Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

could you stand the tower in the grow bed with holes drilled in the tower below the surface of the gravel, and have it drain back to the tank via the growbed?

See no reason why not, though more than one or two and they are going to get in the way of other plants and/or sunlight. One of the attractions to me is to add capacity so I don't want them to interfere with the grow beds at all.

Check valves on top of each tower are needed. An end cap at bottom of each tower and bottom drain. Set rows of towers up on 2 blocks with a main return drain running in the space between the blocks.

Root clogging at the bottom of towers where they drain could become a concern.

I have the tower standing in a small trough now which would pick up any drips/overflow that happened, but at this time all is going very well. I want to make another couple of towers over the weekend and I will make up a manifold for the top to distribute the water to each tower.

I am worried about the flow washing the bacteria out of the tower, is that a concern or not ???

Murray

Muz,

IMO i don't think its a concern. The bacteria attaches itself to its host media with a slime matrix, if they can survive the flows encountered in a cannister filter then i think you are safe

Steve, I put just a handful of gravell from my pot plant filter into the top of the tower about 300mm down then covered it with some new gravell. Will it take long for the bacteria to spread downwards ??? I know that is a bit of a "how long is a bit of string" question , but do you have any idea.
Water temp is between 18 and 21
Muzza

Over the growbed sounds like a great idea, I was thinking about putting one above my drain tank, hooked into my return pump line so that it gets about 10 pumps an hour draining through the pipe and straight back into the drain tank.

I imagine that it wouldn't take long Muzza, it certainly won't wash the bacteria away. My guess would be 2-3 weeks for bacteria to spread and grow, I guess it depends on how much food you have in the system for them for them to multiply.

Muz,

EB hit it on the head, it depends on the food supply to them.

I assume that your tower is plumbed into your original system?
If "yes" then you have really not changed anything, you still have the same amount of bacteria present for your original number of fish. See what i mean? They won't expand the colony unless there is a higher waste load produced from the fish, and thats only going to happen if you feed more or put more fish in.

So what i basically saying is that there is no need to be concerned about the bacteria actually being IN the tower, if its plumbed into the original system then the nutes will be in the water for the plants to take up. The plants do not need to be in contact with the bacteria. Thats why my soil planted parsley does SOOO well, becasue i put the waste water from my tank changes on them.


If your system had 10 units of bacteria, they could all be together in the flower pot, or spread out in towers and beds...........they would still be processing the same amount of ammonia/nitrite.

You get into trouble if you try and picture the process as a linear one. conversion happens where ever there are bacteria and metabolites (ammonia / nitrites) and since these are dissolved in the water the bacteria can be anywhere and still do their job.

Once again, they will only expand if there is a need to.

I hope i have not misunderstood you original question Muzza, ask away / clarify if i have


Steve

so, looking at what you justr posted Steve, I don't have to remove my bio filter then now that I have 2 small grow beds connected... ... I was starting to wonder if I should take it out of my system so as to encourage the bacteria to colonise my growbeds...

NO!!! DOn't take it out

three ways to go about it AM either;

move the media from the bio filter to the grow beds

slowly (over a month or two) remove media from the bio filter, this will cause the bacteria to multiply in respose to the (now) increased load

leave the bio filter in for now, as you increase feeding and or fish the bacteria will grow into the beds.

If you have no drawbacks with the bioflter, then definatly leave it.

What do others think? and why? (gee, sounds like an exam paper )

I thought that maybe it would help with the whole issue of removing plants from growbeds - the bio filter is not affected by this as it just keeps on ticking - so I am just going to leave the bio filter in place for now...

Thanks for that Steve / EB ....Good info
It is a wonderful thing this Aquaponics...the more one learns about it , the more there is to understand...
I have been doing small water changes every second day...so, I am not going to do that so often now that I have some plants in the system.
I am afraid of losing some fish if the nitrates get too high (have I got that right ?)
Muzza

Muzz. they'd need to get pretty high for that. That why i like testing a NEW system, it gives me point of reference. Nitrites are the one you have to worry about.

Its easiy to confuse them, only an "I" difference in the word!

I just built my first "shortie" tower!

In my little goldfish tank!

I will post some pics this weekend .. but IMHO this is a great way to go!

Who came up with the idea of using heat to "distort" a soakwell pipe?

Brilliant idea!

I loaded it with pea gravel rather than expanded clay balls .. (too - expensive)

My only difficulty was planting seedlings after I filled it with gravel and located it in the tank! So hard to do it without damaging fragile root systems!

IMHO it would be nice of we can figure out an easy way to plant seedlings anytime .. some sort of special tool we can come up with maybe? So you can part the gravel ... place the seedling ... then allow the gravel to return to cover the roots ... then withdraw the tool ...

My fingers just don't quite do it wioth pea gravel ...

Amazing idea .. 4 towers going in in the holidays!




Anyway ... 4 towers in a wheelie bin ... imminent ...

a 2 m tower cost me 7 bucks!