Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey,

I'm putting a system together that will have approximately 20 75 gallon (1500 gals total) tanks for my fish tanks.

I'm looking for a non-submersible water pump that I can attach to the aquariums and pump my waste water into my grow beds.

Any recommendations? Most water pumps are submersible and that won't work for this arrangement.

Thanks,
Kev

That is a lot of fish tanks! Is it possible to gravity feed into the growbeds? That would be a lot less work to set up. A CHIFT PIST system would allow you to use a single pump if all of your fish tanks are linked. Otherwise you could do one sump tank for every group of fish tanks. If the growbeds are higher than the fishtanks, then gravity feed into the sump, pump up to the growbeds, gravity feed back to the fish tank. The only issue is that the sump can get kind of dirty that way, so keeping some crawfish in the sump would be advisable to keep it clean. There are pumps that can be plumbed outside of the tank. I know my Laguna pump can be, but submerged is easier for my application. Look into the Lagunas, and I'm sure you will be happy.

For such a setup you want to feed the tanks via pump then gravity feed the grow bed.

So you want a centralize sump tank with an external or internal pump attached that feed each 75gal tanks. The water overflow out of a 75ga tanks in to the grow bed then from grow bed back to sump. Obviously you can modify it a little on include settling tank and bio media in the sump but that’s the basic of it. I've setup a similar but larger system before but without a grow bed.

Here is a good source for external pumps.

http://www.marinedepot.com/External_Aqu ... EP-ct.html

Thanks for the feedback guys and the link...

I HAD planned to have the aquariums laid out on the floor (or just above the floor), under the grow beds (this is in my basement and lack of vertical height is a concern), and gravity feed back to the aquariums.

I'll have to consider/think the options you guys have thrown out there.

thanks