Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all,

As the subject said I'm new here, and totally new to aquaponics but hope to set up a system and have it up and running by this time next year,

I'm from Ireland so from the reading I'm doing trout seems to the best option for me, I was planning on was planning on putting my system into a poly tunnel, I was also planning on digging my fish tank into the ground, about 110 ft3 and having 4 grow beds off this totally 110ft3 so a 1:1 system, this is the basics around the system I was planning on putting in, a few early questions;

1. Is it ok to sink the fish tank into the ground?
2. Should I have four water pumps, one going to each grow bed or one pump and passing the water through the four grow beds in a circular way? - I was planning on having 4 pumps,
3. Is it ok to put this system into a poly tunnel?
4. Is there anything obvious I'm missing here?
5. How many fish should I expect to be able to keep with this much grow beds?
6. Do I need any air pumps as well as the water pumps?
7. Do I need any other type of filters or would the grow beds be enough?
8. If I flood the grow beds and I use a sort of flush system the once the water gets to a certain level in the grow bed and a hole opens in the grow bed to allow the water to fall back into the fish tank would this be a good method to add air and oxygen to the fish tank?
9. If I have four separate water pumps as asked above should I set them up so that while 1 is working the other three are off, call the beds a,b,c and d, while bed
8. Any other info you guys want to tell me would be great!

I just need to edit the above post as while I was writing it my phone nearly died, and as bad as it is writing all that on my phone it would be worse to lose it

Hi all,

As the subject said I'm new here, and totally new to aquaponics but hope to set up a system and have it up and running by this time next year,

I'm from Ireland so from the reading I'm doing trout seems to the best option for me, I was planning on was planning on putting my system into a poly tunnel, I was also planning on digging my fish tank into the ground, about 110 ft3 and having 4 grow beds off this totally 110ft3 so a 1:1 system, this is the basics around the system I was planning on putting in, a few early questions;

1. Is it ok to sink the fish tank into the ground?
2. Should I have four water pumps, one going to each grow bed or one pump and passing the water through the four grow beds in a circular way? - I was planning on having 4 pumps,
3. Is it ok to put this system into a poly tunnel?
4. Is there anything obvious I'm missing here?
5. How many fish should I expect to be able to keep with this much grow beds?
6. Do I need any air pumps as well as the water pumps?
7. Do I need any other type of filters or would the grow beds be enough?
8. If I flood the grow beds and I use a sort of flush system the once the water gets to a certain level in the grow bed and a hole opens in the grow bed to allow the water to fall back into the fish tank would this be a good method to add air and oxygen to the fish tank?
9. If I have four separate water pumps as asked above should I set them up so that while 1 is working the other three are off, call the beds a,b,c and d, while bed a is being filled by a pump then the pump for b,c and d off, once a has started emptying pump b kicks in and a,c and d are off and so on, each pump on for about 15mins and off for 45 mins,
10. Will I need a second water tank to ensure my fish tank stays full or would it be ok with this much water being taken out of it at any one time,


Thanks for taking the effort to read all this and providing any answers and advice, all is welcome!!!

Could a mod delete this post and the first two posts pls,

so that's about 3000L of GB and FT,

one pump would be ok pipe all the GB to run in parallel not in series.

if I had trout I'd want a back-up pump and an air pump.

sounds like you are after a siphon in the GB's to give you a flood and drain system.
in that case the pump runs continuously. search this forum for "siphon"

Otherwise get a bigger tank and run it on a timer 15 on and 45 minutes off.

the water level will go up and down a bit but the fish won't mind.

start with a low stocking of fish and build it up as the system matures max 150 fishes.

So I do it the same way as with the 4 pumps but instead do one pump and fill each GB one after another or fill all four at the same time, I guessing it's the first one as filling the four at the same time would empty the ft too much, so the one pump fills GB a for 15 mins then GB b for 15 mins and so on,


Is that what you meant???

it's easier to fill them all at the same time, FT level will move but not by much.

please read some of the posts o this site regarding:- cycling, pumps, siphons, rules of thumb.

Yeah I'm trying to read as much as possible but there is so much information its a long haul getting around it all, I really appreciate the help guys thanks very much,