Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everyone.

My name is Yuri, and I live in Mauritius, small island in the center of the Indian Ocean. It is so small that it is pointless to name the city I live in, in fact it's only a village of the south east coast. Lol.

I'm a software engineer, turning 30 in December. Mauritius economy revolved around a Sugar cane industry, and in the early 1980s, we entered into the Textile industry. Then we became an acclaimed touristic destination. Since 2000, we are trying to become a finance center/information hub. Fact is, in the space of one generation, most of us got disconnected from agriculture, which is really sad.

I used to have a little garden, growing up, and some chicks. My uncles and cousins had pigs and rabbits. But by 1995, all of it was gone. Now, I want to reconnect to agriculture. I have been doing lots and lots of research, about how to produce healthy food in limited space. Basically, the answer was AQUAPONICS.

I'm setting up a small scale pilot system. I want to start with no technology at all - no pumps, only gravity. Being an engineer, it might sound a bit contradictory. I'll introduce technology later on, little by little.

I will try to post at least once every week.
Cheers and have fun.

Sounds interesting. How do you move the water from the sump/fish tank to the beds, and how does it get back? I know you can use gravity and elevation to produce pressure, but then you need some type of pump to fill your sump/cistern/uphill vessel up?? I've seen systems with very small pumps, but haven't seen any with no pumps...unless you employ someone to bucket water out for extended periods of time

Reasons I didn't want to use pumps are that: 1. It is costly, 2. Has to be maintained, and 3. Will consume electricity. I wanted to use gravity, a hose siphon to move the water from my fish tank (lowest point) up to my grow bed (highest point).

Turns out coachchris was right, and I'll NEED a pump, there's no getting away. Therefore, I am rethinking my system. Scaling it down to bear the cost for purchasing and using a pump.

Welcome to the forum Aquaman1512 .

Regarding the pump - Consider spending more initially to get a good quality efficient pump. Doing this will usually save you money in the long run because of the savings in electrical costs. Think out what's most important to you in the system you're designing and what you want to get out of it. Once you've got this and your design, it's probably a good idea to share it here just to see if anyone sees any issues. Plenty of good advice and people here to help get you started.

Cheers

So, here is my new design. Two 55 gallons barrel fish tanks. One 55 gallons barrel fish tank slit in two, my grow beds. One is filled with expanded clay pellets, and the other converted to a raft bed. Initially, i was planning to fill both beds with expanded clay pellets. One 20 gallons barrel sump tank, equipped with a submersible 200 gallons per hour submersible water pump. My elevation is 7 feet.

I estimate that my fish tank will hold about 50 gallons each, the expanded clay pellets grow bed about 12 gallons, the raft bed 25 gallons, and the sump tank 15 gallons.

From my sump tank, my pump pushes water continuously and simultaneously to the raft bed and clay bed. My clay pellets bed is equipped with a bell siphon, which drains into my first fish tank. My raft bed drains into the second fish tank. Water from my fish tanks is moved to the sump tank to complete the loop, a bottom water gravity overflow.

Thanks scotty435 for the advice.

You'll need to check the head height - that's the distance from the surface of the water in the tank where the pump is to the highest point you're pumping to. Most pumps will have a chart that tells you how much they can pump at any given head height. Shoot for pumping the fish tank volume once per hour but give yourself some extra capacity which you can use to circulate/aerate the water in the fish tank. You can also use the extra capacity to allow for some future expansion. Remember though that it will usually cost you in power consumption and initial cost.

You should consider that how many fish you can stock is dependent on the filtration you have in your system. I don't think you'll be able to stock very many fish with only 12 gallons of grow bed media (which acts as a biofilter) although you'll get some additional filtration from the raft bed (not certain how much though). You could either add more grow beds or a solids filter like a Radial Flow Filter but the RFF adds to the maintenance because it needs to be emptied regularly. Information on stocking densities can be found in many threads, here is the oft repeated rules of thumb version - http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6646

This sounds like it will work. You might also consider running Constant Flood instead of with Siphons. If your sump is large enough for running with Siphons then you can switch back and forth pretty easily provided you setup a removable siphon. The standpipe would usually have a small hole for running siphon at one end and no hole for when you run CF at the other end. To run CF, remove the siphon and flip the standpipe so the hole is up. The hole being up would keep the water in the grow bed if there is a power outage so your sump wouldn't overflow (this allows you to put more water into the system). With siphons, when the siphon kicks in the sump level comes up fast and you always need enough space in the sump to hold the water from the grow bed when this happens - since there is room it makes sense to have the hole down and let the water drain if there is a power outage. Hope this makes sense to you.

Cheers

Thanks scotty435.

I've included head height and future expansions in my calculations. I'll be adding more grow beds, and more fish later on. As for fish densities, I'm going to start with 10 tilapias, 5 in each fish tank. Originally, the Siphons were where I intended to install venturis, using the pressure created to add air to the water. But since I now have a pump, I might use the venturi that is shipped along for that. The idea of inverting the stand pipe, with a hole drilled at one end is very interesting, and I'll definitely go for that.

Radial Flow Filters and Swirl Filters are avenues I wish to explore. But first, I wish a simple model, to cut my teeth.