Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

DD, the idea of gravel in the sump tank has passed through my mind constantly and the very fact you have stated it in here makes such a crystal and painful sense that I'm beginning to think I ought to "just do it" !

And Sandman, thanks for your tip on turbulent waters... it's a detail worth thinking on. I appreciate it.

I think it will be OK to do it as long as the water is constantly moving and/or there is an air stone pumping air into it. If it were only occasionally getting flow and air then I wouldn't consider it. The anaerobic conditions would be disastrous!

Another variation would be to tune the volumes so that the sump and the grow beds trade water ala a tidal effect. Water would be pumped out of the sump to fill the beds then draining out of the beds to empty them and fill the sump again.

The idea is great, just don't forget that you are losing 2/3 of your sump water volume.

So, is the open space in the sump gravel the "sump sump"?

bleh that was one of the thoughts I had... if I put gravel in wouldn't that take up space? but if your sump possible volume is the same or bigger than the sum of your growbed volume then it shouldn't be a problem. This is as long as you keep the pump right at the bottom and covered in water. If both the sump and the growbeds are filled with the same gravel then the volume for the water to fill up will be the same won't it?

Yep.

Don't forget to allow for some (several cm?) unusable volume that the pump needs to have filled with water all the time.

Yep it's a bit of a tradeoff and a healthy-sized sump would absorb some of the loss of volume. If the volumes are too tight like not enough to account for evaporation loss then you'll be topping it up very often which is annoying.

I'm sure one could come up with a clever fill device to keep levels just right, but I agree that it will be far more touchy than a normal sump.

The idea also requires that all growbeds are full at the same time and drain empty together: it will not work with multiple growbeds running on autosiphons.

Ha as if OBO's own disaster wasn't enough.... THe biggest thunderstorm I haven't seen in a lloooooong time just haaaaad to happen on us west coast perthies. everything was wrecked! hailstones the size of a softball or cricket ball whichever is your fancy, dents on cars everywhere, there were several roofs that collapsed huuuuuuuge puddles on lots of roads and tree and plant matter everywhere.. it's a mess! I'm lucky dad predicted a thunderstorm yesterday and I put my outdoor things away just for that. Anyhow, my beautiful seedlings got wrecked i hope it's not still there in the morning when I plant a new tray of seeds

All my disaster wrecked was a couple of pipe fittings

Where's the pics? Even I got pics at 2.30 am

I gotta admit - that was an impressive effort OBO - above and beyond the call of duty ! Should be some sort of medal.

Hope the new seedilings got in OK Jen.

gah... the quick reply function doesn't seem to work...

anyhow...
I think the sky's gone clear today... it seems that the weather just had a short loss of temper for only 12 hours. I'm just glad my car isn't dented. Had to rake the front, will do the seed sowing tomorrow - above ground crops with inner seeds veggies like cucumbers, tomatoes and capsicum I'm thinking maybe some carnations and dianthus too..

Just a quick update for anyone who wants to know.

The seedlings are going very well thanks for asking. half of them were wrecked but the other half that survived grew well enough for me to give half of the survivors away to other family. Currently I'm trying to grow brussel sprouts and carrots. and watching the seedlings grow into beautiful vines. There are a lot of pests going around so I'm watching out for them like a hawk.

My corrugated system has now been dismantled, I'm getting a bigger Fishtank. The corrugated tank will move to the cubby house where it will supply water for my tropicals. It can act as a emergency tank should any HSM in the other AP systems occur.

I have 2 new regular systems which I think works very well apart from the minor leaks every now and again (loose pipes).


This system is holding my lebanese cucumber and tomato seedlings that survived. The rest have been given away. the 2nd container from the left has my strawberry plant and is currently growing 6 fruit... they are only 2 days old !
I'll be rearranging them so that each container has a ground grower(rosem or strawbs) and a climber (toms or cukes) I'm looking forward to the results as I've been so much more organised this year so i'm hoping for a nice yield.


In this one, notice that the sumptank and fish tank are the other way around. I'm hoping that this allows me to change my fishtank should I want a bigger or smaller one. I'm considering buying the 500L sumptank from BYAP shop when my bottom line is reasonably higher than my "spending" limit. It might be a few weeks before that happens.
This system doesn't have any plants or fish in it atm, I'll be moving a few of the big goldfish from the ShedAP to this one to start kicking it along because the other one is getting a little bit toxic. I am a little worried actually about the ammonia levels in the ShedAP but if I move the fish, it hopefully will decrease that.

The cubbyhouse picture will be in the next post tomorrow as when I took the above pictures it was getting a bit dark. Aaaaand I am planning to put the plastic roofing on the cubby house so there will be some before and after pictures. I'm still working on how I'm going to arrange the growbeds on the cubbyhouse floor.....

Last Thursday and this morning, I went to gardenweek show and there was a couple there called Waterwise Tanks. I don't know if they're like husband/wife thing but they certainly looked the part. they had a really cool aquaponic setup. You know how there's people making these no-dig corrugated tanks without the bottom? there's different sized ones and some in different kinds of materials.. anyway.. this company has a smaller one with a bottom sitting on a platform INSIDE a bigger one so it's like the fish go in the bigger one and the veggies and hydroton go in the smaller one... it's clever! I can't believe I didn't take a picture of it...

Looking good Jens! Was a bugger about your fence falling down and taking your pipes out with it.
All good now. Hey, that does sound like a good idea with two tanks. Can you explain how it works. How do you get to the vegies if they are in the middle?

Ummmmm..how toxic? What is the ammonia level? Is it so high simply because it is not cycled? Any reason not to add some bacteria from one of your cycled systems and get it going?

Ummmmm..how toxic? What is the ammonia level? Is it so high simply because it is not cycled? Any reason not to add some bacteria from one of your cycled systems and get it going?