Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

lol ya by the time im done im quite sure im going to have to have an entire pump house just to control all the water flowing about threw my barn/greenhouse lol.. i have big plans. trying to be as cheap but as durable as i can, kind of an oxymoron but we shall see.

You can do it . The thing that surprised me when I built my system was the cost of the fittings for the plumbing. The pipe's cheap but the elbows, ball valves, through hull fittings and uniseals all add up, especially if you use larger sizes of pipe. You want to build in some extra capacity but you have to weigh that against the costs and benefits.

ya i know those bulkhead fittings are not cheap, i think im going set up all my tanks and get positioned before i figure how im going to be running my pipes and what sizes to use.

What are you using for biofiltration Jamest, you need to have biofilter to convert fish waste into nitrates for the plants.

ya i know iv been thinking of an idea, iv come up with three. i drew two of them out the third i still need to figure out how i want to do it, its almost impossable to explain though. any way here are two of the ones I drew up.

check out radial flow filters for settling out solids.. you're making it more complicated than you need to..
you'll still need biofiltration, which is surface area for the bacteria to grow on.. that's where media in growbeds comes in usually..
forget the coffee can!

Paul from earthan group has a good video on making a Biofilter but there are few other good ones on youtube.

his web site is down at the mo so I can't copy the link. but google "biofilter earthan group"

It seems you can use almost any media for a biofilter, you need lots of surface area any plenty of air and water flow.

I made one using bird netting as the media.

ahh ok, thanks for the comments.

Yes, you need filtration. AND you need that filtration to be between your fish tank and your plants in the pipes!!!!!

If you send fish pooy water directly to plants in pipes it might seem to work for a while but after several weeks you may notice an odor and the plants may start to languish and not do much and eventually you will pull up some plants to find that the roots are covered in goop or fish poo or uneaten fish feed. Plants in pipes generally do far better if you have nice clean filtered water being sent to them.

For a lower maintenance type grow bed that can grow most anything and not require "separate" filtration, I strongly recommend containers of gravel or other media. That way you get your bio-filtration, solids filtration, mineralization, plant growing space and worm home all in one. AND you can start seeds directly in media beds and not have to mess with separate seed starting media and net pots and cleaning out the filters and pipes all the time, AND you can grow big plants in media beds while trying to grow large plants in a hole in a pipe can sometimes become quite problematic.