Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi
Have started my system with an IBC and half barrels.
The first stage will have an ibc for fish tank and sump and 8 half barrels for grow beds, the barrels are in place and the plumbing almost finished. (Think i will slice about 350mm off each side of an IBC next stage, it will cost more than 4 barrels but will be a lot cheaper on the plumbing.)
The fish tank i have to cut the top off yet and fit the syphon pipe to feed the grow beds

Could some one explain what size pipe is best for the syphon pipe and how it is fitted through the tank side, the IBCs don't seem very strong to support a pipe if it is off the bottom of the tank to syphon the fish waste.
From the forums i have read there seems to be different sizes of pipes used.

What about medium for the grow beds, blue metal is the cheapest i have seen with pea gravel next, anyone know were i can get something a bit better in Perth WA at a reasonable price.

I eventualy want to have three IBC fish tanks side by side which leads me to the question can i start with a pump large enough to fill the three when installed but feeding only one tank now.

Cheers
Eddie

[quote="edroe"]
Could some one explain what size pipe is best for the syphon pipe and how it is fitted through the tank side, the IBCs don't seem very strong to support a pipe if it is off the bottom of the tank to syphon the fish waste.
From the forums i have read there seems to be different sizes of pipes used.
[quote]

Hi Ed,

Is "CHOP" like "CHIFT PIST" only with less letters? if so:

By siphon pipe I guess you mean "SLO" as if it was a true siphon your fish might get a bit dry. The general consenses is the bigger the SLO the better as you are relying on gravity to feed the GBs and bigger pipes are less likely to clog and offer less resistance to flow and therefore can move water faster. I have 40mm SLO and pipe to feed the GBs but only a 32mm bulkhead fitting in the tank wall and this is only just cutting the mustard for a 4,500L tand and 2000L of GB, I will probably up grade to two 60mm SLOs and bulkhead fittings when I expand my system by adding a bigger ST and more GBs. For a 1000L IBC I think 32mm minimum SLO, 40mm would be better.

People use bulkhead fittings and something called a "uniseal" which I have never used, don't worry about trying to keep the bottom of the SLO off the floor of the FT, just cut some crenulations in the bottom of the pipe to let the water and crud out and they you don't have to worry about the stress on you IBC wall or fish getting sucked up the pipe

Uniseal


Bulkhead fitting (yellow bit only)

Hi Ed

Couple of ideas that might help you:

1. Only cut out about half of the top of the IBC, this helps to keep some of the strength.

2. You don't want a syphon in your fish tank, you want an overflow. Drill a hole using a hole saw at the top of your IBC and use a tank bulkhead as suggested You can use other fittings to make the overflow but the bulkhead type fitting is easy and doesn't need any silicon. The tap at the bottom of your IBC (if it has one) can then be used to drain it if necessary.

3. Put a PVC T junction on the inside of the bulkhead fitting and run a piece of PVC pipe down to the bottom of the tank. The T junction and pipe will allow water to be drawn up from the bottom of the tank (gets the crap up off the bottom) but will not allow the tank to syphon dry.

I used 40mil pipe for my overflow, branching into 20mil for each growbed. I used 40mil for my returns to the sump. Some use bigger pipes but I haven't had any issues with 40mil.

Blue metal is fine but a little harsh on the fingers, pebbles are more finger friendly. The bigger pump will be fine, just put a T piece with a tap in the supply line and direct some of the flow directly back to the sump

Happy building

This is what I meant by an SLO, just drill or cut holes in the pipe that is at the bottom of the SLO that is at the bottom of the FT to let the water and crap out but keep the fish in.

Here is a CHIFT PIST system demonstrating the SLO concept (art work by TCLynx)



And here ia a better picture of a bulkhead fitting as the other one may have been confusing due to the fact that it has a thermometer sicking through it.



Cheers

Simo

Thanks Simo and Fishfodder

That makes things a lot clearer now so i will make it 40mm pipe in the tank and reduce down to 25mm over the grow beds
I have 40mm pipe for the return to the sump so no problem there

CHOP is the same as CHIFT-PIST from what i can see, the term was used on another forum and stands for constant hight (as in constant hight in fish tank) one pump

Any ideas on a quality pump and size needed to lift aprox 2mtrs, also timers to stop and start the water flow

Look for quality pumps that you can find a chart or curve to tell you how much water it moves at different heights. If they don't want to tell you that, you probably don't want that pump.

If you are doing timer operation, you will want a pump big enough to move the equivalent of your planned total fishtank volume during the amount of time it will be on each hour at the height you are asking of it.

So if you are planning 3, 1000 liter fish tanks and you will use a timer to run the pump for 15 minutes each hour. Then you need a pump that can move 3000 liters in 15 minutes or 120,000 liters an hour. I always advise to go a little bigger on the pump than needed cause you can always put a bypass in and send extra water back into the tank in which the pump lives which simply makes for more aeration.

Look for a pump that is efficient. Something that costs a little more now but saves electricity in the long run is a good idea. The more efficient pumps of high quality seem to last longer in my experience too.

If you were to set up your grow beds with auto siphons, you could get a smaller pump and run it constantly but then you would have to spend quite a bit of time getting flow rates balanced and figuring out siphons for the grow beds. Timer operation is pretty easy and so long as you are not dealing with an external (inline) non self priming pump above the water level, most high quality pumps can handle timer operation though some people will tell you it shortens pump life. (so far I've not had a submersible pump die that was running on a timer.)

Good Luck with it

Thanks for the help TCLynx
Will take on board what you have said and see what i can find here in West Australia

Think there is an extra 0 there! Poor fish would be in a jet.

I've been researching pumps atm, this site has a good list. http://www.creativepumps.com.au/zpumps/product_comp_chart/pumps_pcc/pump_comparison_8001_13000.htm
Easy to see how you can save your extra spent on a more expensive pump with running costs in a year.

oops I think you are right!

Hi everyone
Sorry for the delay in answering but it is a case of Telstra Fails Again.

Went to use the phone Friday morning and it was dead.
Rang Telstra on the mobile and spoke to a woman (Indian) who said there was a line down? and it wouldn't be fixed till Tuesday.
No warning and no appology, emergency's and customer service do not exsist with this company anymore.
Come Tuesday night and still no phone, rang them today and got put through to a technition who said he would check the line and get back to us.
He rang back and said he had to reset the line?, nothing about a line down or anything like that .

There is a black mark on my post, anyone know what it is.

I could put in a 120,000lph pump, should have the healthiest fish if they can swim against the current but don't know if they will put on any weight

When cutting an IBC horizontaly in two for grow beds the top section turned over is not even and will hold water permanently.
As plants don't like their roots in water permanently how is this overcome or is it not a problem in this kind of system.

Cutting the IBC verticaly gives two flat grow beds but then the frames would have to be altered, has anyone done it this way.

If you are figuring that one of the beds will have a slightly deeper section and that is what would hold extra water, I don't think I would worry too much about it since it will be an extra deep grow bed anyway right?

I have grow beds that are about 60 cm deep and I plumbed the drains out the sides of the beds and the way I did the stand pipe plumbing in some of them, there will always be about 10 cm of water in the bottom of the beds. So long as the rest of the bed floods and drains regularly, I don't believe having some water remain in the bottom of the bed is ever going to cause a problem.

We have a member who uses full depth IBC's as grow beds and he only floods and drains them half way, the bottom half of them always have some water in them. Since the water mixes and aerates on each flood and drain I don't believe this to be a problem.

We even have some members doing continuous flood media bed systems and they seem to be doing fine with it though they run highly aerated systems for their trout which might contribute to their success.

Thanks TCLynx

Hi again
A little bit more help needed please.
I am making progress with stage 1, will post some pics if i can work out how.
At the moment i have an IBC sump partley buried, one IBC fish tank and 8 half barrel grow beds ready to go. 2 part IBC grow beds to be added to this stage yet.
I borrowed a Pondmax 8000lph pump off my son for a trial run. The beds took 30mins to fill (a couple only 20min) and 35min to drain through 1x4.5mm hole.
I have 25mm feed pipe to the tank, off this two 13mm polypipe feeds back to the sump for stage 2 fish tank and had 25mm feed into stage 1 fish tank but this filled the tank to overflowing so added some fittings to reduce to 20mm outlet. This stoped the tank from overflowing but had to put a short peice of pipe in the overflow/slo to stop water running over the top of the T peice.
Would it fill the beds quicker if i let water run over the T peice or would stop the pick up of solids off the bottom of the tank.
The water entering the tank at the moment is going across the top of the water, would it be better to put an elbow on and run the warter downward for better airation or would this disturb the fish.
As the flow is fairley powerfull and i wouldn't want to restrict the pump to much and damage it do you think i could get away with a 4500lph pump and also save on electric.
As the beds are taking 30min to fill and 35min to drain would the system be ok if off for 90min before starting again this time of the year and then cycled more frequently in summer.Intend to extend the carport over system eventualy,hopfully before summer.
Water is a bit dirty even after all the washing, i read on the forum about eggs helping this but could not find if you just remove the shell and drop them in or beat themas in an omlett then drop them in.

Now the pics hopefully

Yeaaaa managed it
Didn't realize only three at a time, so here are the others

Any constructive comments appreciated