Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi wonderful AP lovers,

I'm new here and to AP and I'm pretty excited about it. Over the past 3 days I've put together my own 2-bed AP system for my balcony. I recently moved from New York to Tampa (I grew up here) and although I'd planned to rent a house, I ended up in an apartment on the second floor with a balcony. So my plans for a insane mega system filled with all types of crazy green goodies were whittled into the setup I have now.

I built a custom frame for my two grow beds out of PVC and I must admit I'm going to have to do some work on it, I don't like it but it'll do for now. I went to the Tractor Supply Co. in Plant city and bought a 40 gallon stock tank (the 110 gallon wouldn't fit in my car) and a 26 gallon all-purpose mixing tub that I'm using as a grow bed (I picked up a second similar one from Home depot). Then I went to Worms Way and spent too much money on a pump, 120Liters of Hydroton (2 50l bags and 2 10l bags that I stupidly thought would be enough), 2 fill drain kits (only $7e), tubing, plant food until I get my live animals in the tank, and I'm sure something else I've forgotten.

I set it all up (photos attached) and now I'm just cycling the water, cleaning the clay balls and thinking about making an auto-siphon. I have some questions for you folks:

I want a fill and drain system. But right now it's continuous until I make an auto-siphon. My grow beds are 32 inches long, 24 inches wide and 8 inches deep. If I make an auto-siphon for the grow beds, will it drain all of the water out?

I ask because right now, there is water always in the bed up to the top of the standpipe where it's flowing back out and back into the tank below. I would think this would be a problem with having the roots sitting in water all the time in a non-raft system. I'm new so I'm just trying to make sure I'm on the right path.

Also, the water kinda just trickles out of the fill fixture from the pump and when I lift it up just a couple of inches, the water stops so it's not a very powerful pump (160 g/h) is this enough or should I shoot for a more powerful pump?

I'm planning to start with 5 marbled crayfish and possibly some goldfish or koi but ultimately, I'd like 2-4 blue talapia or silver perch.




All the photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=6 ... 8e09fca74d

hay there and welcome!!!!!! Warning, this is addicting, you will need to get yourself a house with a yard so you can continue to greater endeavors.

But until then, I'm glad you got started with the space you have!!!!

Yes, you probably will need a more powerful pump but maybe not. If you are up to some plumbing with a little bit of PVC, you might be able to get more flow out of a little one by up sizing the plumbing a bit and running it as straight up to the beds as possible. I've noticed that a little pump hooked to flexible tubing doesn't move as much water as that same pump with an adapter plumbed to some larger PVC running as short a line as possible up to the grow beds.

One note, I notice you have your stand pipes buried. I would suggest that you put a larger pipe with holes in it around the stand pipe to keep the media back from it, this way you can check the drain and make sure it isn't getting clogged with anything and also have access and a place to put the bell siphons if you decided to try that.

If you get a bigger pump and have enough flow to add a spray head to the fish tank as well as feeding the grow beds, you might not need an additional air pump but if you stay with a small water pump you will definitely need an air pump to bubble the fish tank.

Flood and drain is not mandatory but most plants seem to like it a bit better but with shallow grow beds that you have, getting siphons to work well might be a challenge so timed flood and drain would probably be better, in which case a stronger pump to flood the beds quickly and turn over the tank water in a short period of time and a timer to operate the pump and an air pump to keep the aeration up between pump cycles would be important.

Good Luck with it, I recommend fishless cycling before getting fish but that is because I hate stress and withholding food from animals.

+1 on everything TC said

I recently changed out my pump for a smaller one and the only thing I had on hand was funny pipe (same as yours). Once igot proper PVC in, the water throughput doubled (at least).

Also to loose a little bit of head height, you could put the bottom tank up on a few bricks.

Good to see you jumping straight in there Threewest.

Thanks everyone for your awesome thoughts! I'm going to see about implementing your suggestions. I bought some pipe today to make a couple of auto-siphons. I'll see how that goes. The same company that makes the mixing tubs makes one that is longer and 12inches deep and I think that one would have been ideal but I can't afford it at this time. I'll have to keep in mind about getting deeper GBs at some point.

I read a lot about AP online and watched the Aquaponics Made Easy video, that helped me plan this setup but I know there is more I have to do to this little system to make it work the best it can.

Now that you mentioned it, when I saw the water flow was low, I was thinking about getting a more powerful pump and using this little one to splash water over the water surface.

I also like the fill and drain on a timer and thought that's was the only fill and drain setup possible. I bought a timer but I'm trying to figure out the best way to use it. I would think I should let the beds fill then have the pump shut off as soon as it fills to whatever level it needs to be. but how long should I wait before I have it kick back on?

One other reason I thought I might need a siphon was because I'm confused about what to expect in the drain process. So if I did a fill and drain via timer or not, the bed won't drain below the top of the stand pipe so that means several inches of water will always be in the GB. Is this the desired effect?

Would an autosiphon get rid of all the water in the GB?

No worries, I'm not getting live animals for a while. I only planted my seeds in my seed starter this evening. I'm planning to get the system tweaked and running while those get started and when they are ready, just plant the plants for a little while, then later on add the live animals.

Thanks again!

You might want to read up on fishless cycling so you could cycle up the system before getting live animals and that will also provide some nutrients to the plants until you get the live animals to feed.

There are a couple ways to manage flood and drain.

If you do it with a timer, you will need some small holes around the base of your stand pipes so that the water will be able to drain down below the tops of the stand pipes. So then the beds will fill (a small trickle going out the holes around the bottom of the stand pipe but hopefully the pump is still strong enough to fill the beds faster than that small trickle can drain them) once the bed is full up to the desired height the excess water will flow through and down the top of the stand pipe so the bed doesn't overflow but stays as the desired flood depth (generally about an inch below the surface of the gravel) until the timer turns the pump off. Hopefully the holes in the bottom of the stand pipe are big enough to drain the bed in the period of time the pump is off. So how long should the pump be on and off, well there is more to it than simply flooding the bed. You want to move at least the volume of your fish tank around each hour so having the pump run a little longer while the excess goes down the stand pipe back to the fish tank is a good thing for circulation and aeration. But to tell you the truth, most people simply go with 15 minutes on and 45 minutes off because that is simple with the inexpensive mechanical timers that have 15 minute intervals. Some might do slightly different intervals like 15 on 15 off to get more circulation each hour while others might need to do 30 on and 30 off just because their pump doesn't fill the bed in the 15 minutes. The main goals are to run the pump long enough to flood the beds and circulate enough water and then leave the pump off long enough for the beds to drain (or add more holes in the stand pipe if the beds don't drain fast enough and the pump is easily able to fill the beds long before the timer is gonna turn off.)

The other common method of flood and drain usually uses auto siphons and continuous pumping. This method is a bit easier with deeper beds since it still usually leaves an inch or so of water in the bottom of the grow bed.

I advise looking in the Useful info section (actually both the useful info and basic info sections are fairly short and good reads before you get too far into all this) for the Useful Diagrams thread with will probably have many pictures that could help explain much of this easier than words.

Good Luck!

Thanks again for all of your helpful info. You're right, the diagrams are helpful. I'd seen them some time ago and had forgotten where I'd seen them. I'll finish checking them out and do more reading.

I made the larger pipe adjustments and got a slightly more powerful pump at 365g/h. I also put small holes in my drain setup so the beds drain as low as possible. All pipes and grow beds are secured to the stand with zip ties. So now I'm working on the timer. I have two but neither seem to be able to do what I want. The digital one only has 20 on/off settings (I'm assuming I need 24 if I need to flood the bed for 10-15 minutes every hour) and the mechanical one only allows 30 minute intervals (with the bigger pump, letting it run for 30 minutes at a time is too much). So I have to keep looking for the right timer. Weird thing is many in Home Depot, Walmart, Lowes don't have the intervals on the package (at least not for the 3 pronged outlets). As you can see, my seeds have sprouted so I have to get this thing ready for planting.

For the initial cycling, letting it run 30 min on 30 min off is probably fine so long as it doesn't flood above the media while it's running (if it does flood above the media, you might need bigger stand pipes because the top of the stand pipe is essentially your overflow and you should be able to just let the pump run and have the overflow keep up no matter how long it runs (otherwise what happens if a timer malfunctions and the pump stays on, this can happen on occasion.

I have found a mechanical timer that works for outdoor and has 15 minute intervals (you won't find any digital timers able to do hourly cycles 24 hours a day. At least I've never found one that could do more than 14 hours of that.)
Here is the timer I'm using in a few places currently.

Thanks! I'll see if i can get that one. Right now I'm using the digital timer to turn the pump off after 15 minutes for 20 hours since it only allows 20 settings and then its off for 4 hours. It'll do for now but I will want to get a 24 hour one. The 30 minute one I'm using for the grow light now.