Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi. I am shooting to construct a AP system here in Texas starting the first of the year. Read through a lot of the threads on pluses and minuses of various designs. So let me lay out my restrictions and what I am considering.

Restrictions:

* Live in a zero lot home so there is not much ground. The land is broken up into two blocks. One area 15x15ft, the other 15x30. Both abut each over separated by a fence.
* Land is flat with no grade.

Option:

* I am leaning to a flood and drain arrangement. I just don't think I have the space for a sump for CIFT-PIST and do it justice.
* FT would be in ground, lowest point in the system.
* 2-3 raised GB in the larger section, drain back to FT.
* NFT used in the smaller section. drain back to FT.

I'll do a sketch up once I have settled on a few points.

Ideas/suggestions/protestations welcome.

Hi John - Welcome to the forum and AP !

The first thing you'll need to consider is that without a sump, you need to keep in mind the volume of your growbeds (GBs) versus the volume of your fish tank (FT).

If the volume of your GBs exceeds or even approaches the volume of your FT, you will pump the FT dry when you will the GBs. This if course will be very bad for the fishies !

Also remember that the volume of the GB decreases once you fill it with media (how much depends on the media you use), i.e. a 1,000 Litre GB, filled with expanded clay subsequently has room for only 400-500 Litres of water.

Others will have more advice, but the above is a rule you nheed to consider from the start of the planning stage.

[quote="chillidude"]Hi John - Welcome to the forum and AP !

The first thing you'll need to consider is that without a sump, you need to keep in mind the volume of your growbeds (GBs) versus the volume of your fish tank (FT).

An excellent point of course. Has anyone set up a system that floods and drains each grow bed in succession? It would minimize the total amount of FT water leaving the tank. Oh, and did it work?

Yep, is a topic of much discussion at the moment. Certainly cuts down that problem.

RupertOfOz has just begun supplying sequential alternating valves here in Australia. Follow the below thread for more discussion;

http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5378&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=spider

You can actually have equal grow bed to fish tank volume and still manage without a sump tank. This is due to the fact that the media takes up at least half of the volume of a grow bed. However, you do get significant water level fluctuations with this situation.

As noted, there are indexing valves available for aquaponics now which can make sequencing the flood of grow beds a completely real and viable option.

Running NFT pipes, I would highly recommend having a clean water sump from which to pump water for these pipes, otherwise you have to deal with some other method of filtering the water before it goes to the NFT pipes. You can't simply pump dirty fish tank water to NFT pipes without running into issues with fish poo gunking up the plant roots.

TCLynx

Point noted. And Thanks!

Welcome.

You might be able to sort out the clean water for the NFT by using a small sort of sump that can fit under a grow bed or something but that would mean an extra pump probably unless you can sort out the heights to have gravity drain water from the grow beds to the NFT then from the NFT to the fish tank.

Good Luck

[quote="TCLynx"]You can actually have equal grow bed to fish tank volume and still manage without a sump tank. quote]

argeed,
i have the BYAP entertainer system http://backyardaquaponics.com/shop.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage.tpl&product_id=13&category_id=8 and it works great ("of course it does" says the BYAP team!! ) 2 x 500L growbeds fill at the same time and they take about 1/3 the volume out of the 1000L FT at max.

Yep a 1:1 system (we count the total volume of the grow bed when figuring the ratios) can work without a sump or spider valve but I wouldn't go any higher on the grow beds without some method of dealing with water level fluctuations.
A 2:1 system (first number is grow beds, second is fish tank) definitely needs a sump tank or indexing valve or some other method of dealing with water level fluctuations.

I'm not sure who it was who set up a 3 IBC system where one IBC was the tank, and the other two were stacked growbeds over sumps, a real nice space saving system that also was chift pist and properly dealt with solids. This could be modified to partially bury FT and mostly bury sumps to help with temperature variations. This system would have a footprint of less than 4' x 12'.

FWIW, I run 10 half barrels with gravity feed back to a 2,000 litre tank on a 15on/45off cycle 24/7. On most occasions the tank is only ever filled with between 1,000 - 500 litres and the fish do not seem to mind the fluctuating water levels. My system thrives on neglect with the only maintenance being once daily feeding, weekly water top ups and monthly clearing standpipes. No pH or nitrate tests, no syphons, no sumps.

Don't get too over scientific just be functional.

cheers
Derek