Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Our place is about 3 kilometers from the road, and the only way in and out id by walking or by dorey (dug out canoe), so building materials have to be hauled in by yhuman power, and we make all of our design considerations based on that.

The other problem we have is that we have to generate our won elecrticity here, using solar power or wind turbines. This makes elecricity spotty, though we always have lights, etc, but we cannot have big draws all the time, and batteries, inverters, charge controllers, wiring, fusing and overcurrent protection, metering, etc, all add to the cost of an AP system as I originally thought about it... so I am thinking about bypassing everything except the panels and the pump.

I have a design I am thinking about, I will write it down below, and I want anyone to tell me if they see a reason it cannot work.

I am designing a system for our place, based on a hole we will be digging for fill in an earthbac building (a course we are holding here in March, see our website for details) which will result in space for a pond. Then, using either bentonite or a pond liner, we will fill the pond with water and stock it with fish.

The pond will be set up to an aquaponics system , Whoa! wait a minute, did you see that? the little buggers came right out, lickity split! It wasn't my fault! They followed me over from PRI, I swear! All I said was aquap... >sigh<, sorry, anyway, I mean an "AP" system which will be the filter to remove manure and also will act as a reoxygenizer.

My theory is that because basically all of our 70 aces is hills, except for plazas around Maya ruins, or flood plain (not suitable for AP systems, think >flush< in a flood), the grow beds could be tied in series so that flow through would be from bed 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5, back to the pond.

This would eliminate the need for high flow as a 9 gallon per minute pump could reasonable supply all needs of the firstts bed, and every other bed, down hill in a cascade from grow bed to grow bed, in its flow back to the pond. I am reasonably sure this could work on a low flow pump when compared to a set of grow beds in parallel, where a high flow pump is needed.

The grow beds would be rectangular plastic feed or water troughs, either the Rubbermaids that Janet showed in another thread: Rubbermaid really cool stuff, or the Rotoplasts that DTHawk clued me into on the bottom of this page Rotoplast feed and water tank.

The pump I have in mind is a simple 24vdc Lorents pump, which can run off of solar direct (with linear current booster to get it moving in low light), will handle silt, sediment, fish poop and insect body parts, etc, so that when the sun shines, the pump flows, when the sun goes down, the pump stops, and when it is overcast, the pump goes slooooooooow.

So far, this looks doable to my inexperienced mind. I am reasonably certain this will work. The question is, will the plants require a continuous flow, including at night, or can they survive off of a sun based flow.

So any feedback, negative or positive? This looks doable to me! Feel free to shoot it down in flames. I'd rather know that now than efter I build the thing!

Chris, I've seen (somewhere can't remember where ) where a lady was running about 14 bath tubs down a slope to clean up her water supply. It essentially was an AP set-up. From memory she was just pumping to the top tub and the water was flowing down thru all the tubs to the bottom.
She was using it as a filtration system, so all the input water was new all the time.
I think that by about the 7th tub the water was clean enough for her animals to safely drink it.
I don't know if this is much help, but it came to mind from your description.

Thanks Jaymie! That is help! It shows I am not completely out to lunch...

Just calculate your pump head carefully to make sure you can get water all the way up the hill. Otherwise, it look great!

One thing to consider Cris is the nutrient stripping carried out by the plants , wouldnt nutrient levels be very low by the last tub?

You could tier your crops so the heavy feeders were first and the lightest ones were last but i think it might lead to deficiences but until you do it and depending on how much nutrient you started with who knows .

To get maximum bang for your buck with your pump you want to keep your head low , if you incorporate 4-5 drops in your system they add up .If you incorporated a simple "T" manifold it the system that then pumped out to two beds and then they drained into a couple more as youve described you would use less energy to pump the same amount of water and would reduce the nutrient differences across the beds theoretically by half. you would have to have a few more fittings but not a lot. Also from a hydraulic point of view keep the piping sizes up and the number of bends in the pipework down.

Thanks Janet and Tim,

We are using a Sunpump right now, which pumps 80 feet up hil across 1000 feet without ptoblem, so I don't think that would be an issue. The pumps I am considering are designed for higher flow and less head, but anything less than, say, 20 feet shouldn't be an issue, and I don't anticipate a drop of more than 8 feet from tank to pond.

The potential loss of nutrients is a concern, though.... maybe a higher flow pump geared for less head (>than 20 feet) to feed two parallel strings would be in order...

But could the beds rund dry/moist(-ish) for overnight without problems?

C

I suppose that would depend on the type of medium you were using.
There was a big discussion about this a while ago http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/vie ... ight=hours

I think though that most people were concerned about the aeration of the fish tank as opposed to the grow bed drying out.

Thank you, Jaymie! Off to do some reading....

Can you give a bit more detail Chris and/or a diagram/piccie

Re your system, my only thoughts are how you will deal with (i'm presuming) periods of high rainfall / flash flooding.... maybe you could design a run off channel at one end of each growbed.... like the overflow from an earth dam

I know Cris how about a swale??

My thinking to date is a straight aquaponics system like Dr J's, with a clear roof over the grow beds that allows light, but keeps water off the growbeds. This would all be highe nough up the slpe in the vallay to avoid any flooding.

The only variation would be to take advantage of the slope of the hill, to induce gravity fed series of grow beds, and the use of one single solar powerd pump without the use of a second sump pump.

Tim, not sure where a swale would fit it here....

Rupert, do you want a digram of our pump set up, or the system I hope to build? The pump set up is pretty basic, and I can describe it:
Two 75 watt Siemens panels wired in series for one 24vdc panel
connected by positive and negative wire to
One Sunpumps Pump Control
connected by positive and negative wire to
One Sunpumps 24vdc submersible pump located in a spring on the edge of our property
feeding into roughly 1000feet of 1 inch pipe, with a climb of 80 feet
into
One 450 gallon Tuff Tank located up the hill behind our house
which gravity feeds our house, the dorm, the posh pods (another student housing), showers, the kitchen and the garden.

Hi Chris,
I know I had concerns about losing nutrients with beds in sequence. However, other members are saying it's not a problem. I'd say go ahead and try it. Thinking about it, if you're running a 40 nitrate in the fish pool, it's probably not going to drop to 0 over 50 feet of beds.

Thanks, Janet!
'
Okay, so it looks like we can start thinking more about this design. Thanks evertyone for trouble shooting some of this with me!

Description satisfactory thanks Chris... I'm impressed at the height (head) and length of pump the system achieves

They have other pumps that pump less volume up to 200 feet on two 75 watt panels. Ours get 4-5 gallons a minute, and is made of stainless steel and brass. Its a copy of the old Kyocera pump, which is no longer made. Its a heavy little thing.

Because the flow is slow, a 1 inch pipe gives very little friction, and the pump never sucks the spring dry when the dry season reduces the flow to 20 gallons a minute.... (in the rainy season its 1000s of gallons a minute)