Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yeah, pool pumps are designed for much higher head pressures than we are using, so that makes them inefficient for us. Maybe use it for a roof heater/cooler, on a timer?

Low pressure, high flow all the way

You are going to have an amazing potential to produce your own food with that much water!

I think the magic ratio was 1 pound of fish to 4 gallons of water to 8 gallons of grow bed; on the conservative end.

Take a look at your pool pump since in ground pumps are usually a bit better than the above ground pool pump variety. In any case, the existing pump may not be very energy efficient.

I started my system when the other half's parents decided not to fix their pool and just deck over the space. We got the old pump and sand filter free as they would have been tossing them out. We used that pump till it burned out and when I got the first electric bill I went and spent some bigger money on an energy efficient pump that could still handle the volume on my system.

You could probably use your existing pool pump to start the process and get your water circulating through some grow beds and do some research on what kind of pump would be appropriate for your situation.

Now a rule most try and follow in order to keep enough aeration and flow is that you want a pump that can circulate the capacity of your fish tank in an hour. Now a pump that can do 10,000 gallons an hour might be overkill though if your stocking density is going to be really low but one thing I do know about catfish is they like their aeration so I'm certain a little 500 gallon an hour pump will not be big enough to suit your situation.

I have a pump that is only using around 220 watts I think and it gives me over 60 gpm at my head height. (the above ground pool pump used about 1200 watts and probably gave me 80 gpm.) Spending a little more money on the pump at purchase can often save more than the cost of the pump on power bills within the year depending on your electricity prices.

I definitely support the idea of fishless cycling. Once you clear your water up a bit and have at least one good size grow bed hooked up, you can start adding an ammonia source. Pure ammonia is one choice (if you can find stuff without any additives as detergent will kill fish), urea fertilizer is another, but the cheapest source is hummonia (urine, pee) provided that doesn't gross you out search PeePonics and you can check out a tread about my system that has been running that way for most of a year now.

If you don't already have one, look into getting an aquarium test kit that can do test on pH, high range pH, Nitrates, Nitrites, and Ammonia. That way you can learn about your well water and keep an eye on your system as you cycle it to be ready for your fish.

Sorry didn't have time to get the pictures today been working since 4am on irrigation ditches and our cows got out so had to fix fence also and get cows back in. Tomorrow morning I might have a little bit of time and ill post a picture.

for the grow beds I'm still looking around to see what we have lots of stuff on a farm thought about welding up acouple old truck beds and welding the wholes shut for my grow beds.

when I start to cycle can the grow beds be empty or do they need to have plants in them ?

You can have them empty or throw in a few plants. Smaller systems I'd go with the plants. Larger ones it does not matter as much, the system need more time to age. Do it without fish to start the bacteria going. Pee in it as much as possible and add some urea whey you hook up the GB's. If you want to get the ball rolling. Get a drum filled with shade cloth or gravel and hook up a cheap 1000lpr pond pump to run water through it. You can hook up a siphon on the side to flood and drain it. 19mm or 25mm poly pipe with an overflow up high back into the pool. Get the bacteria growing while your working on the rest. Large systems need more time. And pick up some pool salt(fish safe) to add later because the nitrite cycle will last longer than normal.

Re the pictures.
Kinda like these but use the whole drum. Your not after a GB, more a bio filter to get the bacteria going. This will then seed your GB's once you have them built.

This is the pool we will be converting


and this is were I'm thinking of putting my grow tanks.


just to give you some ideas. ( yes the Ground is Frozen)
Right behind this pic is my old chicken coop which will be turned into a turkey pen as the chicken are moving to a bigger coop, all the exsiting cyclone fence will be taken down (not for sure when) and either a white vinyl fence or a black Rot Iron fence Im leading towards the Rot Iron the cows wont be able to tear it down. The house will be getting a new coat of paint also we have been talking about painting it like an old barn to even a blue color.

This whole house needs alot of work just moved back in to here acouple years ago after my sister and cousin was living here.

Later today Ill try adding some pics of my possible grow beds I have an old metal silo that I might cut down for grow beds.

On media for the grow beds does it have to be a certain type of gravel or can I just go buy acouple truck loads of gravel for it ?

hope this helps because this rookie needs all the help I can get hehehe

The pump needs to go in the deep end to pump all the gunk that goes to the deep end and dont discount the pool pump i run one and it only runs 3 min every hr $30 a year to run [Do a lot of reading and ask a lot of questians its easier to do it right once ]

Gravel. Small river gravel or pea gravel is often good. You want to avoid limestone or marble though as they can raise your pH more than desirable.

There are actually quite a few discussions about growbed media on the forum.

I have taken to using lava rock around the standpipes or drain areas of my growbeds and 1/2" brown river rock throughout the rest of the grow beds. I did also fill a bunch of my growbeds with a mixture of washed shells and the river rock but if I had it all to do again, I would probably just go with the river rock and only get a few buckets or bags of the shells to use for buffering.

Anyway, what kind of gravel can you get for cheap there?

do you get a heap of cold wind there Slugy?

Not discounting the pool pump just a lot easier to get a better one for the application. 3min an hr will not work for that volume of water unless it can move 10000ltrs in 3min. The pool pump is connected to the skimmer box and can have a pipe connected to grab some of the solids from the deep end. But with a large system having the pump in the deep end means if you are away and something happens you can come back to an empty pool with a lot of dead fish. In the shallow end means you come back to a half meter of water and a lot of unhappy fish.
I'm setting up my old pool pumps for different applications. Vacuuming the bottom of the pool and filtering out suspended particles. Or as aerators for emergencies.

Frozen ground. You might want to plan where to put your GB's with the though of covering them later. Next to the house allows you to utilize the wall. Shade cloth over the pool can help with the algae blooms.

usually the cold air isnt that bad this year it has been far worse they keep predicting snow which only happens like every 5 to 7 years.

Grow beds question for a 10k gal tank.

according to what I have been reading 1ft/30cm Depth is a good minnium, What would you recommoned on a good managable width and length ?

When planting crops in your grow bed do you go of the normal recommondations for the crop. Like Tomotas 3 ft apart in each direction ?

Okay when figuring out capicity I read it will be 60% Grow Media and 40% water is this a good assumption ?

Im going to be starting stage 1 of my experment soon which is just basicaly 2 5 gallon buckets, a air pump, some gravel and water testing to start learning.

Going to pump into one bucket and see how long it takes to clear the water what kind of flow there is and so forth. I dont know if this will help Im just curious as I want to get the green cloudness out of the pool and start to clear it up for fish and grow beds. I might put one plant in the mix also.

Think that all for right now going to research fish food so ill have some question there probaly.

A couple of 5 gallon buckets probably won't give you much results quickly but they are a good place to start. Once you learn the basics of the test kit and get some bacteria growing on some media in the buckets, you have something to seed larger grow beds with to give em a jump start.

The mention earlier about getting a food grade barrel of some sort and filling with media or even netting or shade cloth to run your water through could have a huge effect on clearing up your green pool. The netting or shade cloth in a barrel type filter is also pretty easy to drain and move once you have more perm grow beds to put online.

good luck!

I was just going to do the two 5gal bucket in my shop to experment with.

I'll look around for a big food grade drums I know there some in corning at an olive factory but I think they had chemicals in them before not for sure if they are food grade.

I wonder where I could find some big ones at I'll have to do some looking.