Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well, this is what I've come up with so far. The plan is to dig out the FT and the ST and use pond liner on them. I want to do a CHIFT PIST system, but I'm not sure if having the two tanks at equal depth will work. As to the shape, my dirt gardens are Square Foot Gardens, so I just figured on adapting the concept to the AP system.

To get the CHIFT PIST to work, you will need the water level in the fish tank to be above the level at which the water enters the sump tank. I would make the top rim of the fish tank about 12 inches above the high water level in the sump tank. I also recommend making the top rims of the in ground tanks high enough so that a heavy rain won't be washing dirt/debris/mulch and whatever into your tanks (this stuff can be a pain to clean out all the time.)

I personally like the Fish tank taller than the grow beds so it can overflow directly to the grow beds and then the grow beds can drain nice clean water to the sump so the pump doesn't need to be cleaned as often.

There is some benefit to having the tanks in ground to moderate the temperature but if you are doing flood and drain beds, the benefit becomes moot if you are flooding and draining during undesirable temperature periods. A flood and drain gravel bed is a superb chiller during cold nights and it is a good heater during hot afternoons.

And if sinking the tanks into the ground and forming using pond liner, remember that you need to slope the sides, especially for the sump tank which will have water level fluctuations. Think about a hole in the ground that has vertical sides. Now what happens when it rains? Generally the sides of the hole will cave in. Putting a liner in the hole won't stop that from happening. How bad the situation is will depend on the climate and the soil. Clay is pretty easy to dig straight down and if you are in a desert, it might not be as big an issue but... I would not want you to walk past the side of your sump tank while it is near empty and have the side collapse and drop you in a hole. My system has an in ground lined tank. I had to put wood around the tops of the sides to help keep the soft sand from collapsing into my tank and deforming it. Even so, there are some odd bumps of dirt around the sides where some one stepped too close before I put down walk boards under the mulch. Even with water in the tank, odd things can happen. When a lined hole is nearly empty, it is really easy to have a collapse. (People have learned this the hard way even with IBC's sunk into the ground, you need to keep the dirt from being able to collapse against the container.

IMO, you might want to consider making your sump a bit bigger, or deeper to get more volume... 48cf of sump water for 96cf of growbeds seems just enough... factor in evaporation and the fact the pumps don't fully empty the tank, it may be a bit borderline...

Welcome aboard!

I like earth coupling for temperature control and have found that if the growbed and fishtank are shaded that hot weather is not nearly so problematic. Best shade for the growbed is lots of plants! TCLynx has that wonderful 110% Florida humidity, but yours is low enough that evaporation should help keep your system cooler in hot weather.

How about a fish tank half in-ground and half above ground so you have a few inches of height above your growbed?

Here's my version of CP using 3 ibc/s all the same height i use 2 as fish tanks [have grown out 50 silvers 100 trout 50 in each tank ] and 1 as a sump
Water from the beds returns via the fish tanks and then overflows [CP] to the sump
theres a bleed off from the pump back to the sump to keep it all stirred up [in two years running theres never been a need to clean the sump] or pump

I'm just thrilled that somebody else here uses mspaint.exe to do their AP drawings!
unfortunately I'm in too much of a rush to have a further opinion at this time

Okay, I think I've figured out my layout. I'm not really sure how a bell siphon works, though, so I'm not sure I've put it on the drawing correctly.

And as for Paint, it's all I've got, but I've learned to do some cool things with it.

Do you understand how an autosiphon works? (water rises until it starts a siphon, then siphon drains tank until it sucks air and breaks siphon. Repeat forever. Beautiful concept with some issues in practice.)
A bell siphon is just an autosiphon that has a lot of it's plumbing hidden inside itself.


Looks good and quite understandable, so it works! If you feel the urge to try sketchup, the non-pro version is a free download. Someday I'll learn it, too. *grin*

Nah stay with paint, I like having a friend

As for the plumbing.

You have what looks like a siphonlike pipe exiting your fish tank. This, set up with the height I see will cause your fish tank to overflow.
But this is not the problem. You siphon should empty the growbed, not the fish tank.
your fish tank should have a simple overflow into the growbeds.

The siphon then allows the growbeds to fill, once full it engages, thereby draining the bed.
This happens over and over.

See this thread for diagrams of how a basic system hangs together: Useful Aquaponics Diagrams

Here is one diagram you may find useful


this is how a bell siphon works.
the principal is identical to a loop siphon, only the shape differs

So if your diagram was altered to look like this, things might actually work out for you.



Another more common (and I'd probably suggest it now that I've had a think) option is to have a siphon on each bed.
This will allow the beds to have different fill times, so you can have a 'dry' bed and a 'wet' bed depending on the plants involved.
It will also remove the need for the beds to be all at exactly the same height, and allow you to shut off a bed for servicing if you need to.

also if you want to be able to easily edit your images, same them as a GIF or PNG, not JPG... JPG compression algorithm may make the image very small, but it leaves horrible little artifacts everywhere that makes the paint 'fill' utulity absolutely useless.

That really helps!

I'm planning on starting a little system made with gallon jugs and aquarium parts and run with goldfish to test out all the plumbing and work out the kinks before I start building the big system. I'll probably start that in April, as soon as I can get a pump and some hoses.

Cool, I look forward to hearing more of it and seeing some photos

Just be ware that with extra small plumbing and aquarium stuff, clogging and cleaning of the pumps and little piping will be more of an issue than with an outdoor large system where you oversize the plumbing to make your life easier.

Anything with 1/2" or smaller pipe needs regular attention to keep things from plugging up with bio-slime.

Here's my latest drawing. I think this one will work. (crosses fingers)


Hubby's not quite on board with me yet. It's kind of frustrating.

I have found that they come around if you stick to your guns. Plant the seed first and let it grow.
My DH (dear husband) just rolls his eyes and says there she goes again. He's kinda used to it now.
Bless his cotton socks.