Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Plachon,

Check out this site.... http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/stmpwr.htm

Interesting idea Plachon.... read this too...http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/steamart.htm

A few quotes...






I am taking us a little off topic.... why don't you start a thread on this? You can just refer back to feintstar's thread here.

Here is a direct answer to your question Plachon.....http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/solarblr.htm

Hi all!!!!!!
This whole idea of the header tank as "battery" backup is one I have been kinda keen on all along. (It is something I sort of pushed a bit in Cyara's thread a bit.) I wish I had a site that would make such a thing reasonable.

Here are a few notes about such a system. Sorry, no I do not think a bathtub would be a big enough header tank to take care of a couple meters of grow bed. A bath tub would probably only serve a very small bin of a grow bed over a 24 hour period. Here are a few tips to help you figure out if such a system is really reasonable. It is generally accepted that a grow bed when filled with gravel will hold about 40% of it's volume in water. I usually just figure 50% so that I have some extra water and capacity in the system. If you want to be able to stock a fairly large number of fish, you will need to be moving the amount of water in your fish tank each hour. If your fish tank is say 10 l (tiny aquarium) and you were only going to fill the top tank once per day then you should have 24 times the size of the fish tank in that header tank and you also need at least that amount of space in the sump tank as well. So for a 10 l fish bowl system you would probably be best off having a header tank of 250 l and a sump tank of 250 l. The amount of grow beds for such a system can vary more but 20 l would probably be appropriate to an amount of fish comfortably living in such a small fish tank. Might be a nice energy efficient way to grow some salad while keeping some gold fish quite happy.

If you wish to size this up to a backyard system with a couple square meters of 30 cm deep grow beds, your header and sump tanks are going to get rather large. If you can manage a bit of a water tower platform (it doesn't need to be terribly high, just big/strong and able to support the amount of water) with it's bottom just above the top of the rest of the system. If you say wanted to use an IBC as a fish tank and were planning on stocking as many fish as you could and still only moving water from sump tank up to header tank once per day, you would need header and sump tanks of at least 24,000 liters each!

If you are not going to have very much fish, you can probably get away with less flow and therefore smaller header and sump tanks. The plants are generally happy with less flow, it is the water quality for the fish that usually requires more pumping.

Now the idea of the huge header tank that is filled up by wind/solar power or even off peak electrical power and then allowed to run the system without power for a period of time before running out is a wonderful idea and is a primary reason I think a header tank would be a worth while investment. It could even function as a "battery" back up for a regular continuous pump electrical system. If your site and/or materials/skills at had lend themselves to a large header and sump tank, then it would definitely be worth consideration. The size of the header tank/sump tank will dictate the amount of time the "battery" will last.

I personally recommend that a sump tank in a constant height in fish tank system should be able to hold enough water to flood all grow beds in a system plus some extra. Even in a cascade system. Yes, in a perfect world where nothing goes wrong and roots don't effect water flow, you should be able to have a system where the sump tank needs only hold enough water to flood one level of the cascade but I have seen times when flow rate slows down a little and for some reason the top level floods, trickles over and never quite drains until some one notices the leaf stuck in the flout or the slowed flow into an auto siphon bed. In which case, you could wind up with more than one level of the cascade flooded and if the sump tank doesn't have enough water to flood more than the first level, the pump has run dry and everything is stuck in this condition till a person comes along and re-sets things.

Considering that the water storage option isn't really feasible, does anybody have ideas for aeration without pumping water or using electricity?

Hi TCL!

Is that 20 litres in your example in the GBs including or excluding grow media... ie 20 litres of water flowing through... or a 20 litre volume of GB built.


So in fact, if I understand you correctly TCL, true CHIFT is not guaranteed if done in series......
If level 3 clogs up for some reason and levels 1 and 2 above keep moving there could be a flooding.

Makes me even more certain I don't want things running at night....

Simple maintenance checks are essential. But hard to know an SLO is clogged by just looking at it unless is transparent. What is the biggest pipe size that could be used that will still lift solids?

And a flout? Only see it when flooding started that it is blocked?

I want more than one SLO per FT so that would ease things. Wanted 3 to be sure all solids lifted along the edge of the deep-end.

If I use a single quadruple flout then blocking of all four outlets is unlikely don't you think?

A simple overflow pipe in each FT and GB above max water height... again a good use for extra displacement capacity... should be able to draw off excess water and prevent flooding over the top. Just must be big enough... or enough of them... to move the water fast enough to prevent the flooding over the top.

For me to run the top tank as a battery.... and have to enlarge the sump to carry ALL the water travelling through makes the Sump impossibly big to build for me.... And I really like this idea of a stored battery of water above very much.

Considering that the GB's can get away with a single watering or no watering at night, then if the fish tank was bigger/density less then the water wouldn't contaminate so quickly and and there would be more air. Rather than have the huge storage of water, what about just a much larger fish tank?

Aaaah!
Plants don't need the one hourly cycles..... fish do....... if stocked to capacity...
Can either have fewer fish or larger FT water volume....
I do like the latter option! Was concerned that my Fish Pond was inordinately large.... but didn't want to make it smaller becasue of the thermal protection it offered the fish.... but it also offers a buffer against ammonia spiking!

You can see me plodding through ideas that must seem plain as day to those who have been doing it some months!
Roll on my practical days too!

I still want the large Header Tank and large Sump..... for the "battery" storage of water

Big really seems to be better in AP. Oh well.... just takes more time to build as money comes in.

FS I hope you don't mind..... I am going to copy some of these postings to my member thread so I don't forget the info.... will refer back to here. Stuff gets so lost over time...trying to remember where something was read.

this, thanks to the challenges and the contributions of many members has really become a wonderful and very fertile think tank with many different threads that all have their right to existence and everything rolls faster and faster
sometimes difficult to follow and assimilate

I was going to suggest just that, Chelle:
that you would copy and paste every suggestion that contributes to your setup to your thread, mentioning the origin where people can see how it came to be.

but you beat me to it

frank

on the basic principles we seem to agree, TCL
but not on the practical realization

bear with me, cause it is becoming a little complex, but I will try to explain:

let me comment your post where I think it needs not contradicting but adjusting:

that doesn't necessarily mean pumping all this water over all growbeds.
I believe pumping to be the most efficient method for the combined purpose of solids removal and aeration, but pumping over an upflow filter or over a small growbed which serves as a biofilter will ensure both solids removal and settling, nitrification, and aeration and thus ensure water quality as far as the fish are concerned.
only 10-15 cm head needed for that part. And no sump.
Either a (small) pump in the fish tank (I don't like that) or one in the bottom part of the settling tank (don't like that much more either) or one in the top part of your filter/growbed (that's the solution I'd choose) can do the trick (this pump would probably need a level protection switch unless all piping is over dimensioned).
a much smaller tube leading from the bottom of the filter/biofilter growbed would lead the settled solids to the main growbeds (or to a worm bed) continuously by gravity.

if you accept this, that means we have found a way to disassociate growbeds flood and drain needs from fish water quality needs.

this greatly influences what follows next:

continuing from the above line of thought, your sump needs only to be as big as the periodic/batch requirements of your growbeds
I prefer to use the words "periodic" and "batch" as that doesn't limit us to a defined period of say 24 hrs.
a batch can be 1, 6, 12, 24, 48,... hrs, or whatever you define it to be.
because in your above quote the volumes would then be replaced by the growbed volumes (50%) and the recirculation frequency needed for water quality for the fish by the needed frequency for the growbeds, which can be considerably less, maybe even reduced to one (good) flooding per day or even one flooding per 48 hrs, depending on the water holding capacity of your growbed media.
this reduces your needed sump volume from 24 x fish tank volume to 1 (24 hrs) or .5 (48 hrs) x 50% of fish tank volume, a 48 to 96 times reduction

quite impressive, isn't it?

the above reasoning contradicts your conclusion that a sump must be 24 times the volume of your fish tank if you would only pump it up once a day
doing that would, unless other aeration systems are used, lead to serious water quality problems for the fish as only the pumping period would serve aeration purposes if your fish are in the top tank. It would surely give an oxygen boost during pumping, but that wouldn't last for long.
the solution I propose takes care of that: aeration, nitrification, removal of solids are continuous
energy needs are reduced to a minimum: that what is needed to continuously ensure fish water quality
as you state yourself:

next to that, every batch (be it adapted to once per 1, 6, 12, 24, 48,... hrs would only need the energy for re pumping of sump contents of 50% of growbeds contents to the header -fish- tank)
which, I believe, makes it much more reasonable to rely upon human power.
The plants would not suffer (depending on the water holding capacity of the media), as they would receive enough water not to dry out and still get all the nutrients, but in more concentrated form.

so the volume of your sump can be effectively and minimally be reduced to 50% of the volume of your growbeds, regardless of the flooding/draining rate of the growbeds
if you want more than one flooding per period without having to re pump the contents to the header tank within that period, you need to adapt sump volumes consequently

this is easily solved by providing the growbeds with an overflow:
That particular growbed will temporarily not optimally benefit from flood and drain, but you would still not have to adapt sump volume to more than growbeds water contents.

pppfffieeuuuw...

hope you could all follow...

Frank

I agree with Frank.

hygicell, its interesting that you would say that..

I was just thinking about something like what I think you are talking about. I was thinking of building a race for my next system and including a large area at the end of the race where there would be a solids settling area and the water would flow up through a gravel bio filter. The water flow would be via axial pump (trolling motor). This way there would be zero lift in water; more like a displacement from the top of the bio filter back to the start of the race.

This would allow me to use solar pumping to pump water to grow beds once or twice a day.


Pretty much like this:

small victories like this make a man revive, DanDman
but don't trust me for more than what I am worth: do your own research and check and double check
don't ever take what I write for granted
not even I do that
as I am too aware that I am only human

I do assume you realize that the water flow in the fish tank would have to be continuous for aeration

frank

Yes, I am a bit worried about oxygen as the bacterial will need even more oxygen.

You could also have NFT trays coming of the bio-filter with the small pump.

There's some really interesting ideas coming out of this thread, the systems being thought up are economical and sustainable. Ideal for developing countries where labor and food prices are cheap, electricity is unreliable and coco coir is a waste product.

One of the problems I can see is the amount of tanks involved. You will need 3 tanks all of roughly the same volume, then there's the extra plumbing. If you're short of cash or are looking at a commercial system, it will be difficult to justify the extra costs.