Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi I finally got around to joining I have been reading and looking for tanks and GB for a while now and I have found some on a farm out the back of now where. I was talking to my neighbour about Ap and its not what you know but who you know. I only got my tank yesterday for $1000, pretty happy with that the plumbing is still in place for draining to the sump, they were used in the crayfishing industry. The tank is 6m x 2m divided into 6 beds 650mm deep. I have cut 4 beds in half and will make 4 more beds. The other two beds I will use for my fish tank removing the middle panel. Should I remove the middle panel completely or cut some good sized holes in it ? Down the bottom I was thinking and pump from both sides at once to the GB. Use a 1000 lt sump. Flood and drain system am I correct in thinking I can run 8 beds (600lt ea) fish tank 2400lt and 1000lt sump. Your help and advice would be handy and welcomed. Cheers to the home brewers as well. Cheers

Nice One

I want one. Oh and welcome

Neat setup going to look great. Might be a bit hard to get to the center of the growbeds with out some sort of walkway tho.

Personally I would put a 50mm hole in the middle wall. That way it can be closed off and the two tanks run separately for isolation etc when required.

Welcome... It has been a long day for me so hopefully I giving you the right information. For a 600L growbed, you will need approximately 240L of water (600x0.4). This varies depending on the media you use, etc... For 8x 600L growbeds, you will need approximately 1920L of water...

If you are running 2 pumps, then your fish tank level could drop quite low before the sump starts topping it back up.

If you are running CHIFT PIST (1 pump) and SLO from fish tank to the growbeds, then your sump is not big enough.

Great score on those tanks! I'd say go with the 50 mm hole, but make sure you have some form of solids removal, via pump or SLO from both sides, and maybe make more than one hole, right at the bottom.

Using two pumps in the FT sounds a bit dodgy, more points of failure. One of the great things about CHIFT/PIST is that theres the redundancy of your FT not being drained in case of failure.

Can definately run that volume of GB, the ST size is a different issue but I think Ivan cleared it up nicely.

Looks like it will be a really nice system when it comes together, keep at it

Welcome to the addiction New Mc
Good score with the tanks
Look forward to seeing pics of your AP progress