Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am new to Aquaponics and started experimenting with different types of siphon in a tiny Aquaponics system see my video http://youtu.be/6MZCQwUtx0w



My fish tank is 2 feet by 5 inch by 9 inch (H)

My inflow pipe is 8mm diameter and fills up my GB in 1 minute.

With a bell siphon with stand pipe of 12mm, it can drain my GB in 45 seconds.
It first takes a few false start to kick off. After changing to a 10mm stand pipe it started after one false start and stop right away. It now takes 1 minute to drain my GB.


With a U or loop siphon with outlow pipe of 12mm, it can drain my GB in 2 minute
It starts very easily(no false start) but takes 12 false stops to stop, and sometimes takes forever.

Hence I concluded the bell siphon is more efficient in my system.

I am also testing a T siphon that takes 1.5 minutes to drain, but have troubles kickstarting from time to time, because of insufficient water flow up to the T-pipes to ceal the entrance of the outfkow pipe. I am thinking about adding one more T to the T-siphon with four in let pipes, that looks like a cross, maybe named cross-siphon. Then if I continue to go further on this path, I can increase the no of pipes from four to a big number with inflow pipes covering all angles. This new idea will be like placing two cups on top of one another leaving a gap in between that >= the diameter of the outflow pipe. That means water can flow into the outflow pipe from all directions, and guided to the entrance to the outflow pipe located at the center of the liwer cup. If we further increase the gap between the upper cup and the lower cup by further reducing the lower cup and ultimately remove that, then we ended up with a bell Siphiin, only that the bell is lifted off the ground by clamping to the outflow pipe. Not sure if this will buy me anything. Will try it out over the weekend.

Cheungbx,

Nice video! I think with the 12mm (length!) bell siphon standpipe you might win the prize for tiniest grow bed and bell siphon! Who says you need 300mm minimum depth for a grow bed?

Nice work and pretty interesting watching the bed fill and drain like that.

What do you plan to grow in the garden?

--
Sam