Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

So CityRoots on this site which I know personally wouldn't stop talking about aquaponics. Every time we hang out I hear about his great aquaponics plan. I went down the hydroponics/aeroponics road and are having great success growing chilli's this way so naturally aquaponics caught my interest relatively easy.

I bought the book Aquaponic Gardening by Sylvia Bernstein and read it cover to cover and after lurking this site for a while and lurking in CityRoot's garage, I built my own system that may or may not work!!!

I know the dimensions are off for the FT size as compared to grow bed size etc but this is just how I wanted to do it for now and I want to add some NFT rails later on to expand my grow area.

Anyway it is a 55 gallon drum FT which has a debris lift overflow into a 30 gallon sump which houses my 550GPH pump which I dialed back to the optimum output. It lifts the water 4 feet to the grow beds which I know is high but actually perfect for planting lettuce and broccoli without bending down. The water T's into a 30 gallon drum split in two to make two 15 gallon grow beds. This was going to be CF media beds but CityRoots dared me to put bell siphons in and I did. Each bed has a 1 1/4 inch stand pipe with a 2 inch bell over it. Stand pipes are 6 1/2 inches tall and Bells had to be 9 inches to induce the siphon and I had to vent them with a tube to get the siphon to stop each time. Without the vent tube I found that it did not cut the siphon off every time reliably.

So I have had it running since yesterday afternoon and today being Easter, I haven't been able to buy any expanded clay to finish filling up the beds. I just used what I had leftover from my other hydroponic systems. Both media beds will be filled with the expanded clay tomorrow and I plan to cycle the system with 3 feeder goldfish that I don't mind losing before stocking the system with 5-6 tilapia or perch fingerlings and maybe some crayfish at the bottom since my FT is so deep.

Wish me luck and I know this thread is useless without pictures so here they are!

Looks like a neat little system. Good job.

Thanks dmayne. I plan to experiment with it, see what works and doesn't. Learn from my mistakes and also be able to take it into the garage next winter and throw a 125 watt flourowing over it and an aquarium heater in the FT. I am sure this itch I have will have me building progressively bigger and bigger systems to satisfy my taste for AP.

Haha I knew you would join!

Welcome aboard

Good to see that the AP bug has bitten someone besides me and CRF in this area! Have fun with it

Welcome Island_Dan!

GN we also have Roscommon too, they are only an hour or so south of us.

It is great that you have a start! There are a couple of tweaks that you should do before proceeding any further, however. You need media guards. You will need to be able to pull up your bells and replace them without your expanded clay collapsing into the void left when you pull them. Next, get rid of the Frankenbell and build Affnan siphons. 99% of the frustration you hear about bell siphons comes from that silly breather tube. Affnan siphons do not use them, and almost everyone here that uses them has had great reliability with them. Google Affnan, you will get all the info you need from the source.

Hey Ron thanks for the input. I do agree that media guards would be awesome but with them in place, 15% of my media beds were taken up by siphon and the water flow was slowed enough by the media guards that is would cut the siphon off about half way down the media beds. I took some short cuts because all I had was 1 1/4 sealing grommets, so I made my stand pipes 1 1/4 inch pipes. The Bells are 2 inch pipes and I did that specifically to prevent media from being sucked up by the siphon through the small wall gap between the 2 tubes.

I finally got the system filled with media today and I went with a two layer option. I am using grow stones which are recycled glass media the size of lava rocks and the two beds are filled half way with that. With one bed completely filled with hydroton, the hydroton packs so densely that water flow is inhibited and the siphons were having issues. With the grow rocks at the bottom and hydroton filling up the upper half, the water flow is not impeded and the siphons are operating flawlessly right now.

I had to adjust my PH downward and left it at about 7.4 to help the bacteria growth. I also did a filter change on my home aquarium and stuck the filter in one of the grow beds. I also decided to go with a fish cycle and purchased 3 pond golf fish for $0.29 each and threw them in there. Also had very cold nights the last couple nights so I put an aquarium heater in the sump to try keep the fishes alive. Hopefully the system cycles quickly. I tested water and Ammonia levels before adding fish were 0.5 ppm with no nitrites and nitrates present as expected.

Perhaps the problem was the material you used for the guards. I regrettably used corrugated drain pipe. In the future I will make it out of rigid plastic netting, aka hardware cloth. That way flow will not be impeded. Also Hydroton's round shape causes it to block round holes. If you are going to use PVC or other piping for your guard, it is better to cut slots as they will not be blocked by the media. Your efforts will end in frustration if you do not have media guards. They do not have to be much larger than your bells. By making your guard out of hardware cloth you have the ability to make it any size you need. I use 55 gal barrels to, I am willing to lose a percentage of grow bed space for something regarded as necessary for good reason.

Also, the media guard is not to prevent the siphon from sucking up the media, it is to allow you to pull of the bell for maintenance. I can assure you that with the siphon you have chosen, that will be often.

Well I looked into what it would take to try to modify the bells and decided to let it be until they do break down and then I will redesign the whole upper bit of the system.

Anyway latest update, I haven't tested the water for 2 days now. When I did test it, the PH was 7.6, Ammonia climbed to 2 ppm with the 4 pond goldfish in there and 0 nitrites and nitrates as expected. Just letting it do its thing. I did do a 4 gallon water change on my home aquarium and I put RO water into the aquarium and added the 4 gallons of old aquarium water into the AP system so tomorrow afternoon I will do a water test and see how things are progressing.

I started my cycling procedure on March 31st.

On a brighter note, I finished my water filtrating station! It comprises of a GE Reverse Osmosis system which I built a carry around housing for. The inlet pipe goes straight onto any garden hose faucet. The RO water then T's between the storage tank and the 30 gallon barrel which has a float valve. The waste water which is dechlorinated by the pre filter goes into the 2 linked 55 gallon barrels. I calculated that I get about 90 gallons of waste water for every 30 gallons of RO water made. I decided to keep the waste water for my AP system as they advise against using RO water since the RO process takes too much out of the water for AP. The RO water is used for my hydroponic and aeroponic systems as well as for my home aquarium. The waste water is also used for watering my potted plants.

Water going into the system is 343 PPM and 8.9 PH. RO water coming out is 9 ppm and 7.4 ph and waste water coming out is 365 ppm and 7.4 PH. The drop in Ph between the inlet water and waste water along with a chlorine tests shows that the waste water is dechlorinated.

Grow Beds full.



Old aquarium filter shoved in there along with 2 green onions from the supermarket. Planted most in the ground and then stuck 2 in there just to see what happens. Today they are already way ahead of what's in the ground although I know that is due to the aquaponic system having a lot more water available.



Siphons working

I like your float valve. All of the floats like tht that I could find around town were bronze or brass, plastic being safe for fish would have been nice to find.