Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

While a simple electrical timer costs $12, consider that 15/45 minute flood and drain uses only one quarter of the electricity of a constant flood system.

If you want to save money, flood and drain is preferable.

I don't think it will actually take weeks to set up, rather that it will be a few weeks before we have a day to do it, Hubby and I only have Sundays off together, and those are most often spend visiting

Re: timers, electricity logistics are also an issue for our yard, I'd like to keep that part of the set-up as simple as possible for the moment, but that is a good point, and something i shall consider.

I have to disagree - If you are trying to turn the tank water over once per hour and you run all the time you can use a smaller pump that uses less electricity so you really won't be saving as much as you think. If your doing 15/45 then the pump must pump the full tank volume in 15 minutes, not one hour so you need a bigger pump. For example - max flo 600 pond pump uses 32 watts while the max flo 2400 uses 130 watts. In most cases you will save some but not nearly the amount you are stating.

Now if you are using the same pump with both techniques then your right but why would you?

There is also some question whether the on and off cycle shortens the life of the pump (this could be a hidden cost). You could argue either way on this since I don't think anyone really knows whether this shortens the life cycle.

well... that's a valid point too.....

Wheeee! So my best friend Erin's partner J (yes, that's his whole name) has been "harping on about" aquaponics to her for ages. I told her about it a few months ago, and she went "oh yeah, J's always on about that". So then on Monday, I get's this phonecall "So do you have books and dvds about aquaponics? where do I get IBC's from?" So after much texting, we worked out that if she and J come and help us clean out the IBC's that we bought, they can have one, and we'll get both systems set up while we're at it!

So, hopefully they'll be done by Sunday night! I'll post pics, and probably get Erin to sign up here too.

And of course you can point them to the IBC Manual... all they'll ever need to know... in one brilliant free downloadable file...

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/Travi ... onics1.pdf

crawler..

Glue is prooving very stubbourn and the rain isn't helping.

We have the problem of being expected to visit as well, finally told the misses no more. Time to tell people to visit us. They have all week together and we get one full day only most weekends. Not surprising we have had no visitors.

Instead of visiting ask them over for a lunch and tell them to wear their work cloths. Wonder how many will accept. Time together is to precious to waste visiting.

One IBC cleaned and cut up! Yew!

Looking good!

You seem suitably relaxed about deciding on flood and drain vrs constant flood or timer based systems. The only real difference is adding or removing a bell or a timer, (and a hole drilled in the standpipe). Try to make your standpipe unscrewable (or press-in) if you can, that way you can change your mind at will, but even that's easy to change from one with a hole to one without by adding a short length of the same tubing, that is cut lengthways. It will just clip over the hole. It wont matter if it leaks a little. Or just ignore all that because you plan on adding more grow beds.

Just ignore everything. Sometimes I just like the sound of my own keyboard.

I run 1 siphon based, flood and drain, and 2 constant flood grow beds, and they all seem to work just fine. I had in mind to grow things that preferred flood and drain in my siphon growbed, but everything seems to grow everywhere (except perhaps capsicum which didn't like my constant flood as much)

hmm, I really wanna grow capsicums... I'm prolly gonna add more beds later on, or something... i'm just really trying to keep it all as simple as possible at the moment though... so we'll see how we go.....

Got the other IBC cleaned up today, bought some gravel, and started working on a frame for the cladding!

That second IBC was much less work than the first once we hit our stride and figured it out...

I think I'd like to do flood and drain at our house. Maybe then we can compare notes and figure out what works best

sounds like a good plan! gonna do it with a siphon or a timer?