Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all am eddy, am new to Aquaponics. I love fish raising & framing have a few(5) fish tanks of my own, with my own made filter setup for them. Any ides or questions are welcome, so i bought two IBC totes (275gallon each and had to clean them) that i will use to raise fish Tilapia (Oreochromis) Aurea. I will be posting pic.. on that setup later. But for now here what am work on, here a pic..drawing of the filter setup in the makings, that i will be using in my aquaponics setup. I will be starting with half's of 55gal..barrels for my beds (will go in to the details later).







*edited - charlie - please resize pics to 800x600*

Welcome Eddie

Welcome, heck you draw good. My drawings look like hell.

Thanks a lot for the welcomes, i have a few question. 1. I got a 55gal.. barrel that (the blue one in pic..)that was use to hold diesel. I clean it 3x w/degreaser & once w/bleach the smell is a lot better but still smell, will i be able to use it? 2. Am going to use a pallet for the base on IBC tote's (i may raise the pallet on bricks i may need the height for filters to work) should i line the pallet to protect IBC tote from pallet & should i add the corner guard ? And from the looks of it i need to bury the 55gal..barrel at least 12-15" deep for it work right. For the top beds i plan to grow the duckweed so need to stay filled at times. So my idea is pump water from after the filter to the top bed then to fish tank. In the pic..drawing am showing how i plan to make it without sucking the duckweed glad it floats Will it work ?

Here are some mock-ups

your system has the feel it is one I am going to be watching out for........looks great on paper and in the photo's.......good luck........

As for the few question i don't know, but there will be a hundred around here or more that might.

Welcome

Looks good to me..

My duckweed tank had a side outlet with a T on it that effectively did the same thing, but I found that rain knocked a lot of the duckweed out of its bed and all over everything including the fishtank.. perhaps some mosquito netting or flywire screen over the top would prevent that but I never got to try it before I removed the duckweed bed..

I was also looking at slow sand filters (just yesterday even, except I was intending to put shell grit in there) but decided against one because I didn't think it would keep up with the required flow.. My current setup is very similar to yours except I have a drum full of shadecloth offcuts where your sand filter is..

No am not using a sand filter in my setup(am going add more info about my filter setup). And yes the sand filter will cause back pressure. For it to work you need to use a pump to pump water threw the sand filter and then at last stage overflow to the fish tank. But will cause your fish tank to drop in water when filling your beds. Then to fix that will need a higher flow pump(then the one pump to the sand filter) to water from the last stage to the fish tank and a overflow from fish tank to the last stage of your filter system. That will keep your water in the fish at level and cause last stage/Reservoir tank drop as beds fill. Hope this helps


The 1st stage 15gal.. is the Vortex filter (Settling tank)

The 2nd stage 15gal.. from top to bottom Carbon Bag 3lbs. then Filter Pads and last Lava Rocks

The 3rd stage 15gal.. is for Bio-Balls/Media i may go with http://www.ebay.com/itm/320913714310?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

The last two 55gal.. barrels are my Reservoir tanks, as you can see i am using a filter sock 7"x 32" 200 micron after the 3rd stage into the first reservoir tank

Here is the pump that i will be using to fill the beds, the pump will be on a timer.
Spec are - 110v 3.2amp 370watts 1/2HP 3450RPM, single phase motor
Total head 110ft. Suction lift 20ft. 1" inlet/outlet about 1,200GPH

Hope it does the job

Here is a few pic.. of the that am working with. The garden (12'x20') will be on first pic.. your looking to the west. My fish will be on the east side of the house. Here is what i dug-up today am in pain, need to finish it tomorrow.

Continuing

Good to see you posting progress Eddy...

Thanks again Ruperto, here is day 2 dig= more pain. Some more pic..

busy busy!

You could get a job as a grave digger , very neat holes. :-)