Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hey guys, I've been lurking for quite some time now (~7 months). My wife and I have been in the process of selling our old house and moving to a new one with more room. So now I have 4 acres and room to finally building a green house and setup my AP setup.

I've had some moderately sized gardens and experience growing but nothing with hydroponics or aquaponics but the idea of getting it into and not having to spend countless hours tilling, hoeing, and pulling weeds is very attractive to me.

Over the last year I have been looking forward to this move and have starting collecting materials that were mostly given to me. For my greenhouse I've collected 10-13 glass doors (french doors), and a dozen old windows, and a bunch of lumber from different remodeling jobs that has happened where I work.

For my AP setup I've gotten an IBC tote, 6 55 gallon blue barrels, and 2 white tubs that are approximately 2(w) x 4(l) x 2(h).

I'm hoping to get my lot cleared of the few stumps in the way and get the foundation of my greenhouse put in place with cinder blocks. I'm planning on using the complete IBC as a fish tank and burying it so that only a foot to two feet are above the ground of the green house. Everything will be flood and drained with bell siphons and eventually have some vertical towers for lettuce, strawberry's, etc.

Hopefully you will see some build thread with photo's soon and I'm sure I will need lots of advice. Love the site and the info it provides. And I'm looking forward to starting this adventure.

Sounds great, welcome to the forum.

Welcome to the forum

Looking forward to the build

Design your system carefully as you might be getting close to approaching the limit of GBs vs FT volume without a sump.

Plan twice. Cut once.

Why would he need a sump?

Working with some very rough numbers, in litres (I'm metric)

1 IBC FT = 1000L water
6 Barrels @ 200L ea, filled to 90% capacity with 40% media = 432L to simultaneously flood
2 Tubs @ 450L ea, filled to 90% capacity with 40% media = 324L to simultaneously flood

There's more water in the GBs than in the FT, so a sump would be needed if all the barrels and tubs are going to be used for GBs and simultaneously flooded; or use a sequencing system; or use more "efficient" media, or run CF... In any case, the designer is going to be very careful what elements they choose if they don't want a sump, or make the system more robust (expandable?) and add a sump anyway.



Scott

Thanks! I'm probably not going to use it all. I appreciate your caution on the ratio, I had been looking at that but didn't know how to calculate it exactly with the grow media in.

In reality I will probably start with the two tubs and 1 or 2 barrels.

I'm also being steered towards the Harbor Freight 10x12 greenhouse which is on sale right now for $500. I will probably use the supplies I have on hand to reinforce it instead of building from scratch. There seems to be a lot of blogs out there on this and with the proper reinforcement it looks like it can be a good investment.

I have a question, how do you implement a sump (say another IBC tote) without having the fish tank above the grow beds? I like the idea of a constant height FT but not at the expense of having it above the grow beds.

Also, on tanks without a SLO how do the solids make it to the grow beds?

There are many ways of setting up an AP system. I'll put my opinion in here, but you have to work out what is best for your situation.
I currently am running my system like this: 300 gallon tank buried to the rim, constantly running pond pump pushes fish water up to 8 half barrels filled with gravel. Bell siphons take care of the drainage, gravity feeds back to the fish tank. No sump, no timers.
If the plants require constant flood, remove a bell and just use the stand pipe. Actually this is the only way I could get the lettuce and spinach to grow. They seem to grow better with their feet constantly in the water.
The bell siphon beds grew Tomatoes, Peppers, Broccoli, Corn, Squash, Basil, Millet, Rhubarb, forget what else.
Since this system runs well with the fish tank at the lowest point with bell siphons in the grow beds, the future system shall be setup the same way. Only this time, a raft/DWC area will be added between the grow beds and the fish tank.

This is not to say you don't need a sump. Just shows another way of setting up a system. Every lay of land is different, every need of the builder/user/operator is different.