Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi Everyone!

I have a new system that I've been running for about 3 months now. A bit smaller than my greenhouse setup.

I've had a 45 gallon tank in the house for awhile and I was sick of spending $5.00/week replacing the filters and changing water. It was very time consuming. My wife (who appears to be in charge of our interior design) said I could convert it to an AP system as long as it looked nice and was quiet! This is what I came up with.....

Also, here's a link to a video I made of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NAiTEq9w5o

great work as always.......

thanks for the vid....

JT

very neato

Wish I had thought of that overflow setup before drilling holes in the side of my tank.

Very neat system there

Very cool! I'm setting up a small indoor system at school, and you've given me some great ideas. Would you mind sharing a little more of the construction details of your FT overflow? It's a little hard to see in the video. In particular, how is it supported? and what did you use to make the cup itself?

I'll draw up a parts diagram and post it..........

Excellent!
thanks for posting such a clear diagram.

Is that air tube there to automatically suck air from the top of the overflow?

I first put it in to suck the air out of the overflow siphon to get the system running. I recall someone (maybe TCLinx?) did this and used an aquarium back flow device to keep the air from going back in.

I didn't have one so I just stuck it down the standpipe to let it keep siphoning a little bit. I soon discovered that the little bit of siphon would also pull out any air out of the top of the water bridge so it would reduce the chance of if failing.

It's still possible to get air in the bridge if the tube clogs with goo....but it at least reduces the chance of failure.

I still don't understand how this water bridge works? Perhaps I am misunderstanding what it's purpose is.

Please correct me if I am wrong but it's designed to keep the water at a consistent level in the Aquarium?

Maybe this will help explain it better.

The goal is to keep a constant height in the fish tank and not to drill a hole in the side of the expensive tank.

To cut a long story short. The water bridge / no holes overflow acts as a tank overflow in situation where you can't create a simple overflow by drilling a hole in your tank.

It relies on equalizing pressure at either side to syphon water over the tank wall above the water line.

The video above explains additional features that are not required to understand its functionality in the simplest case.

could this be used to bridge a sump in two different tanks. say one tank with half this in it and another tank with the other with a pump feeding a system?