Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi friends,

I am starting an experimental Aquaponics poly tunnel in some days.
I am looking for some inputs from you all.

The temperature range is here in Mumbai is
Hot season avg. 32 C (90 F) & high 40 C (105 F)
Cold season avg. 24 C (75 F) & low as 18 C (64 F)

I had asked a Science collage to host my experiment for 1 year.
They have full fledged biology labs & all are willing to participate in it.

The system, in a Ploy & shade net tunnel, will be hosted on the terrace of college building, so I dont have choices like sinking sump in ground.
My plan is to run a system on one water pump & one aerator pump.
The plan is of using a Deep Water Culture (DWC) system.

The flow of system will be:
Fish tank > SLO > worm bed > bio filter > dwc unit 1 > dwc unit 2 > sump > water pump > Fish tank

Fish tank outlet will be will be at highest level
below the outlet there will be a 1' deep worm bed
below that there will be a bio filter that has height = fish tank base to outlet height - 1' ie. height of worm bed

FT will be around 1000 liters.
SLO in fish tank with one air stone blowing air in it, thus aiding the SLO performance.
Sump will be not less than 500 lt & will be of height more than DWC unit & its stand this will keep the water level in DWC & sump at equal level.
The only water pump I will be using is one in sump submersible.
2 no of DWC size will be 15' x 6' x 1.5' that equates to 7646 liters.

Questions
1. Pump size - will a 2000 lph pump good enough for continuous flow.
2. Aerator pump - for 5 air stones in fish tank, 3 air stones in each DWC, that can run on Inverter backup. Specifications
3. Plants - Green & Iceberg Lettuce, Cabbage, what else?
4.
5.

Am I missing something

Looking at your diagram, I'd add a stand pipe on the return line from the grow beds to the sump either in the grow bed or in the sump. Yes, the height in the GBs and sump will remain the same given the configuration illustrated, and you could add a float valve with water supply in the sump to account for evaporation, transpiration, etc. and keep the level in both constant, but if you ever have a failure in the plumbing between the pump and fish tank a stand pipe will prevent your grow beds from draining as the sump tank empties.

Beyond that I'd say things look good. I look forward to hear how your project goes.

I'm curious, what is a worm bed?... ie: is it just a gravel filled bed with worms in it?

Instead of running a worm bed and a bio-filter, why not just have a gravel filled grow bed containing the same volume of gravel as the worm bed and bio-filter combined, make it 300mm deep, grow plants in it and put worms in it?... This way you have the same amount of bio-filtration, but the capacity to grow many more plants... and the worms get to feed on old plant roots etc... instead of just fish crap.

Sure thing! I missed.



Yes, thing to consider first.



Sorry for my delayed response.
As we have different time zones My replies will be a bit late.
Please excuse me about this

Yes sure it is the way it as you are mentioning.



First I want to try the DWC which is needing only 2 mechanical devices, ie. 1 water pump & 1 air pump.

A gravel filled grow bed will push me to try for more vegetable types.
Also once I had a DWC running as per the current design, I can it change to gravel filled grow bed vary quickly than other way around.

I hope to know more from you

Sorry for my delayed response.
As we have different time zones My replies will be a bit late.
Please excuse me about this

Is your drawing to scale?

If so your worm bed (gravel bed) is far too small relative to the rest of the system. This will not necessaryly be a problem if you are not feeding your fish very much. If you do want to feed the fish in a 1000L tank a reasonable amount then you will want to add some way of removing solids.

If you do want to keep the system simple as you say then replace the DWC with GBs. DWC by itself is by necessity more complicated than a pure GB system.

If you really want DWC go for a system that was GB and DWC. This allows the GBs to do the solid waste processing, provides an easy place to grow bigger plants like tomatoes, cucs and the like yet still gives you the labour savings of DWC for leafy green crops.

Hi Stuart,
Good sugessions,


Almost, except DWC in first image shown smaller in length and in 2nd picture FT & Sump is shown less in width.


I can reconfigure the wormbed if needed since its in planning stage.

The SLO in fish tank should should be enough as I will be aiding it with air pump kind of effect using a areator ball, as shown in picture one.
If you think it is still not enough, then what is the alternate solution


Yes it is possible but I would like to stick to one way of processing to start with.