Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My GB's fill in about 5 minutes and I run pump as mentioned 1hr on 1hr off, they obviously overflow for 50 odd minutes during a cycle, I have no problems with ammonia etc only time I had that was in winter when it was below 0 at night and 12c during the day, water was between 6-8c so the ammonia problems weren't a threat, my fish and plants are raging, my pump is a Tornado that pumps 12000lph but only draws about 135wts from memory the Ebara type pumps draw 3 times that in power so it wouldn't be economical for you to run them longer cycles, my current system was only started in April and I do have algae at the moment but is clearing, algae is just another part of the cycling process and in the first year you may have a couple of algal blooms, I have found with my old system that they will clear, as mentioned covering from direct sunlight helps greatly, I have a small bathtub system also that has a 1200lph pump that runs 1hr on and 1 off, water here gets turned over 5 times in a cycle, had one bloom 12 months ago but has been crystal clear since, this only has a shade cloth cove and is in the middle of the yard, I personally am a firm believer that water flowing is best so more pumping the better, the tornado pumps are expensive, mine was $380 but low wattage allows me to run the cycles I want

Went to school the morning and did some timing and made some changes.

All grow beds drain within 22 min but I cleaned roots out of some after I did the timing and also noticed that some standpipes had been pushed further into the reducer socket or slightly twisted since when I first drilled out the 6mm holes reducing drain flow. With the roots cleaned out and the holes redrilled I reckon it would be 20 min or just under, will try and time again this week to confirm. Would be interesting to see what time it is taking other BYAP beds to drain with 6mm holes, theoretically they should all be about the same.

All beds are filled and overflowing within 7 minutes of the FT pump going on.

Given the above I have switched to 15 min fill and 30 min drain to see if water clarity is any better once the algae clears. Although our water has been clear when there is no aglae, it has always lacked the clarity that I see in some peoples tanks. Will let this run over summer unless problems arise, the extra aeration will be a bonus if nothing else.

Cleaned out the drain holes and drain time is still around 22 minutes. Will see how it goes as is with the 15/30 time and if we start getting root rot problems I drill another 6mm hole to reduce the drain time and increase the time the bed is dry for.

pH swing yesterday, corrected it and now the algae is dying off, same as last time, water should be clear by Monday.

burnsey my GB's are still just emptying after 1 hour and my plants are raging, water is just a very slow trickle after an hour, never had root rot problem, what are you trying to achieve by faster drain time? as written many times here, as our water is high in DO problems with root rot shouldn't occur, even worms will live happily in a GB due to DO content

Nocky, not really aiming for faster drain time, I just wanted to make sure the bed does drain within the 1/2 hour before the pump kicks in again as we are now running 15 on 30 off to try and turn the FT water over once an hour (or close to it).

Strange that your GB's take an hour to drain, we have the standard two 6mm holes that Joel recommends and they are all but empty after about 25 minutes, after that it is just a slow dribble and not really a flow any more. I don't think we will have any rot problems with the current settings, the comment in my previous post was more a just in case senario but I do not expect it will happen based on OBO and others experience.

Are we not worrying for nothing i have beds that fill in 3 min and drain in 25 min beds that fill in 15 min and drain in 2 hrs Beds that water just flows through for 3 min an hr ,Beds that water flows through for 15 min every 2 hrs Beds that are constantly filled And you know what you can plant 10 different plants in 10 different beds and they all grow the same
Granted that in an established system

At the start of the thread I was worried about changing the pumping regime but after hearing from others about extended and reduced flood times that have no effect on plant growth, I am not anymore and have made the change. That is the best thing about this forum, the ability to sound out others about system changes so that you can make informed decisions

So thanks all, I will report back on water clarity after the bloom has finished and I can see the bottom again

Water quality in my system about once a week i let the glasshouse system continuous run all day just to polish the water the outside system is all ways nice and clean

it's not gushing out burnsy just a slow trickle so probably only a few mil of water left, but still dribbling all the same

Probably the same then, I called anything less than about 10mm left empty.

I've changes mine to 15/30 this morning. Increases pumping from 6 hours a day to 8 hours so should be enough extra water turnover to turn off my separate pond filter. Still only turning over a fraction of the water per hour, but not much I can do about that without using my spare 25,000 l/hour waterfall pump to the growbeds. Would prob need to increase all the drain pipework for that.

Depending on how many GB's you have Mike, I only have 2 at the moment and my GB's can handle my 12000lph pump but I had to cut the stand pipes down a little to stop GB's flooding

Is there a reason you want to turn off the separate pond filter? I would suggest that to keep the water quality good, you should probably keep running it. The minimal grow beds you have can really only handle filtering so much water you know.
How are your plants doing? Gotten any nitrate readings or are the plants using them all up before you can read them?

Plans was to turn it off to stop running a second pump 24/7, and cos it is ugly. But you may be right and I should bite the bullet and accept I need a 24/7 filter as well as growbeds. No readings at all - so I guess plants taking all nutrients, but not exactly growing madly.

One thing I do know about ornamental ponds is that they usually need the 24/7 pumping through at least the skimmer box/waterfall filter. Some people like to turn that off overnight but that is generally not really a good idea as that is when the fish/plants need the aeration the most.

You could try shutting it down but I fear you could run into water quality issues and if the filter has been shut down for more than a day, it could become anaerobic and be really nasty to start back up. I don't like to shut off my sand filter for more than 8 hours.
What sort of bio-filter is it, would there be any way to make it more attractive or work it into the landscaping?