Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well thanks Dave and Ryan. I appreciate the comments. For aeration I was thinking of using a rotary blower as well as the splash.

I sorta dread filling the beds with media. Plan to use pea gravel. Probably just get a dump truck load and work from there. I'm not too worried about aesthetics, my wife just wants tomatoes.

Do tomatoes do well in constant flood? I think the whole system will be easier to manage with constant pumping and constant flood. May be able to get by with a smaller pump, will probably use two for redundancy.

Anytime bud. I think a blower is a great idea for the aeration side of things. In my experience they do great in constant flooded scenerios as long as you can maintain DO levels.

Ive got a buddy with a constant flooded gravel bed and he buried diffusers throughout the length (pretty long trough). The bubbles have to work around all the gravel so you get a long retention time and great oxygen transfer into the water. It also does a great job of breaking down waste but im sure it's going to stink when it comes time to clean the diffusers. I don't think you have to go that far b/c your troughs are only 10' but I would still take some DO readings when everythings up and running to see where you stand.

Ryan, I like the idea of the diffusers in the growbed. Although I was thinking of a peice of pvc pipe with small holes in it. Not sure if I will try that now. All that aeration adds energy consumption.

Okay, I have screwed up already. I'll blame it on old age, I haven't used these tanks in years.

The grow bed tanks are 8 feet long and 22 inches wide on the inside, and still 12 inches high. That comes out to 109 gallons full to the top. 100 gallons at eleven inches deep. 91 gallons at ten inches deep. Didn't change my calculations much except now I have nearly two extra feet of room.

These GB tank stands are already made with two levels of tanks in each stand. Can anyone think of a reason to leave them like that?

I can't, the top tanks would be too high and the bottom tanks wouldn't get enough sunlight. I suppose with little pumps I could make the top a growbed that drains into a lower FT. I could have ten small seperate systems. Nah, sounds like a pain.

Hey JP... I'll try and attach a 3d version of your drawing here, it will be compressed, so you'll have to unzip it first. Yep, look down the bottom of this post for the "ap2.rar" file.

Also if you want a real simple way to get your picture out of Sketchup, click File - Export - 2D graphic, this saves it as a jpg.

Wow EB, that's awesome! Thank you very much.

I know enough about computers to get myself in trouble. The sketchup sure helps.
Can you tell me the best unzip program to use. Apparently I don't have one yet.

Okay, I played around and downloaded WinZip15 and got it to open. Thank you

Oh, whoops, yeah I just figure everyone has a zipping program installed.....


Wasn;t quite sure of the height of your fish tanks, just invented that...

That was great. I am not on top of computer stuff. I changed the sketch a little. One round tank is elevated now. 1009 wide x 512 high. So won't load now. Apparently when this computer crashed, the new boot up didn't include a picture editor program, so it won't resize until I work something out.

Ahhhhh, you need this thread, first post has a link.... viewtopic.php?f=4&t=107

Which will work with XP... not with Vista or Windows 7...

In which case you need... http://imageresizer.codeplex.com/releases/view/30247

Nice growbeds, dude.

Regarding your double-decker stands - do you have stands for all your growbeds?

You are correct in your assumption that the sunlight won't get to the bottom half as well as the top half. And growing tomatoes in the top half, it would take a ladder to harvest the product.
Not good for tomatoes. Get an indeterminate variety and they'll be out of reach in no time.

IMO, I'd take a sawzall to the top of the lower part of the stand to seperate the top half from the bottom half, weld a "foot" onto the newly cut bottom leg, and there you have two stands.

Thanks Bill, yes I have stands for all 20 GB's. I like your idea of dividing top from bottom stand. Most likely will divide them in that manner.

Here is a butchered version of the EB sketchup. Not very good on my part, but portrays idea of floating raft/sump tank in center of elevated GB's. The FT is elevated.
Comments, criticisms?
Thanks to all,
jd

Great to see you've been playing with the sketchup.....

So... you're going to be running this Chift Pist... with the overflow feeding the growbeds... and the growbeds feeding the raft tank... pumped back to fish tank??

What's the head back from the raft bed to the elevated tank??