Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

How are you governing back the pump so it takes longer to fill the grow beds? In general restricting a pump will be hard on the pump for little or no benefit. If you wish to make the grow beds take longer to fill, perhaps diverting some of the pump flow back to the fish tank for extra aeration will give you a benefit from the extra power usage of the too big pump. Of course you might be better off just letting the extra flow go through the grow beds and down the stand pipes for the extra time and get the aeration with some extra filtration that way. Or you get a smaller pump but then you don't have the extra capacity for expansion. Some extra flow for aeration is usually a good thing.

Even if it only takes 3 minutes to flood your grow beds, you still want to make sure you are moving a good portion of your fish tank water each hour just to make for better water quality for your fish, especially if you are going for a fish that likes lots of aeration.

If you are getting ponding over your media in some areas, then you are either flooding too deep or you need some more media to fill up the low areas. If there are plants in the low areas, they might suffer from wet feet or root/stem rot if they are picky about that. If there are no plants in the low areas then you probably only need to worry about unsightly algae growing in those places.

I govern it by gate valves at the entry to each grow bed, not hugely governed but enough to allow the sump pump to keep up with the retun water , I was wondering yesterday about your suggestion about diversion, my system is next door to our outdoor entertainment area and I was thing a fountain in the main FT or a set of flowforms etc for decoration, the water running sound but more importantly aeraton
Out with the saw and the blue glue again I think

Bree

Bree stick with the 15 minutes as it is turning over the water (many advocate turning the volume of your tank over once per hour) and adding aeration. Put a diversion in the outlet line so that it circulates back into your tank but allow as much water to cycle through the beds as the 25mm outlet pipe will allow. Throttle back the beds till the overflow pipe has about a 10mm ring of air visible in the overflow and the rest is water falling cleanly over the pipe, not backing up or gurgling. This will maximise the amount of water being passed through your GB's and therefore being filtered.

I found that if I did not allow for the 10mm ring of air to be visible in the overflow then the bed started backing up and in one instance overflowed. Now I check all the overflows once a week and just tweek them to get the even overflow if needed, it does change over time as biofilm builds up. If you find you have to change the tap a fair bit, chances are there are a few holes blocked in your distribution pipe on the GB's so check them.

As you have alluded to, make sure that your sump pump can keep up with the overflow as well as this.

Well no floaters this morning all seems good, did some testing of amonia last night and again this morning, last night is was basically zero, this morning the figures are as below-

Amonia 0.25 max
PH - 7.4
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0

Comments would be appreciated, havent given them their first feed yet will do that later this morning, have added some pics

awesome Bree

... had a feeling pulling out the camera might prompt you Bree...

If you hadn't posted some pics ... I would have...

Yep, you're set up is looking just fine Bree... time to get some plants in and growing...

Give the trout a feed this morning (if you haven't already done so)... and test again late this arvo... and post your results up...

I have given then a desert spoon full of feed this morning, cant say they were really excited about eating it though,
readings are the same as this morning

PH - 7.4
Amonia - 0.25
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 0

Is this normal and was that enough feed a desert spoon full ?

Bree

If the fish aren't hitting the feed hard, or as hard as normal... then there's no point in feeding more...

Try a bit of feed later today... the trout have travelled a fair distance and may still be settling in... they wont starve...

Good chance they're hanging lower and quieter in the tank today anyway...as a cold front is moving through...

I found if I stood there on one leg and called them by saying come to mumma and attracted their attention they showed interest in the food and did a bit of frenzy sort of thing, way cool, any requests for photos of this ritual will be ignored, lol

Have tested again this morning and the results were as below so I fed again

PH - 7.4
Amonia - 0 - 0.25
nitrite - 0
nitrate - 0


will check in a hour or so
(this arvo)

still all good
still feeding a desert spoonful of food morning and night and readings are remaining the same, if anything the amonia has gone down, am I feeding them enough should i be feeding more, water temp is around 12 degrees of a day

amonia <0.25
nitrate - 0
nitrate - 0

Is this all normal?

Steady as she goes Bree... it's a new system... two dessert spoons a day for 50 fish will be enough for the rest of the week...

thanks Rup

Back to the pump timing thing ..... if your pump un-restricted can fill beds in 5 minutes and if can drain back in 15 , you are far better doing 3 pump drain CYCLES PER HOUR. A lot better than just over-flooding just so pump can run 15 minutes , and restricting the pump causing excessive load.

The theory behind the larger pump and the 15 minute cycles is two fold. A smaller pump will not have the suck to get the solids out of the fish tank as quickly and easily as a larger pump, nor the capacity to turn over a lot of water out of the fish tank.

Big pump pumping for 15 minutes straight through the over flowing beds means good solids removal, good aeration, and good water turnover.. This is more essential as the stocking levels increase of course.