scotty435 wrote: What purpose do the siphons on the fish tanks have? We sometimes use siphons on the grow beds but it doesn't look like you really need them on the fish tanks.
I think in the diagram the siphons ARE in grow beds that sit on top of the fish tanks. It looks like the brown fish tank tops with slightly raised sides objects are meant to represent grow beds. So the flow is...
Sump Tank pumps to Biofilter
Biofilter drains to Grow Beds
Grow Beds siphon to Fish Tanks
Fish Tanks overflow to Sump Tank
Perhaps the grow beds would suffice for biofilter as well? If so...
Sump Tank pumps to Grow Beds
Grow Beds siphon to Fish Tanks
Fish Tanks overflow to Sump Tank
Another consideration is that you could plumb things like that with all 6 grow beds and all 6 fish tanks plumbed tother, but there is merit in having a plan to isolate a tank or two and perhaps running some grow beds independently as well. You could plumb things up both ways with valves to isolate a section. It is probably drawn that way for convenience, but I think the fish tank drains would be better done to a drainage manifold kind of like the water distribution into the grow beds, but reverse. Rather than overflow one fish tank into another and finally to the sump, each fish tank draining into a drain pipe going to the sump would help keep fish tanks cleaner rather than one tank dumping trash into another and another.
If you can work it so you don't run your solids through the pump before they get to a media bed filter or some other solids filtration, they might be easier to filter as larger chunks rather than finer particles after being whipped through the pump. Fish tank SLO draining into media grow beds which drain into a sump which pumps back to fish tank has something that just seems so almost perfect about it -- if it is feasible within your layout, etc.
Something else to consider is to convert one or more of those fish tanks into 2 more grow beds each. Assuming you are using split IBC's for grow beds and full IBC's for fish tanks... Converting 1 of the fish tanks into 2 more grow beds would give you 5 fish tanks and 8 grow beds: 1.6 split IBC grow beds per fish tank. Converting 2 would give you 4 fish tanks and 10 grow beds: 2.5 split IBC grow beds per fish tank.
What are you considering for fish and what are you considering planting? 
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Sam
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. CHIFT PIST which stands for Constant Height in Fish Tank, Pump in Sump Tank is a good type of system to build but having the pump in the Fish Tank and no sump works also. You'll also want to think about whether you'll have siphons in the grow beds or not - this affects the size of the sump. Running "Constant Flood" without siphons would be another option so you should probably research that as well. I think a good place to start getting some information would be The IBC of Aquaponics which is free and you can download a PDF copy here - http://ibcofaquaponics.com/. 
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