Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

yea I think ill have to start from the beginning then what people are saying will make more sense, thanks for the input

another diagram

Here is another diagram

And another

Indexing valve layout diagram

Constant flood

Deep grow beds that the bottom doesn't drain all the way.

You've been a busy girl...

Gonna be teaching a plumbing class and also needed examples to show some one to help explain a few things so I share.

I like the CHOP MARK 2. Would you have any issue plumbing the grow beds to drain to the fish tank? I'm thinking to give the SLO a big burst flow to a t-shirt type filter might help with stubborn solids removal.

Why? I reckon that if you want to drain your beds back into the fish tank then the drain tank, and trying to make it into chop 2 is redundant and a waste of materials. Just pump from the fish tank into the beds and drain back to the fish tank..

Thanks Earthbound. I must be missing something,I think. Isn't pumping from the fish tank a bad idea? Volume change and all. I was thinking drain the growbeds nice cleaned water to the fish tank and overflow to aerated sump (fishtank aerated too of course). Pump from the sump to the growbeds and drain to the fish tank, overflow to the sump and repeat. Thanks for input. I'm just starting to finally getting my equipment together after lurking for a year.

I suppose you could have the grow beds drain to the fish tank but then it isn't really CHOP Mark 2 but probably something else. The Mark 2 was where everything drains to the sump tank and the pump pumps to everything to make layout easier.

If you raise the grow beds higher so they can drain to the fish tank that would work too provided it doesn't put the grow beds up so high they will be difficult to access.

Oh, I would recommend against trying to block solids exiting the fish tank since that will slow up the slow and could result in overflow of the fish tank. I would let the solids go on and be pumped to the grow beds.

And it isn't that terrible to pump directly from a fish tank as long as you make sure you can't pump the tank dry in case of disaster and design the system so the water level fluctuation won't be enough to stress your fish.

Naaaa, depending on your growbed volumes of course.. But if you have a very large growbed volume and you think it may be a problem, you can run the system constantly flooded, then there's no tank fluctuation at all.

Really when you think about it, the sump tank is just not needed, why overflow from the fish tank to the sump then pump to the growbeds and drain back to the fish tank? It's just a waste of plumbing and a sump tank.. pumping from the fish tank to the beds and draining back does the same thing with less parts.