Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

try opening up the flow a bit on that GB and see if the flow improves. If it is slow to start, increase. If it doesn't want to stop, dial it back a bit. Takes a little tweaking to get them right, but once you do, they're very reliable. Never had an issue with any of mine in 2 years. Except the one that got clogged w/ tom roots.

I have found that if you have at least 2 90 degree elbows below the bed then you get enough air sucked back into the siphon to make it stop every time. Basically, straight pipe a couple inches down below bed, then 90 turn, 6 inches straight pipe then another 90 with another short straight pipe down. I finally settled on this setup on a 50 gallon growbed with 1" siphon pipe and it breaks every time. Been this way for over a year now.

Yes, good point, you do need a 90 after about 6" for them to break properly.

Pics of the bell siphon and media guard anywhere?

hey thanks everyone. Yes, there's a couple pictures back on page 31

I think my siphon has all those things mentioned. Without media yet and the media guard off, I can watch it. It appeared to me that surface tension around the slots wouldn't let bubbles in, so I added a few more slots a little higher, which helped. It broke every time after that.
However, what I am questioning is the volume of overall water that can move past a one inch (25 mm) stand pipe surrounded by a 1.5 inch (38 mm) bell. I think the bell itself should be larger. I did it that way as an experiment. On the next one I'll do one inch (25 mm) stand pipe, two inch (50 mm) bell. It makes sense to me that more water can move around the pipe with greater difference in diameters.
Maybe slow on the overall draining is good for some reason, I don't know.

One of the issues I didn't foresee, is that by hiding my plumbing so very well, I can not observe the outflow from the first GB, unless I dip my head in the pond. (hehe we need an emoticon for FT head dipping)

Yeah more slots should help too. I have slots/holes almost to the top of media. Funny thing you mentioned that. I had to take a swim in the mbbr tank yesterday. Couldn't get the last outlet pipe strainer attached from the outside, and could reach from the far side, so I jumped in.

Yes increasing the size of the bell will help. The open area outside the standpipe is less than the area inside the standpipe so the flow is being restricted (I calculated it out based on standard sch 40 pipe dimensions)

The area inside the 1 inch pipe is 0.7857 inches
The area between the two pipes is 0.4092 inches

Ha Ha Motorcycle or wife? That's a tough one... NOT. I BLEED HONDA RED !!
IN all seriousness, I've seen several ways to heat your USED fittings to release the glue. Heat Gun(not sure if blow dryer is hot enough) , one guy uses a bit of fresh glue on the inside and burns it? One guy says boil in water.
Just leave 1/4 to 1/2 of the pipe sticking out past the elbow. Heat it up and grab with needle nose pliers, slide them in and twist.

Thanks Scotty, you're the bomb. I'm off to build four bell siphons, this time using 2" bells with the 1" stand pipes

Crap, it's always something... I only have one short piece of two inch pipe here. Time to go hunting around the ranch

I am sure you stated it somewhere, but could repeat the volume of water you will run in the FT/pond?

cheers,

thjakits

Ten thousand liters

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

....that's about 2640 gallons!

I don't see the number of GBs fitting inside that Greenhouse!!
Are you planning to expand the greenhouse?

Or possibly have an outside "Summer Circuit" and filter the rest of the year??

IF you are planning on the volume rule-of-thumb FT=2xGB, that would be like 38 or 39 1/2-IBC GBs!!
[If you cut them down to only 12" its more like 57or 58 1/3-IBC GBs!!!!!

[IBCs is a simple way to visualize the space requirements...]

How big are your "In house"-GBs?? Are you planning to run a super-thin nutrient solution??
[Very low fish population....]


Cheers,

thjakits

[BTW - your "Indoor Recreational Center" is AWESOME!!
.....all you need now is Japanese style hot-tube to watch your fish through the window....]

This is a bit embarassing but what the heck . Looking above my areas are totally wrong but the conclusion is right - pretty sure I forgot to use the radius instead of the diameter. I knew they couldn't be right when I looked again today.

Should be 0.7857 for the inside 1 inch pipe

1.7679 - 1.3587 = 0.4092 for the difference between the ID of the 1.5 inch pipe and the OD of the 1 inch pipe

I'm going to edit the first post

Good one Scotty, haha I looked at it, accepted it, and didn't even wonder about the 2+ number in a 1 inch hole. I'm a bit overwhelmed lately; too many things I want knocked off my bucket list, and life keeps on pounding reality down my throat.
Thank you for doing the math so I didn't have to think about it and possibly hurt my poor lil' ol' brain.
It is great having my wife home and doing well. When we got back from unloading the rock into the driveway my helper Matt busted out of the excavation of our new bedrooms project, my honey, bless her heart, had dinner made. We're almost back to normal around here.