Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Do you push your floats from end to end while they grow or do you work them where they are? Some of the systems I have read about make the rafts move from start end to the finish end. Their seeding and planting was done on a bench and put in to the trough at the start end. At the end of the grow cycle the plants had floated to the finish end where they were removed and processed for use. You would still have two troughs but no center aisle. If you are doing the same thing why do you need to get in to the center section? Does this system take much maintenance of the plants during a grow cycle?

Still need to prune, inspect, treat, etc as they grow.

I see. I am thinking about changing my system some and maybe put in a DWC also.

If those beds ran aeroponics there would be no problem

You do need to get to both sides even with sliding the rafts up the trough,there are times when as Lmannyr says you have to attend to the plants.
The only downside I could see to swapping over to areoponics is the size of pump needed to create the fog in the trough. At the end of the day the cracking is a problem,but not a huge one the way I think of it is it ain't nothing that can't be fixed one way or another,I have had bigger problems in the past that were overcome iam sure this will as well.....

I havent continued with my project (well mainly because I was hoping to visit Chatterson's farm, but I have to let go of that idea), but after visiting the Casas' farm recently, I'm considering some aeroponic adaptation. The Casas brothers are using lawn sprinklers. My concern is clogging of the sprinkler / aero system with fish gunk.

See Agroponicos "A frame sprinkler system" here:

https://www.facebook.com/AgroponicosPR/ ... =3&theater


I've also seen a video on youtube of someone (somewhere) in Asia doing the same thing

Hi Andreas,
Like the idea of the filter, especially the ease of cleaning part!
Can you give a drawing of how you have it set up.
Just a sketch so I can see where the pipes enter and exit.

Thanks.

farmz246, i am currently doing an upgrade that includes adding another upflow cap filter,so pics to follow of the build and construction.

Can't wait

Cool.
Look forward to it.

Picture time with update,my system up until now had run with the five fish tanks running through a single RFF,the big tank had a feed along with the other four paired up and single feeds to the RFF. This worked ok but i felt it could be improved on so four more RFFS were added to give each tank its own.The new RFFs are based on a 60l barrel,i do like the way the barrel tapers down at the bottom and the inlet size has been reduced from 1 inch to 3/4 to make sure we have a good flow to keep the solids moving,in the 1 inch before on the large tank solids had settled in the line,finally the lines to the upflow filters were broken into and the RFF feeds plumbed in.
First pic is the existing RFF,second is the barrels under construction the last the first pair in place.

These are the two for the other side,big tank is 800l small fingerling tank is 300l.

To do the plumbing meant draining down the 460l tank,so the fish from the large tank were moved and the fish from this tank moved into the empty tank.

For the return,i decided to add a third cap filter,to plumb it in i broke into the existing plumbing and by adding a T i supplied a feed to the new up flow.This shows the plumbing to and from the up flows and DWCs,still some tiding up to do around here.

These are how the RFFs are configured.