Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi everyone,

everything seems to be going well again, no more dead fish.

Been trying to hold the water in growbeds for as long as possible between cycles(10 min on 50 min off each hour). Done away with the siphons and using just a stand pipe with a 5mm hole drilled at the base. So far on the ten minute pump cycle the two beds are filling and staying full for 4-5 minutes after the pump stops. The beds then drain via the 5mm hole at the base of standpipe taking approx 40min.

All up the water is pumped from sump through fishtank, swirl filter, growbeds then sump again taking approx 55min of 60 min cycle.




Tried two types as pictured above, one from 19mm poly and one from 40mm PVC, both seem to work as well as each other.

Anyone else doing this drain method?

God bless, froggo

A timed flood and drain would use a standard standpipe arrangement without syphons and drain via a small hole (6mm) at the bottom of the standpipe. Is that what you mean froggo?

yes thats it Charlie, so is that what you call a flood and drain. Seems to work well and not much can go wrong with it.

Do many people still use this low tech method?

God bless, froggo

Timed flood and drain is the original naming and I believe it still stands. I know Rupert swore by it and Im sure others are using it. I tried it for a while but had issues with the pump I was using where it didn't like stopping and starting but other than that the draining method worked great. Timed F&D was one of the systems in the BYAP system trials and it did very well.

Thanks Charlie for the info.

I've only used loop siphons on my old system so it's good to know the flood and drain is tried and tested.

Does anyone know if grape vines and rhubarb are sensitive to salt in the system? Just got some plants today and trying to decide if they can go in the fish loop (salted 3ppt) or to put them in the non fish (no salt) loop when finished.

God bless, froggo.

Hi everyone, it's been hot in this part of the world. Spring has been skipped and summer has come early. The hot temps have caused the algae in my tanks to explode. My secret weapon to deal with algea are the two varieties of local shrimp. They just love eating the algae


It's a bit hard to get a good photo of them. These are the small variety on the 90mm CHIFT PIST pipe from the 5000liter fish tank.

I put a few hundred of them in my system each year when it warms up. They do steal the odd pellet, but mostly clean up the algae. The silver perch will hunt them down but as yet the catfish seem to ignore them. As the cold of winter comes on they die and then the silver have a feast.

More fish due in the next few weeks. 100 more silvers to make the total of 360 in my system. Not sure how many catfish will be added yet. John from Glenburn is harvesting the growout dam this week so will know in a few days.

God bless, froggo