Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

The space allows for extra beds to be added to this 3000 litre fish tank, which can support up to 6 growbeds in total.

"Oh yeah! I just had a cup of tea while I was waiting for the tank to fill." Come on now, no sitting down on the job, you are supposed to be working Carl!

Another hard day, another install and yet another happy customer

What's with the title Faye ?

Well it could be a 4 bed family system, but they on;ly wanted 2 beds to start with. The extra beds can be added as needed. Does that make sense CD?

Yep - thanks

May I ask 1 question?

Why do you guys build "halo's" for water distribution? The water gets to the "whole" GB from bottom up anyway?

Even distribution

Dont believe that sorry

Even with the HALO, it would be lucky to distribute 5% from the top down

I have never understood this either Erich. All mine just drop in at a single point and I get good growth over all the beds

It's multifunction. To distribute solids around the edge of the bed so they aren't all dumped in the one place, and to keep the water away from sunlight.

I will accept to distribute the solids, however wouldn't think a full sized HALO would be needed (extra expense of elbows etc) or be of benefit. It would only benefit the larger solid mass's as the others would easily flow around in between the media you have. As a lot of people are adopting some sort of Solids removal, see this as less of a reason and would forgo this space and have just that little bit of extra room I like to stick my garlic in (unless ive missed something?)

If you distributing water all around the GB with a HALO like that, your water to surface area ratio just went through the roof compared to something a lot smaller that does not splash

Im an analyst (or anal-ist as its called in the trade), need to understand things 110% - sometimes more

Ah, I hadn't thought of the second one - Ta !

Nice point about the extra aeration to Erich !

There was a post some time ago about a certain type of bacteria that only lived where the fish crap was. And the theory went that if there was only one outlet then there was only a small surface area where that could live, where as if there were multiple outlets then you increase the areas where that "shit eating bacteria" could live, and thus increase the amount of fish poo that they could process.

I'm going from memory here, and I don't remember how scientific it was.

Would be interesting to find that out. If the bacteria had 1 larger pile or many smaller piles, you would potentially still have the same amount and im sure in greater numbers, would do a better job

The same amount will come out of the delivery pipe with or without a HALO, that's your bottleneck

My water just dumps straight in, and after a year I have noticed that the expanded clay under the inlet flow is eroded by being moved against each other. While the damage to the clay is minimal is may cause problems over time, so maybe the distribution grid is a good idea

Ahhh, your not taking everything into account... A full ring also means that there are no points for solids to build up within the pipe, there's no "end" of the flow and pressure is equal. You would be amazed how solids can build up in a system with big fish if you dump them in the one spot, even small solids.

Why would you want to take your solids out when they have a large percentage of nutrient within them and feed is a large input cost? And solids removal has a cost as well, probably more than a bit of pipe n fittings... But this is all a different subject. You asked why WE did it, and the answer is for the above reasons, after years of trial and error, we found this works well...

Every system is different.

Besides, your not really losing any space, 25mm around the edge? plant your garlic in the middle and other things near the edge, we have plants come up between the pipe and the growbed and hang over the sides of the bed, so in reality, no space is lost at all.