Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Did you make a special test kit stand Gatekeeper? I do like the rustic look.

Yes faye recycle recycle after the fires earlier in the year we grabed all sorts of materials going to waste that piece of wood is off a neighbours deck that got a little hot
More tests this is quite exciting

Last test for the evening seems to be going well its 8days old
Iv got a new tank going to start new thread here is a sneak peak of land available and size of tank going in top yard near rotary hoe

Big tank.. and land.... you lucky, lucky bastard...

cheers rupe iam struggling with shetch up so drawing with crayon and scan it up on the way
already got 4 BYAP Grow beds and been watching OBO thread with many questions as i need alot of GB and scored a 8mx30m shade house x commercial hydro lve the barter

and the natural fall in land for drainage

Now you're just starting to annoy me...

hello gatekeeper!!!!!!!!!! your system looks really good! can't wait to see your big system set up! giddy up bring on the marron.

hay rupe here is a little sketch of what is happening next any thoughts

It's a big tank gatekeeper... but how big...

First concern would be drawdown on the tank to fill all the grow beds.... there are solutions..

The second is how are you going to return the grow bed water back to the tank... unless you bury the tank below the height of the grow beds... you'll need a sump, and a second pump... or a chift pist/chop method...

There's probably enough slope on the land to deal with returning the water to the tank, and the tank looks big enough to supply a stack of grow beds if they are not overly deep.

But you can set up your grow beds so that they are almost full all the time. This means you require less water from your fish tank to flood them all.

Also there are a few options for distributing water from bed to bed including using the lie of the land to cascade one bed into the other, of one of the DIY sequencers or off the shelf solutions like Rup's sequencer valve that distributes water to each bed in turn.

Either way it should be an excellent system.

What is the total volume of the grow beds and what size is the tank?

I thought this thread was called "keep it simple"????

Watching with interest..

Cheers lads here is a bit more info i will start a new tthread tonight in members systems with all the info have

1)Tank Approx 10900 Total volume it will be dug into the ground to suit fall from GB
2)4 of the GB are 500L BYAP
3)14 ICB for GB ?

4 x 500 (BYAP) = 2000
14 x 1000 (ICB) = 14000

Totak GB = 16000 ish
getting close to 2:1 ratio

Spider for return to GB
this is what i have pic of land above any better ideas as this is early days and open to mods and ideas

Thanx again

If you do the 15 on 45 off that the BYAP systems use, probably the easiest way would be to run multiple pumps so they come on one after the other. ie 2 or 3 smaller pumps each with a timer.

Or cascade from one bed to the other. If you do cascade, each siphon will help trigger the next as the dump will be fast, and then stop. So you will only really have to adjust the top siphons with any accuracy. The rest will take care of themselves.

sorry that wasnt very clear.

you could use siphons in each bed and divide the beds into 2, 3, or 4 runs. The first siphon at the top of each run dumps water into it's second bed, that in turn dumps to the third etc.

You could run pumps on timers to split the flow, or just divide the flow at the top from one pump.

Because the water in each run is only a little over the volume of 1 bed (that one bed volume cascades down to each bed), you can be sure that the total drain on your fish tank wont be very much.

Due to the large rush of water coming out of the first bed, the next bed in line will trigger very decisively. As will the next etc.

So if you were to divide your grow beds into 3 "runs", you could run it so that only a little more than 1 growbed of water was out of the fish tank for each "run".