Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Excellent guys cheers for opinions..

Sam- Great sketches firstly... This was the intention to put a sump under the deck but accessibility, cost and space rule this out. The deck has been built to store a car trailer so space taken up with concrete and retaining blocks. I do like the idea of flood and drain combined with constant but this would affect water level dramatically.. correct if im wrong.

Another area of the 3 sump tanks I love is ability to keep fingerlings before cycling out larger fish from pond. With the risk of sounding like a tosser, I still seem to be leaning towards the sequence valve option..

Working some rough numbers as follows..

Pond capacity say 600L-650L
GB media area 670L
wet GB media area 530L
GB water hold capacity 250L -used a 35% rule that a forum member found when tested
Sump tank total water capacity 820L
GB water volume with volume with 1xGB full, 1x half full, 1x quarter full 130L

or something like that...

As far as the water level, the fluctuations would mainly come from the flood and drain beds on the system, any Constant Flood beds would stay the same level all the time (sometimes you do raise grow bed water levels to sew seeds though). The max height of the water in your Flood and Drain bed cycle is roughly where you'd want the water level in a Constant Flood grow bed.

Basically your sump or fish tank (whichever ) have to handle the fluctuations of the flood and drain grow bed portion of the system and any water that will drain back to the tank in a power outage. CF grow beds typically only drain over the top of the standpipe while Flood and Drain beds usually have a weep hole at the bottom of the standpipe so all but about 2 inches of water could drain out in a power failure.

If you have all CF grow beds the water fluctuation will be due to evaporation and use by the plants.

Wet media area = 530 L about 35% to 40 % would be water so about 185L and for your 1/4 size bed that would be around 46 L of water and you have 600L (about 1/12th the volume). Doesn't really sound like you need a sequencing valve at this point unless you want to run more that half the grow bed as Flood and Drain. I think you'll quickly learn that plants will grow either Flood and Drain or CF pretty well.

And after chatting to couple people today I've seen the light as most have told me in this thread. . Next step is to get the bloody things built so o can get a boogie on. . Thanks a heap for helping out everyone

Mum has been really interested in the idea of it all so put this together for her this morning. .had the tubs lying around so everything in total cost under $100.

Mums gonna love that! Wont be long before she will be wanting a much larger system, Datpsi

Thanks for your time yesterday SeaMonkey.. yes that's the plan. . Think she needs to see the system doing it's thing in her backyard before she bites the bullet!

Hiya datpsi great start, getting a start and working from there is the way to go I reckon, well done.
Generally the white plastics aren't uv stabilised so you might like to paint or clad those containers for mum to lengthen their life..
Looking forward to your deck system build.

Cheers skeg.. still got sh#t loads of work ahead but aiming to have all up ams running in 3 weeks.. we'll soon see. Just come in from bit more work on the deck! Aim to have welding completed by Monday night, decking in and coated buy wednesday night, up to the bro in law when we put these boxes together. .

Decided to increase the depth of my additional tanks under the grow beds to 500mm to carry just that little bit more buffer in case. . Also ordered couple float Valves to ensure the pond and the lower tanks have sufficient water..

Latest tests show the following.
50 nitrate
5 nitrite
6 total hardness
6 carbonate hardness
6.4 ph
0.5 ammonia

Fish seem happy enough even though the silvers are all hiding. Bit of algae so contemplating giving her a scrub or not?

And while I'm waiting for weather to dry out to do some more welding i got this planted and plumbed..

And he's on a roll.

Well still few weeks off everything being up and operational but couple questions regarding the pond. First time the nitrate and nitrite readings are at zero but ammonia has risen from 0.25 to nearly 0.50. I've got plenty or aeration and a biofilter running so unsure whether to ride it out and keep eye on it or start removing water and adding fresh ?

Check your water temp and pH and check to see if the ammonia is reaching toxic levels by looking at the chart here - http://ibcofaquaponics.com/information/tables-and-charts/. If it is or is close, then stop feeding until the ammonia goes back down. If there is any doubt don't feed - fish can go for a long time between feeds.

The pallet grow bed? Did you find something off the shelf for the plants?

Still getting plenty of sun. .thus the algae, so water warm so is safe levels still. Will give the fish day or 2 of fasting to compare. I'm using bunnings drainage grates minus the tops. Rekon bit too short to have enough stone to help minimise evaporating but time will tell. Think they were $15 each.

On another note i need some sump tank ideas. Have 1700L x 700H x 450W to play with and cheap cheap. . Also will be a pain to access.

ok, wouldn't have thought of using them :-)

for the sump, considered besa block or ferrocrete? with a fish safe coating like crommelin? check out colum's system.