Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Below is a rough sketch of the system i am in the process of building. Any input would be great. I should have more pics soon.

I'd build a radial flow settler using a 55 gal blue plastic drum and use 6" PVC as the stilling well. The more I read about radial flow settlers the more I'm convinced they are better than swirl filters. Of course this is coming from a guy who has a 35 gallon plastic garbage can swirl filter presently that works fairly well with my 250 gallon fish tank.

Whats the difference between the two?

Alternatively dont have a filter at all

It is one of the most contentious issues here on the forum as to whether they are needed or not. You could save yourself a lot of work and have your grow beds drain directly to your fish tank. It would save 3 water containers and a pump. Pump from the fish tank to the grow beds and let them drain back in. 2 pumps for a system that size really is overkill. If you wanted 2 pumps for redundancy then fair enough, but there is none in your system anyway.

If you want to keep your sump then pump from there to the fish tank and let the SLO overflow to your grow beds.

Sounds like a nice simple solution Ryan!

Here is an excellent article comparing the two: http://integrated-aqua.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Radial_Flow_Settler_Whitepaper.pdf.

Or allow the grow beds and fish tank (or filter) to gravity flow to the sump. Then pump from the sump to the fish tank and grow beds simultaneously. You can also oversize your pump a bit and use ball valves to control the flow into the fish tank and grow beds for better control.

Good alternative but i was considering using a filter so i can increase the amount of fish in my system. I could try an go take water from filter to GB using Gravity?

What kinda of tout are you guys using in australia? Brown? I would like to do trout but i think it is too hot for rainbow trout which are the common species where i am.

So I finished building the tables for my GBs and also have all the grow trays for the GBs. Now I have to start working on the plumbing and leveling of the GBs.

got the plumbing done today for the drains and the flooding pipes. I need to pick up some silicon to seal my drains but after i should be done with the construction portion.

With your grow beds so high, you really don't need the sump after the grow beds, they can just drain into the fish tank. Then the container you are calling your reservoir will be your sump. You already have some stuff built, but I was going to recommend lowering the grow beds, have the filter flow into the grow beds, then have the grow beds flow into the sump, where the single pump pumps back into the fish tank. With two pumps, it can be a difficult balancing act to get the flow rates even. Different head heights mean different flow rates.

Shouldnt it be ok if I put a float valve on the pump in the sump tank and put a timer on the pump in the reservoir. I could get rid of the sump tank but then i would have to bury the fishtank. I wanted to keep the grow beds and fish tank up high because the ground here is really dusty and i dont want dust getting into my system.

I got my swril filter pretty much finished, i just have to wait for the silicon to dry around the funnel. I currently have 5 crawdads in my tank, i cought them the other day while fishing. I figured they could tolerate the flucuating conditions that my new system is going to experience.

We have all kinds of trout here.
California gets very similar weather to the southern half of australia.
We can keep any trout no problem over winter. Over summer is much harder.
I would expect your story to be the same over there.