Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I've seen the second picture before, but not the first. WOW!!!

Thanks for the input.
Janet, I have a reasonable understanding and respect for the nitrogen cycle, I have been keeping fish in an aquarium for about 20 years.
gnash- I understand that there is no such thing as maintenance free, but neglect is a reality of life, and I want to plan on it, instead of having it bite me when I'm not expecting it. There is planting, testing, etc, but with my fish tanks I get around to doing the 10% water change closer to once per quarter than once a month. The fish get fed most days, but not necessarily every day, heck, if the kids didn't complain, (and me too), I'm not sure we'd get around to eating every day. The lawn gets mowed, but it may be 2 weeks between mowings. The garden gets planted, but then things get busy and the weeds come out.

What I'm trying to say is that once I get things running, I'm hoping to have the maintenance be more of the type of feed the fish, pick dinner salad, and occasionally pick out some fish for dinner. The more salad etc. I get, the more things will get checked on. (I know that's not how things should be, but it's reality.)

Janet, I'm working on a simple A/B selector that when one bed starts the autosiphon, it would switch inflow to bed B. This would help keep the fish tank from getting too low. I would be tempted to use this if i do the 3-barrel system.
-Doug

Several other threads concerning automating autosiphons .... seems to be somewhat problematical.

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=696

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... highlight=

How do you propose to do it ... Elkaybee and others would be intrigued

Good, glad to hear you have experience with the fish. IMHO, the fish part is the harder part here.

My aquariums also got infrequent water changes and testing. The fish were fine. Neglect is an art.

I have followed these threads with interest. My idea is rather simple, (therefore lower chances of failure), but not very scaleable.
Difficult to describe without the ability to diagram right now. I will attempt to describe, and when I get time, I'll draw out a diagram.

A vertical riser out of flexible tubing going about 5-10 cm (2-4") above the two adjacent growbeds. Terminate it with a T, Extend the T about 10-15cm (4-6") out each side and end it in elbows with a slight upturn (to create a small puddle of water in the tube to keep it down once it tips.
Run a string tied onto the elbow over a pully, and down to a leaky bucket under the autosiphon outlet for the bed. Do this same configuration on each bed.
The way this works is when the autosiphon initiates, the water fills the leaky bucket, which pulls on the string, which lifts the elbow, thus diverting the water into the other bed. After the autosiphon breaks the siphon, the bucket empties out, but the weight of the water in the elbow keeps the water flowing into the other bed until the autosiphon on the other bed kicks in and tips the flow the other way.

I hope that made sense, I'll see if I can get a drawing in for better understanding.

It sorta makes sense. Shades of a Rube Goldberg mechanism. It sounds failure-prone to me, but maybe I'm not understanding fully. Whatever design you do end up with, make sure you have failover. Ie, what happens if a bed over fills, what if no beds fill, etc etc.

Seeing that you are happier working with water and mechanisms (me too) rather than electronics, I have another suggestion for you. Dual auto-siphons. It seems they are used commercially to alternately flood two septic fields. I believe that you can even purchase them, but maybe you could make them, too. The idea is that a raised holding tank has two identical auto-siphons mounted in it. As the tank fills the auto-siphons begin to prime. Even though the siphons are identical, one of them will kick off first, draining the tank and leaving the other auto-siphon partially primed. The next time the tank fills, the partially-primed siphon will kick off first.

You could use the holding tank as an elevated float bed, dump the water into one of two gravel grow beds, and then let the gravel growbeds auto-siphon back into the fish tank.

Here...pictures and everything for dual autosiphons.

http://www.siphons.com/operationdual.html

I like it. The design would have to change, but it would be simple, fairly idiotproof (a good idea) and reduce the amount of water taken from the tank.
I would need to ensure that the water expended by the holding tank were enough to kick off the autosiphon from the growbeds back into the base tank.... (calculating, counting on fingers) - I believe that the number was 40-50% of the volume of the growbed ends up being water, so for my 1/2 drums, I would need about about 20-25 gal (80-100l) in the duckweed/floating bed tank, - or I could use that as a aeroponics/cloning bed, (seeing the overengineering kick in, and the low cost thoughts fly out the window), hmm... This stuff is addictive, and I haven't even started yet....

Actually, Just thinking about it, the holding tank could be another grow bed - gravel filled and everything. I would just need to make sure that it was deeper than the other two grow beds....Put a 1/2 pipe drainage pipe in the bottom to make sure that the autosiphons were pressure balanced, put identical autosiphons on each end, and drain it into the 2- 1/2 barrel beds. The beds would then autosiphon (at a slightly lower level) back to the main tank - which would equalize back to the pumping tank.... I need to draw this out!

Thanks Janet!
btw- I don't have problems with electromechanical or electronic systems, except they are more complex, and therefore prone to problems. Small, indepent systems are less prone to breakage, therefore more robust.
-Doug

MWAAA HA HA HA. Igor, ve haf created a monster!!!! It's aliiiiive!!!!

Your comments are right on the money, except I don't understand the part about the 1/2 drainage pipe. That's ok though. Go draw it up, contemplate, re-draw and then post it.

btw, your upper growbed/holding tank will be filling twice as often as the lower two. That could be an advantage: put your watercress and wasabi up there, and put plants that don't want quite as much water in the lower beds. With my implementation, each of (eventually) 3 beds runs off its own pump. It has occurred to me that I can cycle the beds at different frequencies, too.

but it doesn't have a sprinkler system!!!!!!!!!!! :tongue3: :tongue1:

Go for it Greenedo - love to see some pics

Here are some rough sketches to explain my current incarnation.

I have done 3 views, layered as it were.
The top images show the bottom layer with 2 attached tanks (the sump tank, and the pump tank. These are equalized with an adjoining pipe.
The middle images are the tanks with 1/2 barrel growbeds on top. These autosiphon into the sump tank.
The bottom image shows it with the top tank which will have dual autosiphons using a combination of the simmo siphon and Janet's idea of the balanced/alternating autosiphons.

In keeping with the cautions and experiences gleaned from Monya, I have a single pump with all flow going back to the bottom tanks.

If all three tanks fill (drains get blocked, and it overflows), the max water used would be 82.5gal*(40%-50% water in the beds) = 33-41.25 gal or in metric, 330 l*(40-50%)=132-165l. This out of 2 55-gal (220l) barrels (not able to fill completely due to cutouts in the top - assume 80% full = 88gal (352l) means we are using a max of 47% of the water in the sump/bottom tank, though in practice, we will only be using 1/3 of that - 16% or 14 gal (55l) in normal use.
Still need to work out the support structure...

Comments?

Oh, I forgot to explain the 1/2 drainage pipe.
Split corrugated perforated drain pipe in half, and lay along the length of the 1/2 barrel. Autosiphons get their water from inside this pipe. The pipe keeps the gravel out of the autosiphon, it also gives greater area for the gravel to drain into. The other benefit is that since the dual autosiphons in the top bed need to be balanced, so having the 1/2 pipe between them should keep them equalized.

Good planning... Will enjoy seeing pics when you have it up and running.

Just one pump right? That makes life so much easier.

Autosiphons = no moving parts (except water)
gravel = no moving parts (except water)
Tanks = no moving parts (except fish)
pump = 1 moving part

I'm trying to design problems out of the system. We'll see how it works....

If I can just get all my honey-do list taken care of, I may get to work on this beginning of 07.