Backyard Aquaponics
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Hi everyone

This question seems to have been asked many times, however after reading a bunch of replies I'm no closer to solving my problem so hoping someone can point me in the right direction.

It seems that my siphons keep going into the neverending drain mode, might be a few hours down the track but in the end if I leave them over night - come back in the morning and they're just draining constantly.
 
Here are pics/measurements, would be awesome if someone had an idea. One thing I'm trying now is I've added a snorkel - I can see many people say that isnt necessary but I'm out of ideas at this point.
 
The only other thing I can think of is the drop isnt high enough - But my tank is right below the beds and this is the maximum drop that I can achieve.
 
Bell on the left I haven't used yet. Have only just sealed the snorkel on so will try it tomorrow. As you can see I've tried redrilling small holes, chopping entire sections out of the bottom, etc, still same problem.

 
Depth of each bell:

 
Height of intakes:


I have also tried other shape intakes - same result (the entire intake is much longer, the top half slides on), same height as above:

 
Drop (identical on both beds:

 
Length after the elbow on bed 1:

 
Length after the elbow bed 2 (no ruler - it's about 800mm)



Any help would be much appreciated.

You haven't talked about your inflow. I know that if I have my inflow too high, they will not break. The first thing I would do is look at that. You also didn't show your media guard. If it is restrictive it could be slowing your water down to the point where it is not able to break. You can also try to drill another set of drain holes in the bell a little higher than your current ones. That gives an opportunity for a little more air to get in at the end.

I followed established dimensions and with a little tweaking mine worked fine. No snorkel, etc.

Hey thanks for your reply, my inflow is pretty low, its a 360 lph pump, which comes to 95 gallons per hour. I actually tried restricting the flow - but the problem was still the same.

Good point about the media guard, here is the pic of the guard on the right before I made any changes to the bell or the intake. I tested it without the media, had the pump going into a single bed, and the media guard didn't seem to restrict at all. So I'm hoping now that I'm splitting the pump output between both beds it will definitely be ok.

Divert the flow with a valve back into the fish tank. You need some sort of valve to fine tune the flow going in. It's just waterflow that controls the siphon.

I would open up your media guard more. Once you put media in, those holes get restricted more. I have slots in my media guard that run perpendicular to the pipe. They go all the way to 8" high. Second the idea about splitting your feed to send some of it back to the tank. That how I manage it.

Thanks for the advise guys, will give it a go over the weekend and will post here with the outcome.

the bottom of your bell looks like mine. i just kept making bigger holes to try to stop the siphon. now i only have 3 small legs. no holes. it was comedic whole it kept butchering it.

i do think your guard holes are too restrictive. i suggest not only bigger holes, but more holes at different heights too. unlike the siphon, holes don't have to be all at the bottom.

after all the tuning (tinkering) i did, the last thing that finally made it reliable was the snorkel. looks like you got that angle taken care of too.

i bet with better flow through your media guard + snorkel, your siphon will break (work).

Looks like you've already got some good advice, but one thing to check if that doesn't help might be the lower end of the snorkel.

Can you see if the water level (as the siphon is draining the bed) ever gets below the lower level of the snorkel?

I'm not saying it is the answer, but that's just what popped into my mind as I had some siphon issues at one stage (ended just switching to CF in the end).

-francis

Here's how I have run my bells and they both worked great. The only issue is I would like to get more water out. I am going to try to cover some of the holes on top and see if it is still consistent. If it is I will make a new one.

Thanks guys, looks like I should've tried my new snorkel first before posting - so far it's worked for the entire day while i've been at work and is still working. I've now added another snorkel to the 2nd bell so will chuck it in tomororw and will see how it works. Looks like I may have finally solved this.

Thanks again for your help

I followed this YouTube video and mine also struggled with breaking the syphon. After adding a 2nd snorkel and glueing a rim on my cup it finally works every single time. My initial pipe diameter was too small.

https://youtu.be/4hHRe3KJfoY

My syphon starts in under 10 sec and stop in 5 sec after the snorkel sucks in air.




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