Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yes. But the fool proof way is to join the tanks below the water line. By having a syphon u always run the risk of the suction breaking.

One thing you can do is add a small syphon to the high point of your bridge to suck any air that start to accumulate.

I still would join the two tanks below the water level if it is an option. Speaking form experience there

that should work fine. You could do something like this:

I have a noholes overflow for my AP system. It works very well for it.

New pellet feeder design for the rocket mass heater. It was quite exciting getting some of the close up footage...It was so hot, I would have to get my gloves wet and could only hold the camera for a few seconds.

So nice, as always.

Now that you've perfected the rocket mass heater can you make a pyrolytic stove? I'd like to be able to make charcoal from wood chips and heat stuff at the same time. World Stove lists ones for sale but doesn't seem to be a going concern. http://worldstove.com/about-2/why-pyrolytic-stoves/

Always fun to watch your videos Rob. It will be interesting to see the teardown, I don't recall having seen one yet.

I haven't put much thought into the pyrolytic stoves. I've seen the worldstove and it's nice....I'm sure you could build a bigger scale model.

I've had several people tell me that they've heard you can grow lettuce and have it ready in 5 weeks. I've been growing lettuce for a few years using a variety of methods and have never gotten it to grow that fast.

Rob, is your system in the first post of this thread still in operation? I am considering a small system with my son's 40 gallon breeder tank (no sump though) utilizing his eheim canister to deliver the water to the GB then back into the tank (flood/drain) using a very similar setup as yours. If it is not, why? Did you run into issues? How about lighting?

I took it off line last summer so I could use the tank as a hospital tank in the new greenhouse.

Clever way to stay clear of the drilling and cutting in tanks.
Golden tip for us noobs that may look to expand later and want to use the same tanks in a different setup.
Thanks!

/H

Hello Rob,

I know your indoor system is now off line but I would really like to ask you a few questions concerning your setup.

I am new to aquaponics but am very excited about setting up my own little indoor system. I am currently designing almost the exact same system with a 120L aquarium, a 90L (roughly 70x40x30cm) growbed on top, and a sump tank at the bottom which I was thinking of sizing at 100L.

I noticed your system is not piped like the classic CHOP2 design (which is what I was thinking of doing), but it seems much simpler. So I would like to know firstly why you chose this piping method? Did you have a bad exerience with the classical CHOP2 (with the sump feeding the GB and FT simultaneuosly, and both going back to the sump seperatly).

Secondly, your overflow functions with a water bridge and siphons down to the sump. So in reality, your FT does not stay at a constant height, as I imagine that the waterlevel drops as the growbed fills up and the overflow keeps siphoning. Is this really the case?

Next, my main concern with this system is causing a flood in my appartement if my pump fails and I'm not home, leaving my aquarium slowly empty in my sump tank... which will be obviously too small! So my main question is, does the overflow siphon break before the whole tank empties? If not, was your sump tank sized up to hold your aquarium and growbed water volume if ever the worst case scenario happened?

I've done a lot of research for this type of indoor system and you are the only person I have found who has described the setup so clearly (and who has obviously well thought up the whole system). What seems to be the most common and easier solution is a direct flood and drain system without a sump. But I would really like to include the sump for a variety of reasons, so I need to be sure that some sort of safeguard solution can work so that there is no risk of flooding.

Thankyou very much in advance for everything!

Jean from France

The main reason was I wanted to maintain the same water level in the fish tank...basically so the system would look nice since it was in our house. You just need to make sure the sump holds more water than the grow bed so that if the pump fail while the bed is draining, the sump will be able to contain all the water.

With this particular setup, there is a risk of the overflow siphon breaking since I had that little tube in it to make sure no air would build up in it. If the pump stopped from a power failure, that little tube will continue siphoning the water out of the tank until the water level web below the siphon level, which would then break the siphon. Then if the pump started again, the siphon won't work and the fish tank would overflow. This could be resolved by getting rid of the little tube, but then you have the risk of air building up in the main siphon, but it's a very low risk.