Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

no .... I prefer spannertown .... a bit like levit town with out the cars.....just FTs and GBs and trees everywhere.

Bouncing back to the energy efficient pump thing. When I first started the big AP system, we had gotten an above ground pool pump and sand filter for free. 1.5 hp I think. I'm not sure of the exact volume of water it moved but it was far more than I needed. It died and we went and got another cheap above ground pool pump. They move lots of water and cost way less than some of the other pumps. Then about 4 days later, I got the first power bill with full pump usage on it. EEEEKKKKKK. Off I went to Aquatic Eco Systems to buy one of their Energy efficient pumps. Sure the pump cost alot more but it uses only about a quarter of the power and moves almost as much water. Should pay for itself in energy savings over the cheap pump in about 18 months.

As to sizing. I have 900 gallons of fish tank divided into two tanks. I have about 1200 gallons of grow beds. This efficient pump moves about 60 gpm or 3600 gph at the head I'm requesting of it and I have pump capacity to expand If I can find the space.

hey sorry to interupt the conversation here

im in the middle of setting up my system its going to have a 3000L fish tank with a 1000L IBC sump im starting with 6 half blue barrel GBs

im running chift pist and i think it would be on a timer for 15 on 45 off

around what size pump should i be looking at? any suggestions?

and it sounds like its worthwhile to buy online too..

cheers..
mav

at least 3000 litre at 1 m head.

http://www.creativepumps.com.au/zpumps/laguna/laguna_maxflo_pumps.htm

Probably the 6000, for expansion use then

yeah..

the tanks guna be a 3000L and it wont end up any bigger
maybe a few extra GBs but im starting with 6 already so thats a fair few anyway

on the BYAP products page they sell a pump for $85 bucks its a 3000/hr
would that be any good for me??

just that i cant afford anything too fancy because im thinking of spending money on buying a 3000L BYAP tank

If you're going chift pist.... then you only need to pump to low head... and the flow to the growbeds will be determined by the output from the overflow....

Or to look at it from the other way.... the flow from the sump pump to the fish tank....

Matter of figuring out how long it would take to fill your growbeds, whether that can be done with a normal 15min "on/off" timer...

And whether or not that would leave you with room to expand later... although obviously you could get a bigger pump later if needed...

Of course if the pump is rated continuous... with chift pist you could just run it continuously... and use loop or bell siphons to drain from the growbed back to the sump...

i had better continue this on my own thread otherwise i can see im going to be going way off the topic of pump sizing