Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello All,
First I would like to thank each of you for your most appreciated help... THANK YOU!
Only after weeks of surfing this very informative forum I've decided to give it a whirl. Allthough not completed yet, still have to plumb in FT, and get fish, I'm amazed by it. This is a very crude and humble start, allready planning a second bigger set-up.
I built it in a single afternoon out of "stuff" I had laying around. The only purchases needed were 1 rubber gasket($1.67), 4 bags of pea gravel($4.00/each), and 1 case of PBR($9.99).
I know how you all love pics, so here are a few for you to laugh at.

Lookin Good DD
Nothing to laugh at
get the fishless cycling started and you'll be good to go.
that aeration looks great
Best of luck, although with the advice around you wont need it.
John

Looks just fine to me Davis... although you might want to extend your pump down to the bottom of the tank so that you can suck up the waste "goodies" into the growbed...

The Glass tank will be the ST in the system when it's complete. I have a 55 gallon drum that will be plumbed as FT next week(CHIFT-PIST is what I'm going for)
Rupe, the goodies you see at the bottom now are just particles of dirt/sand from lazy washing of the pea gravel, I did'nt want to clog up the pump with these, so I tied it up abit. When I figure out how to clean these out with out wasting the water, and when I actually get fish, I plan on lowering the pump to the bottom.
My only great concern with the set up is the timing of it all.
I have my pump running constantly, and GB is flood & drain. The time span from the GB draining to flooding again is very short, ... only about 3 minutes. Should I be concerned with this or is it ok. I have found little in my searches here on this matter. Lots of 15 min on and 45 off for pump timer cycle. (In 15 mins, my system will have filled and dumped about 5 times)
Thanks in advance for your response.

just remember.....

great things come from humble beginnings....

jt

Hey mate welcome, I have a similar small system running similar pumping cycle, (flood and drain in approx 5mins) I have tried all sorts of variations with a power timer and find that runnning on most of daylight hours and off most night time hours works pretty well for me. I find if the pump is off for too much of the day the tank and water get pretty dirty, also 24/7 must make a difference to the power bill, even with such a small pump.

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6817