Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So i've been playing with some materials I've bought a couple of flower pots, an aquarium, and a pump to get a feel for this stuff. And after getting a better idea for it decided to draw up an actual plan. (Thanks to whoever was recommending Google sketch in some other thread, that's an awesome program and I hadn't heard of it till now.)


Aquarium is 30 gallons/113 liters, and each of the pots is about 6 gallons/22 liters. Right now I'm planning on having the pump in the aquarium which of course pumps to the plants which will have a loop sipon set up on the grow beds to help control the flood and drain. The pump is a little 132 gph pump i got at a local hydroponics store, and I got some hydroton to use as a media. I really love how the hydroponic stores have disclaimers all over the place saying the equipment isn't supposed to be used for illegal purposed.

I'm really thinking that I should have a sump in there somewhere, like on the bottom shelf of the other set of empty shelves, but I'm not sure how to get water from the sump to the aquarium with out drilling holes into the aquarium and I really don't want to do that cause knowing my luck I'd ruin the aquarium. Would the best thing be to get a second pump for the sump and just have them on the same timer?

Welcome Stephanie!

Search on the forum for no holes overflow, you can have water overflow over the side of an aquarium using a kind of siphon pipe. It would be best to use just one pump if possible. Another option would be to get a timer from the hydroponics store instead of using siphons for each pot. Having several small pots each with their own siphon would make me worried, just in case the worst happened and one siphon clogged and the water overflowed on the floor.

Pumping out of a sump instead of the aquarium would be safer, because if the system were set up to overflow out of the aquarium into the sump, and the pump were in the sump, then if the worst happened and the sump went dry then at least the aquarium stays full. This is called CHIFT PIST - constant height in fish tank, pump in sump tank.

Welcome Stephanie... hope you enjoy the forum...

And if you have the aquarium at the top you can have the no-hole overflow (a siphon-overflow) suck up your solids that would otherwise often clog a pump.

Yep, I have my aquarium at close to the same height as the "flower pots" and it overflows into the pots using a no holes overflow (with a solids lifting attachment.) Then the "pots" which are all connected together drain using a loop siphon into a sump tank where the pump is. The pump sends clean water from the sump up to the aquarium.

My flower pots actually happen to be 5 gallon buckets. The no holes overflow and solids lifting attachment may sound all fancy but it is really just short lengths of PVC pipe, PVC elbows and PVC Ts. I'm using 3/4" pressure pipe (thin wall) for my overflows and I am using two of them so in case one fails or gets clogged, hopefully the other one will still be working and I can fix the problem.

If i moved the aquarium up to the same level as the flower pots, that would put the aquarium into direct sunlignt unfortunately. And currently the aquarium is maintaining a temperature of about 85 sometimes up to 90 in the afternoon in the shade. The balcony railing come up to a bit higher than the shelving.

And I was only going to put one loop siphon in with all of the flower pots draining into one pipe wit the loop syphon on the end of the pipe, kind of like TCLynx's indoor system.

But i'm thinking maybe a no holes overflow from the aquarium to the sump, with the pump in the sump might be the way to go. I'm going to be doing a bit more work on it today so maybe i'll have some better photos of it this afternoon.

So far i have one flower pot going, getting them to not leak was a bit of a challenge, the second pot that I'm working on adding is using one of those uniseals. And those things are pretty spiffy.

The siphon on the first flower pot has been going for a week without any problems. The tomato seedling i put in it is starting to but it's for tomato! And my herb seeds(thyme and basil) are starting to germinate.

The fish tank is almost cycled, i think. I took a page out of the peeponics thread and created an artificial ammonia spike that way.

The temperature of the tank is still fluctuating alot from 77 F/25 C this morning to about 82 F/27 C this afternoon. I'm wrapping the tank in some insulation that i got from lowes in hopes that will help keep the fluctuation down, but i'm guessing the temperature swing is coming from the water running over the warm grow bed media all afternoon.

Hi Stephanie
I promote sketchup on every possible occasion
but I'm sure I'm not the only one
if you ever need any help just ask

I am enchanted by your sense of humor
I had to grin when you mentioned the possible illegal uses of hydroponics.

personally I too am a strong advocate of CHIFT PIST systems
but they are by far not the only solution
if exposure to light of your aquarium seems to you problematic, you should let go the CHIFT PIST idea

lots of AP systems only have a fish tank from which water is pumped to the growbeds that then drain back in the fish tank
in fact that is the simplest solution of all:
you need no sump as your aquarium is the sump
you need no autosiphon if the pumping is timed and the drain is slower than the pumped volume
just adjust the pumping time to where the required level in the growbeds is reached, then stop the pump and let the growbeds drain back to the aquarium

hope this helps

frank

Thanks Hygicell.

I've actually gotten a bit more attached to the siphons than the timer and i'm not really using the timer anymore except as a glorified on and off switch. I'm starting to think that it will maybe come into play when things start really warming up and i need to control how much heat i'm getting from the growbeds.

Today was a bit cooler here i think we had a high of 24 C/76 F, I've been having a little bit of problems with the heater that came with the tank and where i set it to kick on at, and where the theromemter says the temperature is when the heater kicks on. Probably going to have to replace it with a better model. But this morning i woke up and the temperature was 25.5 C/78 F and when i got home from work it was 28 C / 82 F, so I'm hoping i finally got the insulation situated in a good way that I can keep the degree fluctuations at about a change of 4.

Originally I was just going to use gold fish in the tank but now i'm debating that cause I don't think I can keep the water cool enough for gold fish, so i'm wondering if guppies or some sort of tetra might bet better for this.

Here are the levels that I've been collecting for the last week.


There is something about our tap water here that has a high ph, cause coming out of the faucet it has a ph of about 8 or 7.8 and I think the dechlorinator i'm using kicks the ph up by about .2. I'm going to start putting any water that i add through my brita water filter jug first because the water that comes out of that has a lower ph closer to 7.

Now for a fun post with pictures.

This is the first pot that we had going with the loop siphon.


This is my lovely cat Mangle, inspecting the tomato. She has been very entertained watching all of this slowly get built.


This is the setup getting closer to done, we're having trouble keeping rocks out of the drain, the cut on the pvc pipe wasn't very even, and the siphon kicking in which i think has to do with it being a bit bigger of a tube than the blue one on the right. The uniseals i bought online were a bit too big for the blue tubes and getting the blue tube to work required a lot of silicon. The lovely gentleman who cut the tubing for us at Lowes informed us that the clear tubing is the preferred tubing of college kids making beer bongs. I just wish I could get that tubing to straighten out and stop curling.


The drain and inflow, (like there has never been a picture of a drain anywhere on this forum).


The tank with all the insulation wrapped around it, any fish i buy to put in this thing better like the dark.


The first budding tomato! And today when i got home from work there were two more buds about to sprout at the top of the tomato plant. I'm incredibly impressed with how fast the tomato has grown and there aren't even any fish in the system yet.


The messy work area where the next grow beds are going to go, hopefully i'll be able to find something that will be alot longer and I won't have to use several pots.

to stop the curling of a stubborn lengthy there are several solutions:
1. flow (really) hot water through it
2. dip it in (really) hot water
3. heat up the tube with an air gun
each time keep the tube in the position you want it to stay while it cools
4. insert a piece of plastic or stainless steel rod or rigid tube
5. slip the tube through a piece of rigid tube

the clear tube will soon rise algae problems if exposed to the sun

frank

You'll need to do something with that PH, or your plants will really suffer.

How high are you flooding the beds? Does the top of the gravel stay wet all the time?

I seem to have invented an new word here: a stubborn lengthy ""
I meant stubborn length of curly tubing

frank

Thanks Hygicell, I'll try soaking that tube in hot water.

OutbackOzzie, the growbed get filled to right about the gravel level so even the top of the gravel gets pretty moist.

You probably want to either raise the gravel, or lower the water - stems will rot otherwise, and algae will grow on the gravel and look icky.

Usually run the water to 1" below gravel level.