Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

For the past four weeks I have been designing and redesigning plans for my new project . . a small aquaponics setup. I am very keen to get it up and running as soon as possible and would be greatful of any comments anyone has.
I plan to use a 5000 litre fish tank with a 1000 litre drain/sump tank, and have 35 blue barrel halves as my grow channels. I will be using crushed pea gravel as my media for the beds. I will also build a 6000mm by 7000mm greenhouse frame from 25mm PVC pipe and cover it with the commercial greenhouse plastic cover.
I will build one run two half barrels wide, for my small crops such as Lettuce and Silverbeet (can be seen on the far left of the birds eye view), this will also double as a seeds germination area (shelving under the beds) this is ideal as the seedlings recieve early morning sun and the above grow beds and other grow beds block out the harsh afternoon sun.
I have also three grow channels which have wire supports for fruiting crops such as Tomatoes, Zuccini, Cumumber etc.
Out the front are three worm farms made from blue barrels ( which will have to be placed elsewhere as they are in full sun) the worm farms will recycle all the green waste.
North is at the top right of the birds eye view picture and south is at the bottom left of the birds eye view picture.
My aim is to supply three families with fresh fruit, vegetables and fish for a year from this setup, I will then extend my setup to feed a total of eight families.

Well it amazes me how eloquently you have handled google sketchup and a first attempt I believe. I for one wish you well and hope other provide comments from their experiences with blue barrels, that will help you in your endeavours. Look forward to seeing the ongoing progress and produce. Be sure to keep us posted. Wonder what you do in your spare time?

Thanks Faye, I put a lot of effort into designing each component and yes it was my first attempt and will be my first large scale aquaponic system. I am curious to find out how others have connected blue barrels together to make them as one grow bed rather than keeping the barrels as individual beds
Spare time?? There's not a lot of that at the moment!!! Although as soon as the school holidays start I will have more spare time . . . although that will most likely be spent building my system.

Yeh - great sketchup effort and lokk slike it will be a nice system.

I don't like your chances of joining the barrels to make them a single unit. Most people I know of have installed each with their own drain and water input. How many fish are you hoping to stock?

I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm, but depending on what you actually meant by your statement, I wonder whether it is realistic to expect that 3 families will be supplied with fruit vegetables and fish from this system. All 3 families will definitely get plenty of the things that you have a glut of (eg your silverbeet and lettuce, in fact you may find yourself supplying all your workmates with these things also) but if you are aiming for a wide variety of produce and a regular supply fo fish (eg a couple of family meals a week) then feeding three families may be a bit optimistic.

On the plus side, you are well on your way (in terms of planning) to providing your household with a great supply of fresh produce and fish and providing friends and family with excesses of fruit and veg and some fish to boot.

I am hoping to have 250 Silver Perch and a dozen Yabbies or Marron in my sump tank.
My idea was to have my system working similar to a Mexican wave . . . The idea was to plant out seedlings in the first barrel of each row and then plant out seedlings in the next barrel in the row four weeks (climbers) or 2 weeks (lettuces and leafy greens) after and continue the pattern. By the time i got to the seventh barrel (20 weeks later for climbers) (14 weeks later for the greens) the first barrel in each row should be ready for its final harvest and remove. That way the plant growth should be staggered . .
The fish now thats a bit trickier . . I would have to harvest the Silver Perch all at once and restock . . I don't think there is any other way. Although aren't Silver's omnivore's . . would that mean I could mix the sizes without loosing fish ??

250 could be at the upper limit, particularly if they were all mature fish. Fish growth is very variable though, so even with a single batch of fingerlings, you will find them reaching plate size at very varied times. With silver you can mix the size as you say, only issue becomes feeding time, in that you'd be generally feeding a small fish a different size pellet than a large one.

In terms of harvesting - you'd definitely not want to be harvesting all your fish at once. Seperate to the issue of them being variable in size, is the fact that if you had only one tank, it would be at least 12 - if not 18 months between harvests and the fish would not last even close to that long in the freezer.

My system is somewhat smaller than your planned one, but in my future system (hopefully not too far away now - been saying that for years ) my preference is for multiple tanks to allow for seperation of different batches and possibly species. I wouldn't be inclined to run a single 5000 litre tank - if I had a choicem which if course is not always the case dpending on available materials, space etc.

Thankyou thats exactly what I needed to know!!!
250 is at the limit I realise but I figured the more nutrients I have in my system the more I will be able to plant into my system and the more I will be able to get out of my system.

How big was your system? Could you post a link to the thread? The next stage after the first system has been established is to add another 5000 Litre tank - which is linked to the first tank and double my systems size.

I'm not worried about space I have quite a lot where I live and I would like to use it productively. So expansions are deffinately the go . . . but deffinately a year or so down the track.

My current system is my second one. It has two 580 litre grow-beds. I run it CHIFT PIST. The fish tank is a purpose built aquaculture tank - 1000 litres and the sump is 500 litres (which would ideally be bigger due to the fact that I run both grow-beds off the same sump and do not have automated alternating beds.

My big system will have three 1000 litre tanks, or maybe two 1000 litre and one of my 3000 litre jobs. For grow-beds, it will depend on what I can fit in my intended greenhouse and more importantly what I can afford. I currently have four 580 litre josbs (2 of which are in the current system). I also have ten 180 litre (approx) round poly fingerling tanks that I intend to set up as flood and drain grow-beds in the big system (in or outside of the greenhouse). I also have a number of NFT channels which I may play with in the big system, though nobody has been too successful with these in AP yet - so I'll have to see how that goes. Subject to funding, I'd also intend to get at least 4 more grow beds - preferanbly BYAP ones.

I will run the big system CHIFT PIST. I have a 2400 litre (approx) tank that will act as the sump for the big system.

The thread for my current system is here viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2266

The thread for my first system - which effectively closed with the harvest of my first batch of silver and jade perch and me moving my grow-bed into my new system, is here viewtopic.php?t=43

Ok, for starters dont use a whole heap of individual barrels - it will be way cheaper to build a long growbed and line it with plastic. The plumbing requirements for a lot of barrels is horrendous.

If you already have the barrels, It may still be worth using them in some ways. However, I agree with OBO that a really large system built with blue barrels requires a lot more in plumbing parts and supports than making liner beds. You also get more contained media volume in long lined beds than you get in the same footprint of barrel beds.

Do you already have the barrels and tanks you are planning on using?

I know in the future for my next big system (once we move) I want to make my system CHIFT PIST (constant height in fish tank pump in sump tank) as this keeps the pump much cleaner so long as there are grow beds between the fish tank and sump tank. Depending on the sight, this might let you drain directly from a fish tank into grow beds that can sit directly on the ground (save by not having to build supports) Then you just need a large enough sump tank sunk into the ground and some way to ensure it won't pop out of the ground due to heavy rain. If there is a little slope to the site, just place the sump at the low end of the slope and it may not even need to be sunk into the ground much if at all.

Anyway, if you are going to run only a single pump and not have any sort of switching system or indexing valves, then you need your sump to be big enough to hold all the water from your grow beds (provided you do flood and drain which is highly recommended.) An easy way to estimate this is to make your sump 1/2 the volume (plus a little extra to be safe) of all your grow beds. If your sump is not that large, you will either need to run two pumps and there will still be fluctuations in the fish tank level, or you could connect more than one sump container together to make up the volume and still manage with one pump.

Good luck

Mitchy,
You asked the question about how best to connect barrels together. It would probably be best to still feed and drain each barrel separately but if you really must connect containers together, here is a picture of how I connected 5 buckets together.


That picture is from my Aquariponics thread
http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3628&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=aquariponics

I used uniseals gotten from here
http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/829/Uniseals/uniseal/0

I would use rather large pipe and fittings to connect barrels together. Those 5 gallon buckets I hooked together using 1 1/2 inch pvc pipe. Might seem like overkill but I doubt that system would work properly for long with anything smaller. I would use 2 or 3 inch pvc to connect barrels together and that is minimum. I would also add a plug to the ends of the line for clean-out purposes for a large system. Especially anywhere you will be growing large vine plants like tomato, squash, pumpkin, etc since the roots on those could easily invade plumbing are really block things up.

My aquariponics system is really meant for growing lettuce indoors in the summer when it is too hot to grow it outside here. I'm not so worried about small lettuce plants getting roots down into the plumbing on that system.

I like it! Nice system design MB!

I have sourced all the blue barrels for free - precut . . . I just have to remove them
So that will save on some of the costs . . . plus they come with quite a few fittings and pipe work which I hope I can reuse to save on the plumbing costs.
I have also sourced 9 large growbeds 2000mm long by 1000mm wide and 300mm deep which I will use in an extention of my system later on. This cost me $1530 . . . they are also second hand. But everything is in good condition.
As for connecting the barrels together . .well that seems like an unnecessary expense - with no benefits.
Either way the plumbing fittings are not a concern I will be buying these at wholesale prices . . . so that should help with the costs.
I'm not sure the CHIFT PIST method would work in my system - firstly I want the growbeds to be at 800mm hiegh for easy access. Secondly I don't have a large enough sump tank. Although I really like this idea . . . I'll try this out on a smaller system soon.
Hope mum won't mind a fourth system . .
Lining a bed with plastic is most probably the cheapest option but I doubt that it would be the best option - long term. I would be concerned about how easily the plastic could split or break. Secondly how could I attach a drainage fitting??

Well actually instead of lining something with "plastic" for a grow bed, pond liner is a better choice as it is much more durable. I have not found it difficult to plumb through pond liner. Just need a bit of plastic or something else rigid with the right size hole in it to act as support for a bulkhead fitting or uniseal fitting. Anyway, that is all kinda beside the point though as you already have access to the barrels etc. Though you might want to keep it in mind as a sump idea or something.

I do highly recommend the CHIFT PIST (constant height in fish tank pump in sump tank) set up thought you will need to make your own choices based on your situation. as to the height of the grow beds, keep in mind that many plants will get big enough to make tending them in grow beds up on stands tricky. To manage CHIFT PIST, the beds only need have their surface just a little below the water level of the fish tank, that still puts them up off the ground leaving space low for the sump tank. However, if your sump tank isn't big enough, you would either need a bigger one or need to connect more tanks/containers together to make it work.

Good luck in your plans!

CHIFT PIST sounds like a fantastic system if you want to minimise the stress on your fish however seeing as the pump is not submersed in the fish tank to tank out all the solid wastes which settle on the bottem of the tank . . . won't the tank end up having a build up of solids?

Secondly if I was having a second tank which was almost the same size as the first tank I think I would stock them both with fish and utilize that water. Having too seperate tanks means I can have two seperate crops of fish . . ie: a more constant supply of fish.

But then again thats just me.