Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi BAP team,

I am planning on constructing a 20ft × 4ft gravel growbed with a bell siphon in it. I need help in identifying the right sizes of PVC pipes i can use to make this and also the placement of the bellsiphon in the growbed. I have searched internet and couldnt find relavant information abt this topic for the beds of this and higher sizes.
Please let me know if any more information is needed from my side.

Thanks,
Srujan.



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Srujan, the one thread that popped into my mind when I read this was the build that Web4Deb built (at least I think that is his screen name anyway). He has a pretty large system that he runs that consists of gravel beds and siphons. He's got a pretty good siphon idea that works quite well. I'd recommend reading through his thread: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=8898&hilit=web4deb
it's a long read, but it's well worth it.

Cheers!

Will

Colum on here made a big bed, I'm sure he'll turn up eventually.

He was nice enough to video it, part 3 had the syphon, worth looking at parts 1&2 as well




He has a very good build thread on here

I built one out of a recycled Abalone tray it was split down the middle with 2 x 25mm standpipe siphons , holes were already in the ends so used them for the siphons . Siphons took ages to break as water took ages to drain through the gravel , outlet in the middle would probably work better . The bigger your siphon the more water flow is needed to make it work so it depends how big a pump you have / want to run .

Thanks Sean.

The bell you want to be about double the size of the internal pipe.

The internal pipe depends on how fast your pumping the water/tank size, and if there are other beds in the system.

I've got 4 x 40mm internal bells in my system, and that's running off an 8000LPH pump, and they all run perfectly.

There are graphs and maths that you can use on here somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember where.