Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Dear all,

Suppose you have a 3 fish tanks for 6 m3 each, water overflows separately from each tank to the clarifier tank, water from the sump will be pumped to the 3 fish tanks simultaneously. Is it necessary or advisable to connect the 3 fish tanks in the bottom using pipes? appreciate your advice. thanks

Best regards,
ty

Not neccessary, not advisable.
Most will say not advisabe to have more than one tank per system, but i also run 2 tanks, with a fry/breeding tank (in summer)/trout run (in winter) to be plumbed in very soon.

one of the main reasons is fish from one tank getting sick and making the rest sick.

Unless you have good flow between tanks, the pipes might get anaerobic and sludgy. I wouldn't think its a good idea, but then I know didly squat about commercial style RAS.

I wouldn't even do it in the backyard... commercially there isn't a single reason to do so...

Thanks to all for the valuable advice. So physical connection of the fish tanks is not advisable. By the way, I am currently building a small aquaponic farm near Taipei Taiwan, please do drop by and give me advices if you got a chance to visit Taipei. Cheers.

You will have no disease control anyway, with a common sump.

The biggest reason for yourself not to do it would be what mattyoga has said.

What do you mean by "physically linking" ? As in water flows from one tank to the next? That would be a no.

Plumbing the tank drains together into a common line that leads to the clarifier is very common though.

That big ole study Rakocy did on AP production had 4 fish tanks... he used them for separating age cohorts IIRC so fish harvest could be stagged over time, and I believe they were connected "downstream" like you're describing rather than directly. Not sure what the benefit would be.

http://ag.arizona.edu/azaqua/ista/ISTA9/PDF's/RakocyUVICourse.pdf

It's common RAS practice to take solids/dirty water from multiple tanks... and remove solids wastes and then bio-filter.. before returning the cleaned water back to the tanks... usually utilising a shared sump...

The sump is effectively a clean/cleaned common reservoir.. as such "linked/shared" by the RAS tanks... by physical components...

But that's vastly different to "physically linking" fish tanks together...

If you follow the flow diagram in the UVI system linked above... you'll see that all tank(s) water is "clarified" and "filtered" before being fed to the raft beds...

And that the raft beds all drain back to a sump...clean/cleaned... before being distributed back to the fish tanks...

But the fish tanks themselves are not physically linked...

Some commercial operations have fish transport pipes between tanks so that fish can be moved about the facility without lifting them from the water.

Normally the pipes are closed though.

Connecting tanks in parrallel like the guys described above is common but not in series. The last tank in the series is going to get increased ammonia levels. Not a good idea.

I'cant remember off hand but I don't think Timmons has much on fish transport systems between tanks but Lekang does.

Thanks to all for the valuable feedback. Given no apparent benefit I will not do so, also for the fear of possible failure/leaking as the ground on which the tanks stand is not concrete paved.