Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Ahhh... no... the worst thing you can do is use perlite in flood & drain....

Trust me... the perlite will float to the top... down your siphons... and into your tank...

Been there done that.... PITA.... fullstop....

I did have some success using a 75:25 mix of vermiculite:perlite.... ala hydro seed raising...

Actually .. it was probably more like 80:20... but it stays very damp... and ultimately started to get an algael slime....

Rupert,

If using the suggested gravel in bottom, perlite in middle, gravel on top, and let it fill up faster than it can drain, turn off then let it drain out the bottom of a 5gal bucket GB, into the FT is still a PITA no, no...... Then what is to be to used as a liter substitute for gravel in a over head / hanging container grow bed....?

i know i said F&D, but to start with, i had wanted to put Matala($$) and / or other biofilter media in 5gal buckets or other pretty container's, hanging and/or sitting over the FT, and pump water into them in a trickle down type biofilter..... So why not Grow something, like mint, or lemon balm, or other invasive plants, etc... In the individual overhead containers, and their gravity trickle draining into the FT oxygenates the water....? This app just's needs a biofilter media way liter than gravel, to be easy to manage in a over head GB situation........ Prehaps Hydroton balls, but they are not so lite, and are costly...... So, are there any other options.....?

Cheap light biofiltration should be as easy as falling off the proverbial log.
If not for the roots, I'd put cut-up water jug strips in buckets for biofilters. But the roots will get tangled up in it, however the only problem I would see is that you'd discard some of the... free filter material ...when taking the plants out.

Constant trickle right? If flooded, anything light will float up as Rupert warns. And if the mints etc. get long, hang over the side, they'll be doing aerial escapes as the foliage starts to outweigh the roots/filter media. But that'd be an entertaining YouTube so I'd still go for it.

I am saving the tops from spring water gallons, and the little strip that gets torn off to open the bottle. Haven't tested colonizing these but the shape is right, lots of surface. Bottle plastic itself has been used, it's shredded to about a cm in width.

Free on recycling day. My kind of price...

these overhead biofilter/grow beds will have water from the inside the GH sump tank pumped to them as the return to the FT and to add extra biofiltration for anything living in the sump tank, like Prawn/crawfish, as what i read, if you feed them very much, they are messy, and may not provide that clean water sump tank pump point TCL likes so much.....

the sump pump will cycle on and off, so they will flood and drain like a normal GB

i am wandering if making them a up flow type of filter would work better...?

the input would go in the bottom, and water up flow through the media, and then out hole's in the sides a inch or so below the top of the media, and when the pump stops, a small hole close to the bottom, would let it drain down during that time...

i have drawn up the inside GB / sump, and the outside GB / sump plans and need to draw up the side view's, and will post them and spec's for feed back, soon.....

Record Breaking Snow Storm in North Texas, 16+ inches here in Red Oak, we were without power for about 58 hours..... Tree limbs down all over the place, once it's cleaned up, we won't need to buy fire wood for a while........

and with all the Rain we've had since aug, (43+in), the ground was already saturated, so the melt off has made it a muddy, muddy mess, even more so than it was before....

and with all my big batterys and equipment, just moved into the new shop, none of it was arranged or hooked up yet, so i could not even run anything off it, while the power was out......

Fortunatly with the FT water Temps starting at about 68degF and going down to 52degF during that time, and with 5000+gal and the current low fish load for that water volume, the oxygen level never got so low that any of the fish were gasping at the surface, so no losses..... i have a oxygen bottle and a extra air stone and tubing in the shop, i could have rigged up on short notice, just in case they were running out of oxygen.........
the GH air temp never got below 50degF, so all the plants did just fine also...

With the Record Breaking Snow Storms across the south and north east, I say Global Warming My A$$

Up Date on my system...

To now......

almost everything has grown good in the grow bed, the cucumbers are just starting in producing good and the tomatos have set some fruit

the aphids attacked the radishs, as they always do, so they did not very good after i sprayed them with habenero pepper spray

finely got some lady beetles in to work on the aphids

the pole beans have not done good, as a lot of their leaf's turned brow and they have not flowered.....

went fishing in the cement pond last week, they were really good...

1LB 4.3oz
1LB 3.8oz
1LB 1.9oz

still have a cupple of them that are bigger than these, and several more about this size and a few smaller ones

Monster Grow Bed and Sump Tank Plan, to go with the monster Fish Tank

GB aprox 19 ft 7.5 in x 25 ft 9 in max inside to inside, no divider
aprox 492.5653ft^2 +12.5585ft^2 = 505.1238ft^2 x 1ft = 505.1238ft^3 = aprox 3778.588 liq gal

to stand pipe hight
505.1238ft^2 x 1.333 = 673.3300254ft^3 = 5063.858 liq gal / 0.40 = 2025.5432 liq gal, / 2 =2531.929 liq gal

gravel hight
505.1238ft^2 x 1.45 = 732.42951ft^3 = 5478.953 liq gal, = 27.127 cubic yards of GB media

Sump Sank
5ft 6.5in x 24ft 8in x 5ft to water level

136.6944ft^2 x 5ft =683.47^3 = aprox 5112.70 liq gal

x 6ft = 820.1664^3 = 6135.270 liq gal

BYAP fish stocking rules

3kg fish to 100L of gravel GB = 6.61Lb fish to 26.4172 liq gal of gravel GB

5063.858 Liq gal GB media / 26.4172 Liq gal = 191.687 X 6.61Lb = aprox 1267.0Lb fish as max FT stocking denisity for my propsed GB

Darn edit time out, i lost a lot of text in that last post

following JT's lead, the sump tank will be block up to Ground level and then 2 x 8's above that with pond liner

the cut and fill from the sump hole = some more, will be used to raise the GB up 1ft, so that the sump can be 5ft deep

lots of small details not shown in the Sketchup pic's but will be added in the build out

Impressive. I'd probably go with one fish per square foot of growbed since it is new. Shoot, my system is nearly two years old and has about that ratio and is doing great!

On the other hand, since cats grow fairly slowly, perhaps 1000+ might be OK. Bit risky..

Hydro,
that's still 500+ fish vs the current stock of 18 tilipia, 25 or so cats, and 30 or so gold fish from 3/4in up to 6in

Now to get this monster built......$$$$.... cause what i want to Build to make it right, may be more than i can afford to do all at once....

A cupple of weeks ago I added 8 large flower pots over the FT with 10 Gal of expanded shale in each, so that's 80 Gal of trickle down bio filter, that the inside the green house sump Pump pumps up to.........

Used a big sump pump to keep the water flowing through the basket till all the silt had washed out, and only dirty water was flowing through, the rinsed with city water for a bit, then dumped out that load, and washed another