Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all, absolute newbie here trying to plan a system for 60-odd Murray Cod and some lettuce, tomatoes, capsicum, basil, cucumber and strawberries. The system will be set up as a test bed for a possible commercial system to teach me what not to do. Hopefully I can construct the system over Christmas. The current plan consists of…

Main System
1000L Tank, stored inside a shed.
1200l/h aerator
30lpm Transfer Pump
Mechanical & Biological Filter with UV (Thanks the flow rate info Murray)
Growbeds- undecided

Heating-
Muiltiple coiled black 13mm poly on shed roof, with transfer pump.
Backup heater (unknown at the moment)

Top-op water
4-6*220L blue drums interconnected for rainwater collection

Being an automation engineer, Ill be using a few solenoid valves and a PLC to try to make the whole system as automated as possible (if I can find some cheap probes and transmitters).

My idea for growbeds is to use 100mm PVC filled with a pea gravel/shellgrit mix (for some of the smaller plants I may try a stocking filled with sand). The pipes will sit horizontally and have 30-40mm holes drilled every 200mm or so. The holes will be for plants and allow a continuos drip outlet running at 5l/h or so. The pipes will gravity drain back to the tank. I will mount the PVC pipes such that they can be ‘slid’ out their frame to be emptied and cleaned without effecting any other part of the system Can anyone see any major failings with this idea? I have been reading that growbed depth should be >300mm or it willl create problems with bacterial action, but the biofilter will be where all that action takes place anyway.
Any comment or suggestions would be much appreciated.

BTW if anyone is interested in developing some automation for their system drop me a line.

Royale, welcome to the forum, over the next week or so your system will be disected then re-assembled (to your benefit).

Theory has commenced on solenoid valve usage but is still in its infancy here (trying to itemise parts required). PLC's and Smart relay setups are being discussed *here*


Initially it started with basic timers and progressed, any input would be greatly appreciated

Okay, got the URL to work now

Thanks for that EKB thanks for the reply. I've posted here to try and provide any help I can on automation.

Working my way up to that topic

sounds like a good setup, i look forward to seeing how it progresses.

on the automation bit....have you ever worked with robots?

Not personally- it is a pretty specialised field, the company I work for has a dedicated robot programmer who they hire out
My main field of experiance is food & beverage process work, including a good amount of medium/large scale (40-100kl/h) filtration plants

cool, 40-100kl/h thats pretty impressive

The fish tank is in the shed, but where abouts are the growbeds? Are they just outside, or in a greenhouse like Stus system? (just curious)

They grow beds will be outside on a table/stand. Over summer I wont bother too much with a greenhouse but hopefully by april or so i will have built an enclosure for them.
Got a link to Stu's system?

his greenhouse is pretty impressive

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... &start=135

royale, Im new to this game myself however your system sounds interesting all the reasearch i have done sounds like you have picked the best bits from many systems, would love to see a plan or some pics in the future!

wow that greenhouse looks huge and very impressive

Hi Mandurahguy,
Ill be doing some sketches and plans over the weekend or next week and will post them when they are in a fit state.

yeah, Monya has done a great job on that, made us all envious (especially for a bloke who supposed to have a crook back )

Can anyone see any problems with the highish flow (5lph/plant) and small growbed depth idea?