Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So Ive reported my post to admin asking to delete as they are huge pics and I'll redo them the old way- so here goes

Wondering if I'm going to have to upgrade my pump which is only a 3000LPH unit as theres not enough speed of flow to supply all the grow beds to enable the bell siphons to operate. All the original 3 work but the new one won't and Ive swapped out bells which work vice versa so I guess I need more flow rate.

Hi Liney,

When I had 2 beds like that I had them both plumbed into a small tub at the same height and that tub had one bell siphon drain to sump from there...

This bodgey diagram will help explain...




I found I had no dramas with it, just had to balance the flow to both beds reasonably close and any discrepancy would flow between the 2 beds via the plumbing.

Mine cycled often enough that there was no bed better off because of unbalanced flow.

Hope this helps?

Cheers,
Scotty

Thanks Scotty I’ve got about 6M between those 2 beds and no room to do that but it would have been a good compromise. Either I get a bigger pump or use a smaller pump just for the 1 bed from sump to GB and back to sump tank.


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Getting sick of this Tapatalk app triple posting. Starting to p!$$ me @((

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His Liney, thanks for redoing the pics, I’ve always wondered how people post such big pictures.
Looks like good plant growth, what % shade cloth do you use? Something I need to do to stop the frazzle.
What size is your pump discharge? I upsized my discharge, just a section, from 25mm to 40mm and found the 50mm connection between the sump tanks wasn’t big enough to balance the tanks with the increased flow so have had to reduce the flow... 2 steps forward one back.

I’ve got 50% shade cloth as recommended by vege growers and seems ok but need a bit more when starting lettuce etc in a 40C day. My pump is 25mm into the fish tank and 50mm SLO into the filters etc and into the 3 GBs but only a 25mm into the new GB. I’ve close to 5000L in the system but only a 3000Lph pump.


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So I’ve spent around 20 hours stuffing around with my siphon on the 4th growbed and after all my upsizing the discharge pipe from 40mm to 90mm I ended up putting my spare 2400 Lph pump onto the 4th growbed by itself to increase flow to activate the siphon which worked but still took a bit of fine tuning. Should’ve tried this first as it could’ve saved me hours as the lady at my local fish supply mentioned before buying a larger main system pump. Not so easy to do after having to squeeze in places adults shouldn’t try to but luckily after 3 trips to my local hardware store I had enough angles and pipe to make it work. It meant that I blocked the feed from the MBBR to the 4th GB as it’s fed from the other pump now. Hopefully it gets enough nutrient rich water from the sump to supply the GB but we’ll see how the plants go.

Just a few pics from the iPad while waiting between cycles.

Hey Liney,

I've not been on here for a while. Good to read back through your posts. Looks like you've upscaled the system, but had some ups and downs with water quality. My system is still plodding along, no real changes. I've only got 10 yabbies in the system at the moment as the trout really don't cope over summer. I'm looking to relocate my grow beds to the back yard, but this is a major job. I'll bite the bullet and do it eventually.

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