Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Not sure if what I did is right, but my system has a fountain pump that circulates the water constantly. The pump is buried in a 5 gallon home depot bucket (too small?) that also contains a fishtank bubbler, and is up to the top with hydroton. The water goes strait up to the tops of the vertical grow tubes. It runs down the vertical tubes into a horizontal grow circuit, and drains out of each end into a 55 gallon barrel (someday- a fishtank!). Once I have my plumbing repaired, it will travel through several walls into a swirl filter. The top skim of the swirl filter waterfalls into the biofilter, where my story started.

The hydroton filled media beds that I have read about, either use a tricky syphon or a timer to allow periodic filling and draining of these grow beds.

I'm not sure how to mix these two styles!

My Nft tubes run constant,the system is timed flood and drain,from the swirl filter there is a feed to a 60 litre barrel,this also has a return to the sump,the pump for the tubes is in this barrel,it is a small aquarium pump suppling 1ltr per min to each tube. The water level is kept constant by the use of a stand pipe,so when the main pump shuts down on its timer,the small pump runs continuously in its own tank of water,a separate small system. When the main system starts up again this barrel starts flowing again changing the water and combining the two systems. I think this is what you meant between cyclic and constant flow.

The easiest way to combine the two (timed flood and drain along with a constant flow) would be to simply have a second pump. One pump on a timer to feed the timed flood and drain media beds and the second pump that runs constantly to feed anything that is constant flow.

But, if you are running the media beds as constant flow and flooding/draining with siphons, then you could probably do it all with just one pump provided it was appropriately sized to feed everything it needs to feed.

There are actually MANY ways you could do it. Heck there is even the Barrel Ponics flush tank that can produce a "timed" effect of flooding grow beds without using a timer on the pump.

One pump, constant flood media beds and NFT...

My main problem at this point is my home made swirl filter for solids removal. Using an inverted plastic 5 gallon sparklets bottle, it worked awesome. Well, almost awesome.

My first design used a PVC siphon that went from the bottom of each 55 gallon barrel (fish tank), over the barrel height, over and down into the inverted sparklets bottle that had the bottom cut off. By arranging the water level in the swirl filter to be below the water level in the fish tanks, gravity moved the water quite nicely, thank you.

I had to discard that arrangement, when, for an unknown reason, the siphon mysteriously stopped after 21 days. Not once, but 3 times consecutively! I think that all the tiny bubbles in my fish tanks from my bubblers accumulated enough after 21 days to break the suction in the siphon by filling the tube with air!

I had 3 sparklets bottles to work with, but I have ruined 2 of 'em! It seems that I cut clean holes, but the plastic material is only about 1/16 thick, and even with lubrication, pushing my 3/4" PCV through my uniseal was so tight, that the force cracked the thin plastic!

Are there any other sealing solutions that might not stress the thin plastic wall so much? I thought I saw somebody using one of those thread on dishwasher vent deals that everyone has on their kitchen sink. Any suggestions?

pvc pressure pipe male/female screw fittings with washers/silicone sealant?

Siphons that go up and over the edge of a tank have that danger, that they will get gas and quit. No Holes Overflows need to have a way to regularly re-prime them or remove the air from the top and even then I've had them fail.

Have you considered simply using a regular 5 gallon bucket for your filter? I know the bottle gives you something more like a cone bottom that lets you drain the solids out easier but it doesn't really help you if you don't get to use it at all. You can get the good food grade 5 gallon buckets for less than $7 brand new but you can often get food grade buckets for free from the bakery or deli since large food operations use buckets for everything from frosting and potato salad to pickles and olives and many of them just get thrown away or at best recycled and most operations only re-use a portion of them.

How did you utilise filtration for the nft tubes in this system ? and feed everything?

Standard Chift Pist configuration... split sump tank pump flow (ball valve adjustment) to the fish tank and NFT... you can sort of see it below..



Grow beds provided filtration of water to sump... wasn't ideal, as there was still too much suspended solids for my liking for the NFT...

But running as constant flood meant a lot of the water was being "skimmed"... and most of the solids captured by the grow beds...

I think it would have been a different story, and much worse... if the grow beds had been timed F&D.. or siphoned.... as I think a lot more solids would have been suspended...

The corollary is.. that the grow beds loaded up with solids a lot quicker... but I think that's true of constant flood anyway...

Certainly looks good though,I had my first attempt pumped like this,but there were just to many solids in suspension,hence the radial filter and now separate filtration for the tubes.I have cleaned everything as well as i could with it running,if i still get bits might add one more.

Yep, that's the way to go...

Jon,

One question I haven't seen anyone ask. Do you have any kind of media inside the vertical tubes?

Sorry for the delay, guys! Some personal problems came up so I was sidetracked. Bummer- discovered a major design flaw with my system, so I ate lots of salads for a week or two, and transplanted what I could to my (dirt) garden. My system is almost entirely disassembled. Glad I don't have 20 dead fish to deal with!

I will post some updates after I have time to study your most recent suggestions, and have time to decide how to salvage what I have that is still usable.

Two problems caused my shutdown:

1)The silicon-seal joints in my horizontal NFT track between my 4" dia. PVC fittings and my 4" dia. Polyethylene strait tubing failed after 6 months of use. Leak, leak, leak, leak, and leak!

2)The plants in my vertical tubes were rooted in either a small cube of peat-moss or a small cylindrical plant starters that resemble fibreglass material. These plant-starting mediums, with the plant and young roots were inserted into one of the 15 two inch diameter holes along this 4" diameter vertical tube. A couple of inches of Rayon mop string connected this plant-thingy to a poly-rope with grow-juice trickling down it. Worked good, except these small grow mediums holding the roots became overly water logged and the water began dribbling down the outside and onto the ground below.

Now that I have completely taken it all apart, here is what I have left to make my next Aquaponics rig:

A) Two 55 gallon food grade barrels, with a 1" dia. PVC return sump line passing through the barrel side.

B) A 620 gallon per hour fountain pump, with 13 feet maximum lift.

C) Two air pumps and three air stones, used to bubble my two fish tanks and one biofilter.

D) 4 inch dia. PVC fittings: Four 90 degree elbows, four Tee fittings.

E) Knowledge about what doesn't work! (And some things that do.)


I don't have much backyard space for this, that's why I chose this NFT setup that uses a lot of vertical space, not too much horizontal space.

Does anybody have any suggestions for my next creation?

***I FORGOT TO ADD-

F) A solid waste swirl filter that I can repair

G) Several 5 gallon Home Depot plastic buckets, one setup as a biofilter (it worked!).

H) A "bunch" of hydroton