Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi there!

I've been reading for a while and have now decided to show my recently completed (I'm sure it's not actually near done) system. I dug an in-ground pond about 6x3x3 as my fish tank. It's lined with the fish-safe stuff.

4 inch pvc with 3 inch holes drilled inhabit the pvc. My pots are both solo cups (since they seem to fit perfectly) and 3 inch pvc net pots.

There are dams that block about half of each pvc pipe at the end before the water runs back into the pond. I did this so that the water levels would be a bit higher and I could grow bigger plants.

So I got it running for about a day, added some water from my indoor non-aquaponic fish tank, and decided to put some fish in.

I don't particularly like cooked fish, and I wanted a system that would help destroy mosquitoes, so I have my tank filled with about 25 guppies, 25 small feeder goldfish, and 20 larger feeder goldfish. 4 or so died within the first hour or two. Only one has died in the day since.

My pump is 1000 gallons an hour and it's running really well. Great water flow to all the pipes.

So far I put in a really small basil plant which has displayed growth in less than 24 hours, 8 cups filled with gravel and a few lettuce seeds on top, and a fairly mature strawberry plant that's sucked as a soiled plant for nearly 4 months. The strawberry plants looks as healthy as it's ever been.

Some pics are attached. Hope this works.



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So here are my questions if anyone cares to give me some advice. I'm sure I did something less than ideal.

1. Do I need some sort of filter somewhere? I feel like I could put one in pretty easily before the water circulates back into the pond. If so, what's my best bet?

2. Do you think that my 6 inch waterfall and the drop at the end of each pvc pipe puts enough oxygen in the water for the fish, or should I get something else? If so, what would be best?

3. Am I missing something obvious here?

4. Is there anything cool I could add on to the system? There are 2 hoses where the water drains back to the pond. I feel like I could make a couple cool attachments using those, but I'm not sure what would be best to pair with my existing structure.

5. are hoses safe enough for this?

Thanks!

Welcome TF,

Looks like a good start. If you're anything like the rest of us you'll quickly progress to expanding your system or having 2 or 3 more

I'll take a crack at your questions



Yes you do need a filter. Normally people have a growbed which acts as a biofilter and solids filter, otherwise the ammonia and Nitrites build up and kill off the fish and the solids can cling to the roots of the plants and smother them. It's a good idea to put this before pumping to the plant ladder you've built because of the solids. Right now you have to many fish for the systems ability to handle their waste - you need a growbed.



Fine for now but you'll need to look again and consider the size of the fish and numbers as they grow.



Growbed - You probably won't have much luck growing tomatoes and other plants with large root systems in the pipes, because the roots will plug the pipe. A growbed will let you grow tomatoes and other plants, and will catch many of the solids. Bacteria in the growbed will change the ammonia to nitrite and then to nitrate that the plants can use. You should size the growbed to handle your fishload (there's some info in this thread - http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=6646)



Some people make a spray bar as a way to aerate the fish tank. You can also split the pump outflow and aerate the water in the FT by returning any excess flow back into the FT through a spray bar.

You could also remove solids with a radial flow filter but this should be before your plant frame again. This allows you to remove the solids and put them in your soil garden while allowing you to have more fish. It's not really a substitute for a growbed you still would need the growbed.



Depends what they're made of. They do have drinking water safe hoses which I've used for top ups, and figure are probably safe. Not sure what others think about this and the regular hoses.


You'll probably enjoy taking a look at the IBC's of Aquaponics which is a free PDF and has a lot of information - here's the link - http://ibcofaquaponics.com/files/IBCofAquaponics.pdf

Well that was helpful. Thanks!

This is where I get a bit lost though.

How can I get water flow to be even going from the fish tank to the grow bed, and then from the grow bed to the top of the pvc tower? I feel like if it's not exactly even I'll wind up with overflow or underflow somewhere. Plus I'd need a second pump.

Would I be ok just building this growbed underneath the pvc structure after the pvc

Is fishtank --> PV/ nft system --> filter/growbed --> fishtank ok?

This seems infinitely easier to me than what you suggested. It sounds like it's not as good, but will it be ok? My pump circulates all the water in the pond about four times an hour. My flow rate through the pipes is pretty aggressive.



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I could move this A-frame pvc unit to a different place in my yard and get it set up with a smaller fish tank and filter to just grow herbs and strawberries. I have limited space where it's currently set up next to the pond so adding a decent sized growbed with full sun would require some serious finagling.

Honestly I was not completely aware of the limitations of using a pvc nft system when i first built it. I knew I wasn't going to get big plants, but I sort of thought tomatoes and peppers were ok.

I'm the kind of guy to build first, ask detailed questions later, which isn't a good thing in regard to gardening.

Would it be in my best interest as a gardener to make 2- 3x5 above ground growbeds where the PVC system is currently set up? This small piece of land the ideal spot for sun in my yard year round.

Thanks again. Sorta wish I'd thought about this a bit more before starting.

Payout need a filter of some sort before the NFT tubes, or else the solids will clog the rootballs of your NFT plants. It can be an RF filter. They are the favorite flavor of filter right now. I am considering adding one to my system... I just need to find the space.

Yep, what I suggested isn't really a good option and I knew it but figured it was better for you to see it on your own. You might be able to add a radial flow filter that has an outlet high enough for it to flow into your PVC/NFT A Frame. Solids are the main problem and that would pull most of the settleable solids out. A 5 gallon bucket version might be enough and could be attached to one end of the A frame. You would only need one pump for this and once the water ran through the PVC it could go into a growbed. So here's the way I think it could work -

Pond --> RFF ---> PVC/NFT --> Growbed ---> Pond

For the growbed build the aquaponic equivalent of what's called a bog filter (Here's the idea - http://www.creative-waterscapes.com/html/natural_bog.html). Here's one that turned out really nice - http://s223.photobucket.com/user/Ramjet99/media/Bog%20Filter%20and%20Pond/pond_10-10-0907r.jpg.html#/user/Ramjet99/media/Bog%20Filter%20and%20Pond/pond_10-10-0907r.jpg.html?&_suid=137503144224007300121866869944. If you can build in a way to regulate the water level in the growbed, like a standpipe, this would be an improvement (you can use something like plywood or plastic to support the liner where you drill for the drain.

I noticed that there are a couple of areas you might make into a growbed in your bottom photo. One is covered in white rocks at the end of the pond and the other is in the lower right corner of the photo (again with white rocks).



This would be another way to go but growbeds aren't easy to move so it might make it hard to get at the fish. If it were me I'd go with the beds along the side of the pond, built like a bog filter, it's probably slightly more expensive but it will look like it fits with the landscape.

How about a pic of the area surrounding the pond and where you'd put the growbeds if you built them? Might have a second opinion - Cheers.

Any area that's covered by white rocks in the picture has multiple layers of concrete below it, and/or exists largely under my papaya trees. The pond area itself is in an area that only gets full sun around 3 months out of the year because of my house.

To make my growing area more aesthetically pleasing and suitable for growing a wider variety of stuff, I've decided to move forward with building a growbed in place of the a-frame and moving the a-frame to another part of my yard where I can just set it up with a few fish and an RF filter. The rf filter will be easier to elevate in the new location.

I have most of the materials for a grow bed since I'm dismantling an old horseshoe pit anyway, received a second pond liner by mistake, and have a bunch of concrete from digging various holes around my yard. I feel like this will look better.

I'll have a larger RF filter with a clean out drain located in between the pond and the grow bed.

On each side of the new growbed, the bottom of which is a 6x5 piece of inch thick wood, I'll have 2-6x6's stacked and secured with a 2x4 running the entire perimeter at the top giving me another couple of inches for my growing media.

That structure will sit on top of stacked concrete blocks, elevating it about a foot off the ground. The grow bed will use a bell siphon to redistribute water to the in ground pond.

I was thinking that down the line I might want to add some strawberry towers as well, which seems like it would be easy to do by just adding a small tank with a pump+water return in between the rf filter and the growbed.

Am I missing anything?

If you have lots of fish you'll be having to pull off solids fairly often. This might not be big enough to handle the ammonia from the fish in your system - I say this because I'm not certain how much pulling the solids out with the RFF will help reduce the ammonia and nitrite, and the growbed is small, so not as much surface area for bacteria. Sounds like your getting things figured out though.

Been thinking about this stuff a lot, and I've decided to leave things mostly as they are situated.

I'm going to take a jigsaw and cut the top third off the first foot off each pipe. I bought two dozen mesh bags, which I'm going to fill with pond filter and gravel. This way I can take them out and clean them really easily. I figure this should help out a lot with the solids, especially if I clean them somewhat regularly.

I just don't see another way of easily putting in a filter before the water hits the plants.

I'm making a 4x2.5 foot grow bed with a bell siphon mostly underneath the pvc structure as well. I figure cucumbers and tomatoes will do fine there.

So it will go pond --> pond screen filter --> mesh bag filled with gravel --> plants in pvc/nft --> grow bed --> pond

Also I'm going to use my spare pump to run directly through a rff, then a 2 bucket growbeds, then back to the pond.

Will have some pics up in a few days when I get the mesh bags from amazon.

Im struggling with the same design dilema. The only way i thought to fix it was to have gravity feed the filter and then dump into a sump tank and then pump to nft.

FT->FIlter->ST->NFT->FT

I thought about that. I guess then the sump would just have to have an overflow line back to the main tank then?

Water would return back to FT via gravity from NFT to FT. So the only pumped water is from ST to NFT.

Is the Smartpond Water Garden Pressurized Filter from Lowes usable for filtering solids? Seems like it solves all my problems.

Seems interesting enough, but the leakage complaints on the reviews and the price makes me think you can build it for less...

I attached that filter from Lowes, and added 3 (so far) mesh bags filled with gravel and filter material to the the PVC. The filter drips a few times each minute from one of the connections, but I have so much water pumping through that it doesn't seem to matter much.

I also built a grow bed out of a 35 gallon steel tub with mostly gravel as the medium. It has a bell siphon and is attached in between the end of my pvc and my tank.

Then I transferred some of the stuff from the pvc piping to the new grow bed. Today's the first day it's running.

Lots of changes. I separated the a-frame into two pieces, intertwined them, and then put them vertically against one of my walls. Each now has a ball valve so that I can regulate water flow as I see necessary.

I added a second pre- pvc/nft filter. This one is easy to clean and has a UV light for the algae, which it's really helped within the first 24 hours.

I replaced the small metal planter with two 50 gallon heavy duty stock tanks that were on sale. One uses a bell siphon and one uses constant flood. I'm just curious what will work better for my purposes.

Both are filled about 2/3rds with river rocks/pebbles. The top third will is expanded clay pebbles.

I also added an airstone to the pond and the constant flood bed.

So here's the final setup-

fish pond-- pressurized filter w/bioballs -- pressurized filter with UV and bioballs - screen filters in the pvc-- pvc/nft plants (lettuce and whatnot) -- growbeds -- fish pond

I planted 4 of the rows of pvc with lettuce (so 16 plants) and both growbeds with an assortment of beets, pees, tomatoes, squash, cucumber, and strawberries. I'm excited to get see some growth.

Will update when something goes right or wrong!