Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

looks good, i need to put one in my system soon too

OK finally all 10 strawberry towers are built so that is 69 plants (well the last 6 towers havnt been planted yet but my day will do that soon) the towers seem to be working well, I havnt had any problems with leaks on the exhisting 4 towers.. ofcourse the roots will grow and create problems eventually but I plan on replacing the plants yearly with runners.
After building these towers and using ball valves to control the flow to the individual towers I find myself wondering how in the world anyone has had success without using adjustable controls like ball valves etc for each tower. I have had to adjust them carefully to get water to all of them... so I fail to see how it could be possible to feed each tower accurately with just drip holes or something similar.. I mean if there was enough pressure then it would work but considering that the water is being pumped to a high head you would need a lot of watts which seems wasteful.. currently my 65W pump (6500 L at 0 head) has to supply 3 IBC grow beds, 3 x 4metre NFT tubes and 10 Strawberry towers... and it is JUST coping, in fact I had to reduce a bit of flow to the fish tank to get water to all the strawberry towers, although im planning to add a small pump which only goes from sump to fish tank as a redundancy and to push up the flow a little.

more images

Impressive work, Tom. Very much enjoyed this thread.

Looking good Tom... and valid points re : pump/head/flow adjustment...

If you're going to add a second pump... why not just dedicate it to the strawbery towers... and use the existing pump for the primary flow control...

Yea, I agree with Rupe. Splitting the system up can have some really good control benefits.

Hi Rupe,

I agree ... that sort of is the plan, except that I would like to keep both pumps flowing back to the fist tank even if one only does this at perhaps 200L/h and the other at the required minimum of 1000L/h (since my tank is 1000L), the reason being that part of the reason for wanting a second pump is for backup/redundancy in case of mechanical failure of one pump. I do have a 12V battery backup bilge pump but that only activates due to power loss not mechanical failure at pump... so having both 240V pumps returning some water would be desirable even if it's only a small amount.

Also when I do buy the second pump (soon) I will probably buy a smaller 2500L/h pump because there isn't much head from the sump to fish tank (about 1 metre) and my current 6500L pump would overflow my 40mm returns to the grow beds ( I do have another 40mm overflow pipe in the fish tank that returns directly to the sump but that would just be a waste of power )

So the plan as it currently stands is to have:
- the main pump (6500L) feed the towers and NFT which are at a high head AND a little (200L) to the fish tank
- the new pump (2500L?) feed the fish tank only
- the 12V battery backed bilge on 240V power switch

What do you think?

Hi Tim,

Thanks! and glad you found it interesting..I've enjoyed building it, most of the time

Does anyone know if certain (cheap) pumps (that are economically viable to non commercial use) are better at higher heads than others because my 65W 6500L/h pump is the main energy hog currently in my system and I would like to go solar with battery in the future and I am currently at about 100W/h and will be heading into the 120W/h are soon with second smaller pump...I want to run constantly flooded and not timed so that is quite a bit of power for solar...

You generally need "power" to lift water to height... and "power" generally equates to wattage...

Not sure you'll be able to do much better than 65w.... some lower wattage pumps can move a fair bit of water... but not above a minimal head height...

The rio hyperflow range is one of the best Ive found for watts vs head.

http://www.riopump.net/products_pumps/h ... _desc.html

I was afraid you'd say that oh well I guess I will need to get more solar panels and batteries... lithium is getting cheaper at least

Hi Charlie,

Thanks for that link .. the specs for those pumps look pretty good. Maybe this one would be enough for my needs and at 35W I would be saving 30W... although I guess I need to get out there with a bucket now and work out exactly how many L/h I am getting with my 65W pump.. I have only measure the flow to the fish tank to make sure it is enough.

Rio 12HF

35W

1930L/h @ 6ft

I just ordered another BOYU pump (JX4P-3500 ECO Submersible Water Pump) my main pump is the 6500 ECO... but maybe Ill get this Rio 12HF as my backup to the backup I have issues

Just sent those guys an email.. are they in America? I couldn't see on there website the phone number looked American.. where do you get them from here in Oz or do you order online? Thanks

Well I thought I would make me one them fancy looking black fly larvae producing contraptions... minus the fancy looks, after all it's just going to be filled with rotting meat etc I will be adding a container for the larvae to fall into which i think i will make out of some 90mm pvc pipe with end caps and a slit to match the size of the one where they will fall out of and attach it with bungy cords or similar.
It didnt take more than an hour which you can see by the design
Here are the pics....
I don't know if it deserves 5 pictures but here it is... oh and i didn't 'name' it 'Karl' that's just my dad who has his name on his containers... although it looks like a Karl