Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yep and its so good to see the interest people are having!!!

the separate tanks have defiantly given you some incite into how the difference in cycling happens with each system, which is obviously the first hurdle that every system has to get over, and as most new people find its not easy to cycle without getting anxious about it and tinkering

i will be watching closely and doing some tinkering on my own system as i'v been doing lately to see what happens better in my climate and between what kind of plants etc

You are obviously doing something right Jamey, those strawberry plants of yours are massive, and I concede defeat in the corn race.

I have 3 of my now 9 growbeds on constant flood and the others on autosiphons. All the beds on autosiphons fill and drain at different rates even the two byap beds as the siphons act differently. One the water vertually trickles in so the siphon will stop and the other fills in a rush and starts and stops with a much quicker flow. At the moment the bed that fills and drains quickly has the best growth by a whisker.

The results so far are interesting.
My growbeds are a mixture of siphon and F&D.
I have a micro controlling the inlet and outlet valves of my GB's.
They fill, retain, then release in a cycle of 3 GB's.
I have noticed however, that the plants closest to the water inlet to the GB have grown considerably quicker than the rest.
This suggests perhaps, than more water than oxygen is better (for some plants at least)
Am following this thread with great interest.

Dui.

Hey EB you need a constantly drained bed as well, to make a proper comparison.

In regards to the flood and drain system, I assume the growbed drain time (to empty) is as close to 45min as possible? Or does it drain in say 30min and stay empty for 15min?

I will do a trial with my system as I mentioned early with water coming from the same fish tank at a later date. My system uses separate pumps for each growbed, so it will be easy to do, just have to wait to the current crops are finished.

You would think in the constantly flooded system that the water would just travel over the surface and down the stand pipe? But it obviously must all mix up and move in the growbed to get the filtration performance it is getting?

My constant flood standpipes have a 7mm hole at the bottom, and its surprising how much water comes out through it. So they drain from the bottom and top. I am tempted to run an inlet pipe around the edge of these beds like BYAP do so that the inlet water gets distributed better for mixing.

my CF Beds have the bell still over them, just no cap on it, so it cant siphon and it draws from the bottom still and i make sure the Inlet go's in at the opposite end.

i still drain them weekly or when ever im out there and feel the need, just by throwing a spare bell iv got in and letting it siphon.

i would like to see a bed that is Timed siphon say every hour the bed drains completly then fills over the hour and stays CF until the next siphon.

Im guessing a FLOUT would be used for this.......

ok so maybe not a flout... but somthing hahahaha.......

im nutting on it....

WOW just checked this tread again. Very interesting results and I'm very glad you are doing these trials Joel! Thank you a great resource to us all.

Provided the flow is fast enough and the aeration good enough it seem that constant flood does just fine as a balance between plant growth and good cycling, yea I expect cycling up a new system constant flood would be a good idea.

It doesn't really shock me much that the timed F&D is slower to get cycled up nor does it shock that the plants like it well.

Like Rupe I'm a little shocked that the siphon system wasn't in-between the other two in growth. Was some one cussing at the plants too often during the early days when tinkering to get the siphons working right? LOL

Now there has long been discussion that a fast flood and fast drain might be better but I wonder if that might actually cause more disturbance to the plant roots and bacteria and thus maybe why the cycling and plant growth in the siphon bed is lagging behind the other two? Is perhaps the fast fill then slow drain gentler on the plants and thus let them establish better? And the constant flow might allow the plants a better chance to grow roots into the zones they need to get what they need without stress? I don't know just some ideas.

I too will be interested to see the results as the trials progress into mature systems.

Would be interesting to compare the different types of plants in the different regimes and its hard to do from the photos. Looks like the lettuce is not so good in the F&D but how do chillies compare for example?

Could be that some plants really like wet feet and others may like the air over their toes regularly.

This is a GREAT thread.

Ok, thought I'd post up some closer pictures of the veg so that people can see a little clearer..

System 1


System 2


System 3


The difference becomes very obvious when you look closely like this, pretty much every plant in system three is doing better, chilies in the front are booming, capsicums doing well towards the back. Chives are about the same in each system and celery aren't doing well in the extreme heat, but it looks like the celery might just be picking up a bit in system 3.

System 1


System 2


System 3

Yeah, stands out pretty well.

Have mine running on constant flow about 80% of the time now !

Flood & drain... all the way... but a new found respect for constant flood, initially anyway...

+1...but my $'s were always with F&D