Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Made me remember mine, LOL, i was stressing bad, turned out to be an intermittent rouge spray............there is a pic early on in my system thread. I thought the IBC outlet that i'd seal up and that was 1m under the gound had sprung a leak.

Mine was caused by the undercut of water on the waterfall, trickling out over the edge. I usually simulate a 'drought' in the top pond this time of year anyway to speed up the growth of the tadpoles. My shed has gone in so I can start planning out a better spot for the small system. Then the BIG ONE.... muhahaha

Hi Everyone,Ive been consider just such a system ,as here in Weipa our power supply is not the most reliable and a system whose default state is flooded has the advantage of being able to stand the power being off for a while, as im guessing the plants and bacteria will turn up thier collective toes a lot quicker by drying out than by being flooded. As you said VB its not the flooding but the DO thats the critical factor. One other advantage is if the grow beds are carefully matched to the level of the fish tank then you dont need a sump tank, no level switches, and only one pump.

I like the idea of filling the growbed up then somehow keeping it full for the optimum time for the plants to get heaps of nutes then a really quick dump to re-oxygenate the water. Any ideas on a) what sort of optimal time that may be and b) how to keep the growbed full for a set period of time before dumping and c) wether I have completely lost the plot

c)

You're serious aren't ya? LOL

yep

Oh well. LOL Think I'll go and eat worms LOL

but what will your fish have for breakfast?

No - but seriously I think that the plants probably take what they need from the water very quickly and in small amounts. This is the reason for the old 'start and end of raceway has same nitrate level' comment. The plants probably have an almost constant need for small uptake of nitrate whenever photosynthesising.

Yeah, I agree, on that basis. My BIL is obsessed with the idea, so I thought it was time to float it. It would be an i9nteresting experiment. But don't get me wrong. I completely believe in the system as a whole, not as stages as such....

On the raft system, and digressing slightly, I took a very ill looking basil plant out of the raft and plopped it complete with net pot and hydro balls into the gravel bed. 4 days later it is showing dark green new groth as compared to the yellow looking rubbish. Still puzzled as to why, as you said, nutes were indiscernably different from fish tank to sump

I reckon one reason we have success in the gravel is that it also contains a certain amount of solids. If I play with my gravel nowdays my hands get grubby as. It was originally clean washed. If I dig a hole when the bed is flooded, the water in it is dark brown with crap - yet what ends up in the standpipe and flows back to the tank is crystal clear. It is all good.

Monya ,my idea was always to use an air lift ,buy a small centrifugal blower 200L min (about $180-$190) that way if i want to expand the system or add anoher node or run a small quarantine setup i just cut another bit of poly pipe!
The advantages as i see them are 1. great oxygenation 2. no moving parts under water 3.no danger of cross contamination even using one pump across a number of systems 4. cheap 5. can run an air lift to vacume out the bottom of the fish tank.
Use one of your fishhighway u bendsto connect the fish tank and the growbed, have them levelso when the fish tank is full so is the growbed, the ubend connects to one end of the growbed an airlift draws from the bottom of the fish tank and dumps into the other end of the growbed, the fishtank is drawn down by the air lift and the growbedtopped up . There is no flood and drain, just oxygenation and circulation.

I like it a LOT

Really. No holes, no drains, no sump and no worries about dropping the level in the fish tank to an unworkable level on the flood cycle. I think I might just have found a way to set up my ebay troughs! Tim B hang around!