Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Background: I'm a 21 year old college student the midwest region of the United States. I became immediatly interested in Aquaponics a few months ago when I fist heard about it from a friend. I picked up Sylvia Bernstein's Aquaponic Gardening book and read it cover to cover in about a week, I have been planning my system build ever since. I decided to do an indoor build because the winters here are very harsh and not conducive to life unless inside a heated greenhouse (which I will build when I have my house). I want to grow mostly green leafy vegetables like lettuce, kale, and spinach and thus decided to jump right into a DWC build. Here's what I have so far!

http://imgur.com/a/RUw54 ⇦ Link to album with these same photos, except larger.

Dimensions: Below is a photo of the Fish Tank (near) and the Grow Bed (far), both are 4ft x 4ft x 1ft (1.2m x 1.2m x 30cm). They'll hold 120 gallons (450 liters) each. I'm considering either goldfish or guppies for this system.


Fish: Guppies would be cool because I could have about 100 of them and plenty of babies. They are a pretty neat schooling fish. I need to make sure that my water temperatures remain at a good level for the though. Goldfish on the other hand don't care about the cold but they present a problem with how large they get. I would have to stock the tank with the adult size of goldfish in mind, therefore I would have a slim ammonia output for a while.



Building Materials: Apple for size reference. This is my first major venture into woodworking. I overbuilt these, you can jump inside of them and they do not flex. $200 overall spent on building materials

Plumbing: I think that I will be pluming this system with 2 inch (50mm) PVC. I will use bulkheads for the wooden tanks and uniseals for the filter system. Basically I will put a SLO in the grow bed that will run into the fish tank, then another SLO in the fish tank that will feed the filter circuit and run back to reservoir. I will also be putting backup stand pipes in both the fish tank and grow bed to set the maximum water height in the event of a malfunction.



The inside of the beds are insulated with 1/4in (6.3mm) thick Styrofoam with a Mylar thermal reflective layer.



Here's a shot of the pump reservoir I plan to use. 29 gallon tank, I have a 55 gallon available if that isn't enough.



Pump: That's the pup that just came in yesterday. Rated at 400GPH (1500LPH) at a head height of about 3.ft (1m) I think that I'll get about 225GPH (850LPH) out of it.




Filtration: I picked up four "Food Grade" HDPE buckets 5 gallons (19 liters) each. I think that I will use these to build a Radial Flow Filter, and a Moving Bed Bio Reactor. The MBBR will probably use K1 Kaldness and a gentle tangential flow to create a blissful bacterial spa. I'm considering using some method of fine filtration inbetween.



Lighting: I plan to use LED lighting for this. Metal Halide HID lights would be too hot for lettuce in this small area and T5 lights cost more over the years.

Waterproofing: I have Durascrim 20RR plastic liners on the way to waterpoof the beds.

I created this thread upon the request of supermod Charlie. Please feel free to give me any suggestions or criticism. Thanks for looking! I will update with more if there is interest.

Welcome from Indiana. I can grow anything but lettuce(ph thing is all I can figure). I have yet to see an indoor system produce to my satisfaction. Not being negative but just want to see the lights produce so I can learn. Get on it brother in a good way.

Thanks for the reply! l plan to prove you wrong with the indoor lighting system. I'm looking at some high quality grow lights.

Hey Lettuce, you can do a fish less cycle if you are worried about ammonia however i believe the gold fish are pretty hardy.
Running filtration seems like an overkill for your system??, maybe you could have a small GB with media to act as a filter, collect off that to feed the DWC.

Hey kitacooch! Good points. Yet, I'm no stranger to overkill. For better or for worse, "If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing" is often my motto. I decided early on that I won't tolerate brown water, I want it to look like drinking water.



I was planning to cycle with pure ammonia from a chemical supply store. I have a brother who has a large healthy tank that I can culture some bacteria from.



I'm still on the fence about what fish I will actually use. Some form of temperate or "subtropic" fish that will live off of central heating seems to be my best bet. Goldfish seem to me more like a pond fish, the more I read about the the more I realize how big they get.



When I do my next system I'll plan for a multi level system with RFF -> media bed -> DWC like you said. It'd just be hard to fit into the space that I have available at the moment. Plus if I go for a large LED light source it would be a little bit weird to light for a multi-level.

Thank you for your input

Nice looking setup.

You'll definitely need a lager sump.

You'd be right if that was a media bed. 100% DWC for this one! That's just a pump/fill reservoir.

Nice system lettuce, but why not build the fish tank under the dwc? Seems that then you wouldn't even need a sump and could have a larger grow bed. Just wondering. It will be fun to see it come together.

That's actually a great idea, it's just not how I chose to go about it. I was actually intending to make this a flood/drain media bed system when I built those boxes a few weeks ago.The original design was to have the FT at the highest level and the GB below it and just run the water down into the grow bed and then into a huge sump.

I have a friend in Florida who runs a commercial aquaponics farm and she convinced me to go DWC. I was receptive to the idea of DWC for a few reasons. Firstly, it grows the leafy lettuce type green plants arguably better and faster. Second, it means that I don't have to spend 100's on hydroton. Lastly, I don't have to have an enormous sump.

The way it is, I like the fact that my pump won't be in contact with the fish solids at all. Pump where it is should extend the life of the pump and also increase the effectiveness of my radial flow filter because the solids will not be chopped up by a pump impeller. Also, If I had the FT below the GB I would have to put the filter loop above the whole thing, raising the pump's head height considerably.

BUILD UPDATE:


Pipes:
I finally decided on what pipes I will use for the drain system. That issue has been holding me back for quite some time. I consulted this list of gravitational constants: http://aquaponicsnation.com/forums/topic/8461-gravitational-flow-rates-based-on-pipe-size/ and decided that 1 1/2in PVC (40mm) would be more than enough for my application. A lot of people suggested that I go with the standard size of 3 1/2in (90mm) but that seemed a little sketchy to me. I was worried that my pumps output (225GPH, 850LPH) would not be enough to lift the solids in such a large pipe.

Filtering:
I may have found a really great option for my middle stage filter, AKA fine particle filter. http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/3102/Mesh-Filter-Bags http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/1480/Polyester-Mesh-Bags. These types of filter bags might be great for me. I can simply suspend them in a PVC pipe within a bucket and pull the whole bag out to clean. Seems like it takes the filter mat idea and gives the water much more area to travel through. Ideally I would like to have something that would not need to be cleaned ever 24 hours. I still have to decide what micron size to go with. More research is needed in this area.


Now I just have to wait patiently for my bulkheads, Uniseals, and Durascrim liner to come in the mail. After they arrive I can begin building the pump/filter circuit. When the plumbing is done cycling begins and I will secure my lighting source in that time too. Next I get the fish and begin planting. Ultimately I will be setting up a data logging automated monitoring system once everything is already running smoothly. Either through Arduino or PLC, I have not decided yet.

Filtering:
I may have found a really great option for my middle stage filter, AKA fine particle filter. http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/3102/Mesh-Filter-Bags http://www.aquaticeco.com/subcategories/1480/Polyester-Mesh-Bags.

Those are overpriced... FDA-Compliant Polypropylene Felt Filter Bag, 8" Diameter x 32" Height is $13.46 from http://www.mcmaster.com, item 51595K87. Even cheaper if you don't care about FDA label. The 50 micron side is based on my potable water experience and this powerpoint. http://ag.arizona.edu/azaqua/ista/ISTA7 ... ontrol.pdf

[quote="Margali"Those are overpriced... FDA-Compliant Polypropylene Felt Filter Bag, 8" Diameter x 32" Height is $13.46 from http://www.mcmaster.com, item 51595K87. Even cheaper if you don't care about FDA label. The 50 micron side is based on my potable water experience and this powerpoint. http://ag.arizona.edu/azaqua/ista/ISTA7 ... ontrol.pdf[/quote]

Thank you! 32" is way too long for my purpose, although 8" wide is just about perfect. Is 50 micron what you would suggest for this application? I don't want it to be too tight so that it will restrict flow in that area. Also, I don't want to have to clean it every day. Do you have experience with these?

EDIT: -that document you posted



Something worth noting is that the bag I linked has a stainless steel ring in the opening and a cloth handle.

mcmaster carr has a lot of filter bag options with different diameter, lengths, and micron rating. They have different retaining ring and handle options as well. I just wanted to point out that the website you found didn't have something unique and they were kinda pricey. The FDA filter I linked is available in 7" diameter, 16.5" long with 100 micron (~0.8ft2 surface area).

The experience I have is industrial scale for pre-filtration before reverse osmosis units. Our plant produces 4,000 gallons per minute of deionized water with all the units running. Our pre-filter bags are in a bank, each 1.74ft2 surface area 25 micron bag filter receives approximately 10ppm of 25+ micron debris at 56gpm and 80 psi and last 6 days between clean outs.

You are absolutely right about this website being better... I looked back and noticed the stuff they have on the next 3 pages. Your few comments have helped me immensely, thank you!



Damn, sounds impressive! Alright then, your professional opinion: will a bag filter work for my application? If I set it up after my RFF from day one can I expect some longevity in terms of it filtering for a few days without being replaced? Or will it fill up with bio slime and clog every 24 hours and be more trouble than it's worth? Keep in mind I'm only working with 120 gallons so it's not that crazy of a fish population.

do you work at a water treatment plant?