is the major noise producer? water falling into the sump, flowing into the beds, etc? Either of those can be significantly diminished by altering the plumbing or providing something that will reduce splash...

CB

Yeah, if you run the drain pipes right down into the water it makes it nice and quiet.. Turning the pump off and running an air pump is fine so long as your not stocked VERY heavily.

thanks everyone.

The noise is mostly from the water overflowing from the FT into the ST. Whilst it was good for me as it provided good aeration and I could tell by listening that the system was running, it's this splashing that's upsetting the neighbour.

I've since redirected the water to drain up against the side of the ST, almost silencing the problem. The other noise concern will be the IBCs when I set them up next weekend.

I have an Airtech AT120 air pump http://www.newenglandkoi.com/Airtech-Ai ... p-396.html, which could probably aerate all tanks, but it's pretty noisy also, and probably would draw more complaints than the running water! It's also fairly power hungry - running it constantly at 108W would use more power than the 135W water pump running for only 15m every hour (plus the 2 IBC pumps that I'm yet to buy).

If I was to run only air pumps at night, what would you recommend for the IBC systems and for the 500L FT + 500L ST system?

I know it's a contentious issue, but how much extra DO is added by letting the water splash back into the reservoir? If it's negligible, maybe I'll just run the drain into the water like you said. The only issue then is not being able to see the amount of flow.

Ive run my systems with only the air pumps at night and no water flow ever since I started , I dont like trying to sleep with the noise and neither do others in the house

havent noticed any detrimental effects to the perch or 2 seasons of trout that Ive gone through

Is it a contentious issue? You'd have to do experiments but I imagine that there's still a fair bit of air going into the water when the drain pipe runs down below the surface.

We are using it on a 1 bed system inside the shop here so that we don;t get too much splashing sound. When the water flows over the top of the standpipe during the pumping cycle you see masses of air bubbles coming out of the bottom of the drain pipe down in the fish tank.

A few holes in the pipe going under the water will suck a little air with it. I like to hear the running water sounds at night. Wakes me up if it turns quiet.

I like the sound too. However, if it is cycling on a timer, I can see how it could disturb people. A constant water sound is fairly easy to get used to and it becomes a nice white noise that can help cover other noises and assist sleep. However if the water turns on and runs only 15 minutes each hour, I can see how it might disturb the neighbor.

As far as how much air is needed.
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6646


Sorry, I leaned the numbers in imperial measure so had to do conversions to figure out the metric.
But I was told that 1 cubic foot of air per minute was needed for 400 gallons of fish tank. It requires 1 psi of pressure to push the air down 28 inches under water and aprox 1 psi to push the air through an air stone (making sure to get a high quality of air stone that can handle the amount of air you want to push through it.)

The handy thing about running a bit air pump is that you can plumb it (I use regular pvc plumbing to run and split my air off to different tanks and then at the far side of the ball valve I put a barb fitting to hook the flexible air line to that I drop down into the water in each tank.) Anyway, you can plumb it to multiple tanks and even separate systems without mixing water between them.

However, you might look into running some small pumps for aeration over night, if the sound they make is constant and the splashing minimal, then that might be more acceptable to the neighbor. Or perhaps you look into ways you might just let your main system pump run constant overnight so there isn't the issue of the pump coming on/off?

It is the changes in sounds that tend to disturb people's sleep.

+1 Duff

All my GBs drain into 1000L tanks and used to make a fair bit of noise - just having a pipe running from the outlet at a 45º angle to below the water depth - eliminated the splashing altogethter. And a couple of 8mm holes in each sucks in heaps of air becuase of the Venturi effect and gives great aeration.

Another tick for living where I do. I doubt my neighbors could hear my system if I was to aerate with a steam paddle wheel.
Have you tried running the water down a piece of chain or several pieces? I've seen chains hung from gutter drains to the ground so there is no splash at the bottom. You would need to direct the water downwards first, then hang something from the outlet down into the water, so the water run down it instead of freefalling. I have a piece of stainless sheet with holes punched in it, (like a cowling on the side of a tractor or...... the round guard in the top of your pullstart lawnmower.... but square... and a sheet of... and stainless )..... anyway, because of the surface area of the perferated sheet/s or chain/s, you mightn't loose any aeration at all.

But like it says below....