Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Now that my larger AP system is approaching 12 months in operation, I have run one complete season of trout and am now onto silver perch.

With the next trout season approaching, and minimal space/prospects for a main system expansion, the question arises of how to run trout again in a system fully stocked with silver perch.

Also, I really dislike the idea of occupying my AP system with a fish species that will exhibit minimal growth during winter, especially when the option to stock trout is available.

So, I am building an indoor, insulated and heated, over-wintering system in my garage. This will allow me to not only run a cold water species in winter, but also to keep modest indoor tank temps for further silver perch growth over the cold period.

I have picked up a 320lt + tank for free from my friend. It has a wier and outlet hole in the base, as well as a VERY small bio filter sump tank.


I also purchased some food grade barrels for $12 each to build the filtration system. they had olives and pickles in them. 2x70lt and 1x220lt.



Filtration plans to follow soon....hopefully

Given time restrictions I went with good old pencil and paper rather than my usual electronic diagram tools. Although it is not too clear....better ones to come.



This should give you an idea of the planned filter setup. All filtration is gravity fed. All three filters have the same flush design on the bottom. End cap over the end of flush pipe to create suction along bottom of barrel. 40mm pipe most of the way through.

Filter steps are
1) 70lt swirl/vortex filter without a cone bottom
2) 70lt static/mechanical filter. poly pipe off cuts replace bio-balls/k1. air stone only present to "stir" the poly pipes during cleaning. Inlet through barrel base, setup to swirl water radially, layer are: water/sludge, grate, poly pipe, shade cloth, filter wool.
3) moving bio filter replacing K1 with poly pipe off cuts

Obviously many details are skipped, but here are some questions I put out there for feedback.
1) to save space, would ppl recommend combining the swirl and mechanical filter as a dual chamber filter (220lt outside for swirl, 70lt inside for bio/mech) like people often do on koi forums (ala EasyPod?). Then run the moving bead in the other 70lt barrel? Or will this just end up being a PITA.
2) being non-pressurized, would people trust 25/40mm uniseals a going through barrel bases. Given the fairly large tappers on the barrels I don't want have too many pipes going through the side and messing with water flow.
3) is here any need for waste flush on moving bed filter after the two previous meh filters
4) is having three layers of media in the bio/mech filter going over board? Should I just go with poly pipe cuts and a layer of filter wool on top?

Cheers,
Luke

Rather than have all that complexity, could you not fill the 220L up with media and worms and then cut the 2 70L barrels in half and have 4 raft set ups? That would minimise the water replacement requirement somewhat.

The garage is not in a position to set up grow beds, and I am not going to run grow lights, but thanks for the suggestion. Basically I need enough filtration to do 20-30 silver perch, with only 360lt of barrel volume.

Medium/juvenile silvers that is.

I think that will be fine DrL. Mantis did an overwintering project for his Jades last year but he used canister filters. Cool project, I have something similar in mind for up coming winter

Cheers Charlie,

The main pain with such a setup is all the extra fittings and valves for waste flush drains. It adds considerably to the cost. I think it would save you hours of being elbow deep in fish crap each time you clean the filters though.

I also have to come up with a way of quickly producing the 200lt+ of 13 mm poly rings/off cuts from a large role of the stuff. It will be a PITA if I have to cut every single one individually by hand.

After reading these threads:
viewtopic.php?t=14895
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11096

various others on the web, and seeing how simple a radial flow filter design is. I think I will switch the swirl filter to radial flow

Of course Rupe would head bang....means ill buy more trout off him this winter

I was "headbanging"... to the simplicity of a radial flow filter...

But I'm happy to sell you some more trout this winter...

I don't have any experience with building moving bed filters, and was concerned about the placement and design of the in/outlet. Particularly the outlet.

I could only find two decent descriptions of barrel based filters online.
One over engineered: http://koi2day.com/forum/index.php?topi ... 5#msg21905
And one under engineered:
http://www.aquaponicshq.com/forums/equi ... -mbbr.html

Should I skim only from the top? Have a "stand pipe" drawing from the center if the column? Or just stick an outlet pipe through the side somewhere near the top covered by mesh?.... Does it really matter????

This project has not died. It has just been stalled/put on hold for a while we sort out some other things.

The over wintering tank might become a temporary SP holding tank in the short term. This unfortunately might mean no trout this winter , but will probably mean a more exciting AP future in the DrLuke family .

Shame DrLuke, was looking forward to your build. My DWC is nearly complete so Ill be moving onto my overwintering project within the next few weeks.

It will be coming soon, just may be not buy the time winter start. An over wintering system is an indoor holding tank with heater by any other name