Hi everyone,
First time aquaponics guy here, and first post on this site. I've been lurking for a few weeks now, lots of helpful information!
I've decided to start off with a decent sized system and I think I have most of the design worked out but I've got no idea what size or type of pump I should get.
Here's an overview of what my system design looks like...
I have a "bay" of pallet racking (like what you'd find at Home Depot). My upright columns are 8ft tall, About 42" deep and 99" wide. I plan on putting a 4ft x 8ft x 2ft deep fish tank, made from wood, on the concrete floor, as the bottom level of the racking, with two shelves of grow beds above it. sort of limiting myself to how much I can pack into the 32sq feet that this racking occupies. I don't plan on heavily/densely stocking the fish tank. The pallet racking is rated at 10,000lbs per shelf.
My plan is to pump water from the fish tank up to a mineralization tank that will sit on the top shelf, and use gravity to feed the grow beds from that. So the height of the MT might be as much as 11ft above the bottom of the fish tank. I would like to pump all solids out of the FT and into the MT at the top.
If this system is as productive (and fun) as I hope it will be, I may look at adding a second bay of pallet racking next to the first and replicating most of the setup.
What type of pump should I get for this? I looked around on ebay and there's a number of really inexpensive centrifugal pumps which all seem to have power draws in the 100's of watts range, this seems quite high compared to submersible pond pumps that I see in most systems.
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