Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

hi all,

i am a newbie here. i have been keeping aquarium fish for many years and often thought about growing plants to keep nitrogen levels down. then this week i discovered aquaponics and i am an instant fan. what an awesome idea.

anyway my partner and i are hopefully buying a property soon which already had a shade house and then a slope down to a sunny area. My thoughts are to put a tank or two in the shade house and use a stand pipe with an auto siphon to deliver the water to the growbeds down hill, then another standpipe/auto siphon in the beds to a sump and pump back to the tanks. i assume i will need a pump with some kind float to switch it on and off according to water levels in the sump. and a pump which can cope with the head.

i may be able to source some tanks previously used to grow abalone to use as the grow beds, they are round (about 2m from memory) and about 50cm deep with a central drain. will they will be OK?

as i said i am a complete novice and would appreciate any feedback/comments

cheers Richard

Strap yourself in for the ride dogboy

sounds great dog boy......simple, easy and minimal complications...I betcha your system will rock

Cool use of the slope. Just remember that pumps work better at a lower head so not too far down the hill. Also if the tanks are up the hill don't use siphons to get it down otherwise the fish could run out of water. If you pump the water from a sump back to the tanks and have an overflow back to the gb's it may work better. Do a search on no holes overflow.
And welcome.

Three words [go shift pist]

If you put 'Chift Pist" into :

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/search.php

It will give you pages of info

Yep definitely CHIFT PIST (constant height in fish tank pump in sump tank) is what you are talking about.

The "stand pipe" for the fish tanks would want to be the drain formerly known as "venturi drain" rather than a syphon.

The grow beds only need be a little lower than the water level in the fish tanks and then things are easiest if the sump tank is enough below the bottoms of the grow beds for the auto-siphons to work easily.

I personally would recommend that the sump be quite large, big enough to hold all the water required to flood all grow beds at once plus some so that the pump has enough depth to work and you have a bit extra in which to install a float top up valve. Then you don't need to worry about a float switch, you can simply run the pump constantly and it doesn't need to be all that powerful a pump. Or you could have a more powerful pump on a timer and instead of auto-siphons on the grow beds you just have them drain slower than they fill and then while the pump is off, they will drain. Both good options for flood and drain.

Welcome to the madness, there is no cure for the AP addiction. While you are waiting you can tinker with some little grow beds for your aquarium hobby and reduce your need for water changes.

thanks for the replies,

CHIFT PIST is what i was thinking, now i know what its called. i run several aquariums on a single sump using the same principal- minus the grow beds (for now). when i said standpipe i meant a venturi drain. i use "durso" standpipes in my aquariums to keep them quiet http ://www.dursostandpipes.com/?page_id=6.

having said that the no holes overflow is a cool idea also, ive seen similar ideas for people who dont want to drill holes in glass aquariums but still want sumps, so thanks Dufflight.

once i find a tank i will then decide what will work best.

great all i need now is to buy the new house, find some tanks, growbeds, a pump, pipes, stands, gravel, some money and some spare time and im there! simple!

houses are cheap ATM but time is in very short supply.
Well here at least.