Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am creating a system that is being driven off a 1500 gallon fish tank. We have finished the first grow bed and will be finishing the second one soon. At that point I'll be ready to plumb and then start the system cycling to get things going.

I am figuring that i can have up to eight 4'x8' (32 sq feet) growbed. It's a CHIFT PIST design and I plan on using a SLO outlet.

In particular I'm concerned with piping size. I think what I am planning will work but wanted anyone's input. This system will be designed to run pumps constantly. The reason for two pumps are in case one breaks -- the system will not really be monitored 24/7 so redundancy like this will be nice.

General comments are certainly welcome.

thanks!!!

Keith

can you use 1 larger pump in the sump? or are you thinking if one fails at least the other is still working.

looks OK at sketch level... really comes back to what you are going to use for your beds, media, etc etc.

1500 Gallons is a big system - one draw back will be having everything in one tank.
that size (6000 Litres) would normally be at least couple of tanks in many aquaculture setups.

large sump but that actually should be OK volume wise.
How will you use it ?

At this sized system many people would be looking at commercial level methods...
so filters and DWC rather than a lot of media.

will this be in a greenhouse ?

having 2 pumps is OK with me.
If they feed at different points they can help with circulation in the tank.
The only catch will be cost a bit more to buy and run.

Thanks everyone.

The two pumps are strictly for redundancy..if one fails while I'm not around I don't want everything to grind to a halt. Yes it will be a bit more expensive to buy and run but the peace of mind is priceless.

Oh, and the tank is already in place -- it's a single tank. I would probably prefer that but it won't be this time. It is probably the biggest weakness I currently see.

There will be eight inches of media in each grow bed / six inches of water (before the bell siphon kicks in). The beds are designed for up to 12 inches of media. Might end up doing more just of

Sump tank will be 1,000 gallons but the plan is to put it under the grow beds (not shown correctly in drawing) so it's quite shallow / narrow and long.

It is designed to be a semi-commerical system -- i could see needing filters later.

Keith

Media itself will be gravel (granite) that is 3/4". As I said, I will be beginning with 8 inches of media / 6 inches of water. Might go higher if I think I need more biofilter.

thanks!

Keith

looks good.
i havent calculated if you have enough room in your sump for so many beds though, but im sure you would have already.

looking at the 2" pump line vs 3" to 2x2" drain... i would make sure you have enough head for your flow rate, especially if you are using both pumps.... you dont list the flow rate of each pump.

i would normally do drain size atleast twice as big as the inlet, if i didnt want to have to have much head, of course this changes if you dont have a straight run / go down into the ground and back up, etc..... then you need more drain or even more head (but i wouldnt go too much head because if a pump stops then the FT level drops, the sump overflows, etc.)

Thanks for the input!!

I calculated 16 cubic feet of per grow bed (6" inch of water in a 4x8 grow bed). That that means there is 128 cubic feet in 8 bed and that would 957 gallons. That doesn't even include the media in the grow bed (about half the volume) so I should be very comfortable with the size of sump -- should be max half full if all beds drain at once.

In fact..thinking about it..i might make my sump smaller as its just more space wasted.

Anyways..

I am not that familiar with water pumps. I have one set goal..turn over the 1500 gallons in an hour. So that really means I could get away with as small as 750 gallons an hour per pump. One thing I don't know (and I hope someone does!!) is that if the pump speed / rate of gph is variable? Or is the speed of a pump simply based on head and rated output of the pump? If the rate is not changable then I will target 2,000 gph TOTAL (1,000 gph each) with both pumps running at a head of 10 feet. That will more than turn over the water every hour. Even if one pump breaks I would turn over more than 3/4s of the water in an hour (i will only have about 1400 gallons in the tank).


Drain size.. you mean that with 1.5 inch inlet for grow beds you would use 3" drains right? The bell siphons for those are pretty pricey..would it make sense to shrink the inlet pipe to 1"?

I am a little confused Yavimaya, do you mean that the pump lines going from sump to fish tank should be 3" each instead of 2"?

thanks!!!

keith

Hard to find out how this system will look in real, but if you have space issue, why don`t you put the sump below the media beds? You can have 2 sumps with 1 pump in each. Sumps can be connected with a single pipe so if any pump fails than you still move the whole water volume from both sumps.

you can grow things in sumps... just don't want high ammonia/nutrients

I am planning on putting the sump under one set of beds..didn't really consider splitting it up. One pump in each sump sounds like a pretty good idea.

Yeah, i have seen sumps used to grow duckweed I think. Not sure if I want to do that or not but it's worth considering.

thanks!!

keith

How did you calculate the 10ft pump head?

The tank is about 5.5 feet high. The sump tank is on the ground. There is some drag from the pipes of course.

Keith