Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thats exactly what i need for future reference scotty! Thank you, i have a very bad habit of reading over things and missing half the info.

This will help alot with the next steps.

Three further questions.... before I go any further...

What size are the holes in the 100mm pipe on the roof??

Is this the pump you're using???? .... http://www.xuone.com.au/400w-dirty-wate ... sible-pump

Do you have the pump curve chart (often on the box).... I can't find one online...

The holes are 65mm.

yeah, thats the pump, I managed to find the box but its been eaten by snails. i cant find the head chart either.

if its really needed i can check next time i'm at bunnings, probably on the w/e knowing me.

That's a pity... a standard 75mm hole would take a 80x75mm net pot.... which is tapered to 65mm at the bottom...

The taper wont really allow the pot to sit down into the flow in your existing holes...

And the standard 50mm Lettuce pot, even with the rim... will probably be just a bit small... (I'll measure one tomorrow)

The 80mm net pots are also quite a bit pricier than the 50mm...

Otherwise I would have said go the 80mm net pot.. and just fill with media...



Ok, it's rated as 8000l/h... at zero head... but your pump head looks to be close to 2mtr... so it will probably only be pumping about 6000l/h at that head...

Still enough to turn over your tank volume once per hour though.... if you can in fact pump fully...

With you current gutters... especially filled with media...that probably isn't the case...

There's a couple of things that could be done.... (PM me)....

But regardless... the bottom line is... the amount of media in the "gutters"... just isn't/wasn't sufficient to provide filtration for 100 fish...

And the flow problems... IMO... resulted in lack of DO...

Frankly, IMO... with two fish tanks, of darn good size... I would be running two seperate systems anyway... and maximising both in terms of fissh and veges...

I'm not a fan of cascading, or inter-connected fish tanks at all... there are just too many potential problems.... for no real gains...

If there are other GBs involved, then the pump wont have to pump any higher than the tanks (1.3m), the roof only needs a trickle.

I could run them seperately, but i cant really fit many GBs into my yard, utilising more roof space will take alot more structural work on the verandahs, so isnt ideal.
I dont think one tank for the roof, one tank for 1-2 small GBs would be ideal either, simply because of the fact that the roof tank would never get enough flow.

Dont get me wrong, i can pump ALOT of water onto the roof at one time, and the total flow is quite large - i dont have flow meters but by my testing it is around 6000L (flow from tank 1 into tank 2 filled a 9l watering can in 5 seconds roughly). That was when it was F&D, this flow rate never slowed down much, such was the slowness of it to drain from the roof.
F&D isnt the best option i have learned though.

The main thing to remember is that whichever way you decide to go, you need to stock based on the filtration capacity of the growbeds and no higher (It's better to start quite a bit lower than the capacity). The only way around this is to pull off solids using a swirl filter and/or have some other biofilter besides the growbeds.