Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I was getting worried the other day about solids building up on the bottom of my 5000 litre tank (flat bottom) seeing as I am feeding over a kilo a day into the system.. Water inflow is along the bottom at one side so the aim was for that to stir it up every flood, and water pickup syphons are from the bottom too... but the real winner is having 15 or so big silvers in there to swim around at the bottom. Solids just don't have a chance to settle. I wasted time and money setting up the syphon vacuum cleaner as there was basically nothing on the bottom.

My Apologies Joel, I think I worded that wrong, I meant that you liked to see the solids going through the grow beds but tank design meant you had to put up with it sitting on the tank base and had to clean it or it was difficult to remove, hence the drive to sump drains and sloping bottom tanks.
Sorry, Gav

I haven't used the heaters for a couple of week. I am still pumping 15 min out of the hour all day and night. My morning temp are around 20. Fish seem okay. They are not usually interested in eating til around 10am. I could put the heaters back in but I don't think they are necessary. I haven't run the black pipe heater for a few days. I think i might start using it again as the temp in Perth is going to be in the low 20's for the next week.