Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Simple CHIFT-PIST using 55-gallon blue barrels. My goal with this system is to develop an open monitoring & control system - get everything relevant monitored, have equipment to control whatever needs to be controlled (lights, fish feeder, etc) - and collaborate on the design of it all in the open. My day job is as a software developer and I have a background building a monitoring & control system for commercial solar installations.

My current concerns:

1) I have no idea if my pump will be strong enough (EcoPlus 396GPH)
2) I'm concerned I have too much grow bed space for my FT & ST (I want to optimize for veggie growth).
3) Not sure what fish to run (I'm focused on the veggies, so I want something easy, maybe just goldfish?)

Attached are some current pics of the in-progress build. I'll keep this thread updated and look forward to being a part of this community!

Built a small table instead of that big pile of cinder blocks I have in the sketchup mockup

All looking good zackham, I'll try and answer your questions.



(1) Your pump only needs to turn over the volume of water in your fish tank a least once every hour so you may need to put in a tee and run some water back into the sump.

(2) The sump needs the capacity too be able to hold the water from all your growbeds draining at the same time and not allow the pump to run dry when they are full. I would double your sump size by adding a second barrel coupled to the original sump.

(3) Goldfish are very hardy and are the ideal fish to start off with, later you can change to something else


One thing I see as a problem is that the length of you bell is too long for the stand pipe and it will not create a vortex, the top of your stand pipe needs sit approx. 3/4" below the top of the bell. Just cut one down and don't glue the cap on until you get the length right.

Joe

Hi Joe,

Maybe the picture isn't at a great angle, but the bell siphon is working great. I made sure to test it multiple times to ensure the siphon would start, and would stop (and not get into equilibrium flow), and I tested with a range of flow rates that I felt comfortably covered the actual flow rate I'll see. This may be a moot point though, as I'm thinking about knocking an inch off the stand pipe (and will cut the bell correspondingly) because I think I want the fill level to be a slight bit lower.

Thanks for your comments on my concerns, that is helpful. I'll take a look at coupling in a second sump barrel - would you recommend putting the coupling in at the bottom? Middle? Does it matter? I suppose it just needs to be at a level that the water level won't drop below, and I should have them all drain into one tank, and pump out of the other to ensure all the water flows?

What do you think about that much GB space for just a single barrel FT? Am I reaching too far?

Thanks again for the feedback, so far this has been a really cool project.

Hi zackham,

I would couple the two barrels as low as you can if you can use the screw cap holes that would be ideal, if you can't anywhere would be OK. Make sure you have the connection large enough for the water from the growbeds to spread between the two barrels when they are all siphoning at the same time.

Your GB volume some people would say that you can never have too much, what you have is OK, the stocking of fish is 1 Fish per 25litres of wet Growbed Filtration = 1 fish per 6.6043 gallons of wet filtration, so calculate the volume of wet gravel you have and stock your fish to that figure.

Joe

Perfect, getting the pump hose coming out of a separate barrel will clean up the plumbing a bit as well, so that's a nice bonus. Will make up for the 45 minute drive to get yet another barrel =)

One question on the FT overflow design. I've seen people run a pipe toward the bottom (I assume to circulate water?), and have also seen people getting fish in their pipes. Is there a best practice around the design of this component? Attached is a quick drawing illustrating my question.

thats a 'Solids Lifting Outlet' or SLO
don't drill holes in it.
Yes put some form of cap with holes on the bottom - run it very close to the bottom, without restricting flow, to lift the poo out
I used a cap with drilled holes but it gets clogged sometimes
And where you've put that elbow you need a 'T' pipe instead so that it doesn't siphon out.

Good call on the T... exactly the kind of mistake I'd like to avoid in my basement!

Do you have it threaded onto the T to make removal possible for if it gets clogged? Starting to think about designing to ensure I can deal with the unexpected without having to invoke the pipe cutters

Any recommendation on minimum drillbit size to ensure I don't exclude any of the larger solids I'm hoping to lift? I figure a bunch of 1/4" holes would work?

By "very close to the bottom" I'm assuming ~1-2 inches is OK ?

Awesome

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk

As jayendra said drill holes in the end cap not the pipe, if you drill enough 1/4" holes you shouldn't have any problems with it blocking.

Remember the rate that the water flows in, it must be able to leave the FT at the same rate or it will overflow, so don't pump any faster than your SLO can handle.

Hello everyone

Thank you all so much for the wonderful information on this site.

I know this is not quite the correct thread to post my enquiry but hoping you will forgive me as I look for an Aquaponic guru close by.

I have been researching to construct an aquaponics system in my backyard and now confident enough to put my toe in the water (so to speak).

However, my wife would like to see an installation up and running before we start!

I live Central NSW and wondering if there may be a generous soul within a day's drive that wouldn't mind hosting us for a squiz at your pride and joy?

If you are sort of Nyngan, Dubbo, Mudgee, Orange, Bathurst, (even Blue Mountains), Cowra, Cootamundra, Wagga etc I would love to hear from you. Would you leave me a note please.

Thank you in anticipation.

Kind regards
Rodney Gwyn

patience and forum posters helped me.
I hope you find someone nearby.

Not threaded, just push fittings with no glue.
I've found on my barrel system that the holes I drilled and the amount of pump flow actually makes the water rise just above the top of the horizontal outlet.
So make sure your SLO is low enough to allow this (for example a slight blockage.
And your picture is perfect with regards to having a little extended section above the T
.
Like this one


Also (behind the SLO in the picture)
you may wish to also build a venturi for extra air - (pump inlet water sucks air from that black pipe and down into fish tank)

Finally picked up my second sump barrel, and am now just washing my media off and taking care of final details before I'm ready to get this thing running. I wanted to better understand the min/max water I can safely have in my system, all details outlined in this blog post: http://x.hamzog.com/water-levels-in-a-b ... cs-system/

I would make sure you have plenty of holes in the cap at the bottom - Mine was blocked this morning (3 x SLO's) and the fish tank was slightly overflowing

I'm going to change to a Vent Cal if I can figure out how to attached DWV pipe to Pressure PVC.

P.S. love your maths sums on your blog

Here's what my SLO cap looks like now - hopefully it's sufficient... not a lot of room for more holes