Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

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Not meaning to state the obvious njh.... with any of the growbeds lower than the tank, you're going to have to pump back to the tank...

means a sump and sump/pump.....if you can somehow gravity feed your growbeds from the tank....

then you could drain to the sump and pump back to the tank.... only one pump that way

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Intrigued.... how would you do that.... cascading beds???..... pump from lowest.... or pump from each?

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Can you dig the fish tank part way in to the ground?

I like the idea of cascading beds, but if they are to be F&D, I'd be worried about the pump running dry periodically. If you used a sump at the bottom of the bed-cascade, you could still put some rafts on it, or use it for fry grow-out.

njh-
Far be it from one of my young years to give advice to a venerable centenarian, but without moving your current tank, you will need to have a sump of some sort.

One option, given your preferences, is to set one of your growbeds at the bottom (bottom of the cascade), and put the pump in there, using the final GB in the series as a sump. Given your constraints, you may want to put four sets of GBs in parallel, each draining into another, then those four draining into your sump GBs. The sump pump would then go back to your main tank, so that the flow would be from the main tank into the four grey halves (on two sleepers), these would autosiphon or otherwise cycle into the second set of four grey GBs (on 1 sleeper), these would in turn cycle into the bottom two blue GBs (on the ground), which would be connected at the bottom to give them a common water level. One of these would have a barrier to keep the gravel back, and a sump pump with a float switch.

Now you get to use all 10 barrel halves with a single pump, and no changes to your current configuration.

The other thing to look at so that you don't dump your fish water on the ground, is to make sure that the drain from your main tank into the top GBs is such that if power cuts out, you would be able to contain the water that would leave the drain in the bottom two barrels.... Perhaps a raft system on the bottom....

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For a siphon to work, the "out" end of the siphon must be lower than the "in" end of the siphon. It would appear that your "in" end is the flat disk area, plus the 3mm holes. I don't think your siphon will start because these appear lower than your growbed.

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Is it the water level in the container with the "in" end that matters? Or the position of the end of the siphon within the container? Maybe it is the water level....in that case, it would work. (Need more tea.)

Ummm, any reason why you've deleted it all njh? If you've changed your mind about the design you could just say so, now no ones posts make any sense at all.....

There is no shame in scratching your design. I think that is the best part about this forum is to get your design on paper and let the critics [s]rip it too pieces[/s] add there thoughts and opinions before you go out and do it.

We need to make sure its all here so other people can learn from the mistakes others have had to deal with.

Point is that the edit function is provided for members to be able to correct things in their posts.

I use it sometimes when i post in heat and think better of it later.

It is NOT to be used as a back-door way of deleting content

AS AM stated previous usage of this function was dealt with severely.

An explanation would be most appreciated.

Steve

Gosh golly! Now I'll never know if his siphon will work.
laces back of hand to brow in dismay:

I shall just have to get my buckets and length of hose and figure it out myself, then. :sigh: