Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi guys! I’m fairly new to aquaponics and am trying to set up a system using 275gallon ibcs and 55 gallon barrels.
I’m going to do 100 fish, 50 fish per ibc, have them set on a gravity feed through a 2” pipe to a radial solids drum. From there the solids will go to a mineralization tank. The clean water will go through 1” pipe to 8 ibc beds filled with 7 50L bags of hydroton each. Each individually set up on a bell siphon, which will run back in a 3/4” pvc to a ibc sump underneath the fish tank. From there I will use a sump to split feed it back into the 2 250 gallon tanks.

My problem is figuring out what size pump I will need. I feel like I should use a 800gph pump, as that will circulate the whole system about 2x per hour. But by my math I’m thinking the 55 gallon radial solids filter will have a retention time of 3.75 minutes, which I don’t know if that’s long enough to filter the solids.

Any help or advice to the system would be greatly appreciated!!

Welcome to the forum

For cycling 2x an hour I think you only really have to count the fish tanks versus the whole system so that would bring it up a bit, but I think 3.75 isn't too bad for an RFF/RFS.

If you’re concerned about the time in the radial filter, you could always have 2 in parallel so the retention time would double with the same overall flow.


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Hi and welcome to the forum

System design sounds great

You will probably find you wont get enough water through your gravity flow inch pipe to your growbeds , every join , bend ,tap ect will eat into your flow rate

I use 50mm pvc with a size reducer and elbow that is not glued (twist up an down to adjust flow)

Or use Taps if you prefer