Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

It looks big but works well. You can reduce down to 40mm or whatever at the growbeds

Big is best yep its right

Im fighting the flu at the moment but got a couple things done yesterday.

bit more this morning.. now to figure out the piping.

Very neat Charlie......

Thanks EB, Im all ears if you or anyone has any ideas the best way to run this. Freoboy thinks I should have the new GB as a CF to help prevent water level fluctuation which sounds like the go. So Ill have the pump in the L/H FT feeding both GB's, they both drain to the L/H FT which will have a SLO feeding back to the R/H FT. I think Ill copy Arbes SLO, hes done a really neat job with his idea.

Essentially the tank with the pump in it is a dirty sump as such,

If Tank A (with SLO) in it was full of trout and you had Sp fingerling in Tank B they may be affected by the ammo load coming from the trout....

As a fix for this..... and i know it may change the plans of your system a little.....

The investment of 2 Barrels plumbed together, Run SLO's from both tanks to them then pump from them upto the beds, Barrels are fairly cheap and rediliy avail and you may be able to hide them easily behind the IBC's

Keeps all the dirty stuff away from your 2 tanks....

Alternatively run 2 separate systems

Yeah, I reckon run two discreet systems.. Sooo much easier... I know, it may be more boring, but it's simple and works and if anything goes wrong with one, it's only one..

Ok jamey, you've got me thinking now with a different angle.

So as I understand the 2 barrels would be connected by say 90mm pipe at the max water height, a SLO from each FT feeding one barrel each and then a pump in each barrel feeding the GB's? Or one pump in either one of the barrels?

I would imagine you would have the pump sitting on a brick or something to keep away from solids?

I could easily sit the barrels side by side between the IBC's so that would be fine. Would this work with just 1 barrel? if not can you help me understand why pls.

I may need to up grade my pump, its a pondmax 2400, would that handle the influx of water from an auto syphon? should I convert both GB's to CF?

Sorry, lots of questions but would like to get it right before I purchase all the plumbing as you could understand.

Just finished this and I see your post EB, maybe your right, gettin a little complex, I was trying to prevent buying another pump but I suppose its little cost compared to what it could blow out to with piping etc??

Cheers for your help

Guys the more I think about it surely my original plan would be more stable. The reason for my thinking is the water is constantly moving through both FT's and both GB's. Even if I grow my 20 trout to 500g in tank "A" surely the ammonia load would not be significant enough to cause any adverse effect on 25 silvers (of any size) in tank "B". Because one GB will be CF it would be constantly feeding tank "A" aswell as every 20 min the other GB will dump into it via auto syphon. Im just thinking the turnover of water in the trout tank would be great enough not to cause any large build ups of ammonia load??

Your thought?

Yes, you are right.

I honestly cant see how the water getting transferred from one tank to the other could increase any ammonia load - its still the same water. And usually it will still have very low ammonia readings.

I agree with EB though, run two pumps.

Ok, so 2 separate systems Col? My first thoughts with the expansion was to increase water and GB volumes as a whole system whilst keeping the original hardware. My pumps (both air and water) are large enough to supply both systems as a unit so I had that picture in my mind to combine them both. If Im not gaining anything by this well I suppose I could just start the new addition as a whole new system which in the bigger picture (and sole purpose) would be just to split the fish species.

You could link the 2 Fts together then you have 1 big system