Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I built a duckaponix system a few years ago, and it has been plauged with problems.

1. the pump gets clogged with feathers
2. the solids form a crust over the growbeds and then the water does not soak in, overflowing the growbeds
3. the solids clog the holes in the drain pipe surrounds.

I have relocated the inlet pipe to the bottom of the growbed however some clog up, forcing all the water into one growbed, which overflows

I think if u use the water once in the pond and then into a dirt garden it will work ok. Use a few large holes in small 25mm pipe. THis will give some pressure to move the solids, but the hles will not clog.

If i did mine again i would have a settling tank to remove solids, the solids would then be drained off every so often and composted

The magic of electricity has arrived at my urban farm. A guy who will be working there as an intern got an apartment in the building right next to where our site is and a 100' extension cord out his window just makes it to the duck pond. So all of the sudden, I'm looking at all sorts of new possibilities.

We have had a problem not so much with feathers (yet), but with all sorts of green waste that I think comes from folks throwing stuff into the duck pond for them to eat. They pick off the leafy parts and the stems sink to the bottom and make a mess. I think I can protect the pump from that stuff with a fairly simple wire mesh frame, but we'll see.

So far my pump (a Wayne, 1/2 hp, vortex pump that handles solids pretty well) has worked every time I've used it to drain the pond and pump the water to the dirt garden, but we'll see how it looks when it gets used on a more consistent basis. The perf pipe delivery system has been working fine, but not used so regularly. The holes are big enough that nothing much is staying inside and the system of laying the pipe on a very airy mulch has been working pretty well. There's enough water to wash most of the solids down to the ground leaving the pipe in contact with the mulch, which seems to have been a helpful piece.

We'll see how all of this looks when the system starts getting used on a regular basis. The plan now is to drain the pond every other day, using the water to water the dirt beds and then refill the pond. I'm not so sure it's worth the effort, but the pond was getting so nasty, we've got to do something.

For me, I'm so excited about the electricity, I want to forget about the duck pond and set up a monster aquaponics project. This place has everything, space, sunshine, some useful slope, tons of plants ready to suck up nitrogen and now electricity. I'll need to do some good planning/thinking about this system, however, partly because I won't be onsite to check it with much regularity and to help make it as easy to monitor and run as possible for the folks who are there. Plus I'll need to make it hard for the hardware to get stolen and to protect fish from racoons (and thieves). The biggest bummer is that I don't have the time/energy right now to work on this, even though it is ripe with possibility.

I'll give an update on duck pond this coming week once we have a week seeing how it goes with some regular drains and refills.

Ya might see if you can find a bigger "hose" to hook to the pump and run to the garden. I found hooking small garden hoses up to these pumps is pretty limiting, but if it works for now, that is good!!!!

You are probably onto something when you mention setting up a small AP system at home to get some practice before setting one up at the farm.

Also, running a 100 Ft extention out a window isn't going to be appropriate for hooking up any large pumps so I'm assuming the system will be kept fairly small at the farm. Long extension cables have losses and if it isn't a full 12/3 (which would usually be fairly heavy costly cable for a 100 footer) you will definitely want to keep the loads on it low. that Wayne pump is probably the max you should do and that one only when you are present to make sure you don't start to heat up the extension cable too much.