Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all,

I am new to this forum and am not sure where to post this question. I am starting an aquaponics pilot project in Jordan and am facing some challenges.

First of which is the pump selection. I have two grow beds, each 100 cm x 100 cm x 40 cm deep. I am using crushed gravel as my growing medium, and will be using the method in which the beds are constantly being filled and drained.

I also have a 70 gallon water barrel that I will be using as my fish tank (Gold Fish). I will then be using gravity to trickle down the water into the grow beds. Later the water will be flushed into a sump barrel that is almost completely underground. The head between the bottom of the sump barrel and the top of the water tank is slightly less than 14 feet.

What size pump should I be using?

Also if anyone has a good way of heating the fish tank in case of drop of temperature as the tank is outside with lowest night temperatures reaching 35 degrees F.

I would love some input and to talk to any experts out their that would like to help a beginer out.

Cheers

Hi Kij2,

Am i right that 70Gal is around 280ish litres?

So the general rule is that the pump should circulate the total volume of the fish tank at least once per hour.

As such, for your situation a 300ltr per hour pump will suffice.

As for heating your tank, heating that much water is going to be costly, is your tank insulated at all?
If you can insulate it, you could probably look at a compost heater such as this to assist:
http://permaculturenews.org/2010/01/11/ ... eelie-bin/

I hope that has helped you a little,

Regards to you,
Jeff

EDIT:
That is to sy that you don't run your fish tank water through it, but make a coil under or around your fish tank under the insulation.

14 ft is a lot of head, you will need a powerful pump?

can you have the GB, FT an ST closer together, of even better put the FT under the GB and pump up to the GB and drain back into the FT?

Thanks Porter for your input.

What do you do to heat your fish tank? Is it indoors? If you have it outdoors, what is the lowest outside temperatures you experience in winter?

Hi Kij2,

your welcome, our tank(s) is an outdoor above ground tank, and we have the opposite issues to you, our issues are keeping the water cool in summer where water temps the week before last reached 28DecC.

As such we take into consideration limiting sunlight and tank positioning to reduce direct sun.

The lowest temps we have experienced was 12DegC.

In regards to Slowboat's question, because i missed it the first answer, i understand that the pump will sit at the bottom of your sump barrel and pump to the top of the fishtank at a total distance of 14ft...what will the height difference be between the top of the water level in the sump and the top of the water level in the fish tank? Because Slowboat is right, that will play a part in pump strength.

When you chose your pump, look at the details for an example at the very bottom of this link for an idea.

http://creativepumps.com.au/zpumps/pond ... _pumps.htm

This is a great link for explaining pump head too:

http://creativepumps.com.au/zpumps/pump ... lained.htm

Regards
Jeff

Thank you Jeff, these links are great. Exactly what I am looking for. So far the system is in a design phase, and hopefully tomorrow we will start putting it together.

Appreciate all the help.

Karim

My pleasure Karim, very nice to meet you, good luck on the build, post up some photos, we look forward to following your progress.

Regards to you,
Jeff