Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everybody! ive been reading this forum and really excited in AP for a while now, and this christmas i was given the book Aquaponic Gardening and it has pushed me over the edge. Now i have four 60gal barrels (soon to be 6), as of yesterday one IBC 247 gal tote and a master plan coming into formation.

At first i was drawn to the Barrel ponics system, then just decided that I was going to go to the 275 gal tote because of limited expandability of the barrel ponics and the added stability of a larger system.

so a few things I would like advice on...
how does my rough draft look?
are auto siphons worth the trouble? i would have to make 8 of them
the reason Im burying the tote partially is to avoid using a sump tank so i dont have to find more containers
submersable pump or non?
will the growbeds be enough to filter the tote?


these are just some of my questions starting out.

I plan to build a green house and make it a sanctuary-esk place (it makes my wife particularly more interested in the project)

i will try to post pictures as i go along

thanks guys and what are your thoughts??

Welcome BuffenStuff!

Have you looked at the IBCs of AP link in the upper right of this page?

Your picture looks fine to me. You can use the trick of tilting elbows to control the flow to each bed rather than shelling out for 8 valves.
Some people might say 8 siphons will be a PITA, you might join up the drains and use one mega siphon instead but then you'll not have enough water in the FT. Using multiple siphons and no sump can work because the beds will be all out of sync with each other and rarely will all of them be completely full. That said you should figure out whether the FT will be empty when all beds are full. A ratio you might use is 40% water volume fills a gravel bed.
Another option is to run the beds constant flood, which avoids the siphon issues completely and should work fine. Would also increase the total water in the system for more stability. Or maybe even a mix of some constant flood and siphoned beds.
I think 8 barrel halves is plenty for your FT.

Yeah I think the constant flow might be the way to go, but the book I'm reading is all about using the flood drain method. I might try to make one and see how it gos from there. But like you said sounds like a PITA

Another option I have heard of is using a sequencing valve, anyone have experience with those?

See this thread, comparing flood and drain (two types) versus constant flood. See if you can tell which one is constant flood from the pictures.

viewtopic.php?f=51&t=8621

TCLynx uses sequencing valves a lot, and has modified them to run with less flow in case you need that. I haven't yet needed one, I do have to distribute water but to do that I split the flow in a bucket with fittings on the bottom or something like that.

That's quite an interesting result, I think il just go with CF because of the simplicity and FD
Method is only a small amount "better"

Should I continue to post pictures of my progress on this thread or start a new one??

Another thing I'm realizing is the ammount of media I need, I calculated that il Need one ton of pea gravel , I guess il be making my grow bed stand pretty beefy haha

The this is where i plan to put the green house and AP system
A lot of work cut out for me

Watch out for the gravity!

I'm seeing that image upside-down BuffenStuff.

You could start a Member's thread to log your adventure!