Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey rupert that is a good point, i'll post another pic today for you so that you can tell me if thats whats actually happening. The outlet of the pump goes to the back of my grow bed so hopefully whats happing by my theory which might be incorrect is that the water from the tank sinks to the bottom of the tank and the old water flows out.. Post back

No problems with the setup of pump to grow bed Ryan.

Are the two short pieces of tube half way up the growbed your drain outlets???

If so... imagine this..... both get blocked somehow.... pump is filling growbed.... water can't drain.. overflows over the top of growbed... no water returned to tank... tank runs dry or too low to pump anymore... pump burns out.... believe me it's happened to more than one member...

A standpipe or probably easier ... another outlet (opposite your pump inlet) draining back to your tank in case of overflow.

Edited:
You can see an example of an overflow at top of Joels Blue Barrel System in the link below

Now if the outlets are half way up your growbed then the water will only drain out down to the level of the outlets.... leaving the water level below the outlets to potentially stagnate....

Have a look at Joels Blue Barrel System to get an idea of how/where to incorporate an autosiphon into a blue barrel...

Look at the black poly tubing loops and follow them to the return line...

Keep asking questions mate... that's what we're all here for

Yeah, I have just set up my first loop auto syphon. Very easy. 19mm hydro pipe in a loop, 1000 lph pump on continuos, floods and drains perfectly. And it's not too late to convert your system to that. It would make a huge difference.

yeah ill get back on that one at the monment iam not at at that house and i need to have a think about it. is there a topic about how the auto siphons work

hello ryan. It's good to see you've dived in. I'll be watching as your system develops. All the best with it.

Ryan, there are a few different ways to do it, but with your size system, the easiest way is a loop syphon. I will draw it up.

if you get the pump flow right and the hose diameter right. the hose fills up towards the loop top as it gets there, it starts dribbling out, then as it fills the pipe completely, the water exits the loop faster than the pump can fill the growbed, hence emptying it. The cycle repeats itself. The syphon stops when the level gets down in the growbed and the pipe sucks in air.

make the point of entry of the loop into the growbed as low in the growbed as possible to leave as little water in the growbed as possible at the end of each cycle.

its a continous flow system, or is that what you mean

Ryan with an autosiphon you could have the pump running continuously... most people time how long it takes to fill the growbed to the top and then use a timer to set that amount of time for the pump to be on and "x" amount of time for it to be off.....

The reason is to allow the plants to have a period of time to absorb oxygen through some of the roots that are developed for that reason... and so as to allow a "drying" out period... so the roots don't rot...

Think of a soil garden.... it rains, or you water it.... then it drains, dries out for a while.... then it rains etc....

The autosiphon literally "sucks" the water out of the growbed really fast, faster than the pump can fill the growbed anyway... the idea being to pull air (oxygen) down into the grow media.... gravel, hydroton whatever... so the roots can be oxygenated....

Running continuously can be done, but requires much more attention....
read through the threads (use search) and you'll find info if that's the way you want to go.... else buy a timer and set up an autosiphon... set and forget.... well most times anyway LOL

so a timer can just be bought from Bunnings or Mitre 10 useally. it sounds that this is the easiest way

it sounds easy next you will be saying an automatic feeder is a good idea and then the only thing ill have to do is pick the produce

personally I would use the small wattage pump on continuously with the autosyphon. Way less wear and tear on your pump, and no timers to muck around with

ok but then will there be to much drainage , because at the moment i have the peice of irragation with just the hole in the end or should i create a spray bar..

you wouldn't need more than one entry point for water into the growbed from the pump in the fish tank esp with a small system. As it floods to the top of your loop level, all the gravel gets wet, and bacteria has the best chance of estabnlishing.