Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Thanks rjinAZ - Its all fun

In my situation i need to take out the large chunks because my backbone pipe (from FT to growbeds) is ground level with upstands going into the beds.. so this acts as a settling tank and the crud settles in this 90mm pipe.

So the RFF reduces the need for me to flush it

If that makes sense without confusing you

DON'T ASK THAT QUESTION!

Your thread will devolve into another debate on whether to remove the solids or not.

Too late...

There are valid reasons for removing solids. I suggest reading Ryans thread called "Chatterson Farm is Born" for some good ones.

For the vast majority of BYAPers there isn't a good reason for removing solids and no need for a RFF. The exception would be those people who are space limited and want to increase their fish production and don't have room for extra plant production.

Everything the plant needs has to come from the water (with the exception of foliar feeds) but it needs to get into the water first. One of the reasons the GBs have to be so big is to store the solids while they break down and then release their nutrients into the water. This takes time. A long time. I believe that this is one of the reasons why AP systems become more productive as they age. In the first year the easily liberated nutrients are used by the plants but it is only after a year or more that the majority of nutrients, which particularly includes iron, phosphorus and potassium, are released from the solids (my theory, others theory, limited empirical evidence lots of anecdotal).

Another good debate question is.... Should you use a bio filter and rff with growbeds :-)





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Answer... Not needed for most modest sized backyard systems.. Except when you start moving to dwc where your filtration medium is reduced .


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Here we go...



If you mean GB storage room for solids then I agree. If you mean biofiltration then I would disagree since the biofiltration capacity of even a small GB is massive.

Given some of the results people have been posting lately of phosphorus (low), potassium (low but we knew that and nitrate levels (high) suggests that when GBs are heavily planted with fruiting plants an additional GB, DWC or NFT component may be a good idea to use up excess nitrogen in the system.

"If you mean GB storage room for solids then I agree" :-) sorry, wasn't clear enough. yes agreed

OR you want to add a buttload extra fish to your system that the traditional growbeds cant accomodate

Here I would disagree. Traditional GBs can handle large fish loads as long as they are traditionally and proportionally large relative to the amount you are feeding the fish.

Yes, that makes perfect sense thank you.

Ok Stuart you are making a ton of sense in the bio filtration aspect. That was my first wtf moment when reading these forums. The bacterial surface area is massive in the ibc grow beds. I found it weird that people think that they needed to add more bio filtration. My fish store here runs on a couple of sumps with maybe a 50 gallon bio filtration Rubbermaid and that does the bio job.

That is a great example of how you can have too big a drain pipe (do a search by author for me and "sqrt" for formula to calculate minimum drain size). If it is working then I guess there is no need to change it but even with the RFF you should probably regularly (once a week, month, day, year?) clean out the 90mm pipe. You probably can't do this but can move the 90mm pipe up and reconfigure the lines to the GBs? If you could make the 90mm pipe the high point then when the flow stops and starts it would help flush the 90mm pipe.

i went and picked up another 275 gallon ibc for my fish tank. heres a rough in:

so its going to go fish tank to rff to grow beds.

any thoughts?

Can anyone recommend a good walk through on a radial flow filter build with a 55 gallon drum?

watch my video - its fairly self explanatory

Its got nothing to do with pipe size its pipe position.

PS Using a bio filter such as a moving bed filter using K1/K3 filter medium will GREATLY increase your fish stocking capacity, above that of growbeds alone. Do some research on the Earthan website or videos.

I've run out of space for growbeds, but want more fish. So solution, add a bio filter after the RFF.