Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello group, I am new here and I could really use some help with modifying the setup I currently have so it works better.

What I have now is a symple IBC tote, with the top part working as the grow bed.
I'm using mostly scrounged up parts. The pump is an old pump from a pond the previous home owners had laying around, from the label it seems to indicate that it's a 675 gal/hr pump. It has been working fine for almost a year now, but probably not performing at it's true capacity.
From the IBC tote, the water gets pumped up into a radial filter made from a 55 gallon barrel, and then back to the grow bed.
I noticed that in most setups I see, the radial filters people have are fairly low. That doesn't make sense to me. How do people get the water back into the tank? A second pump?

My main reason for wanting to modify my setup is that I want to add strawberry towers, so this would make it necessary for the water from the filter to flow quite high so then it can go down the towers by gravity, and be collected at the bottom of the towers to flow back into the tank.
If my towers will be say 3 feet tall, I need the level of the water in my radial filter to be at least 4 ft above the edge of the tank I would think right?

Also I notice some users have those upside down 5 gallon water jugs as their radial filter. Doesn't the flow of a big pump cause too much water movement for the particles to settle at the bottom? it seems to me that my pump operating normally would shoot water up in the air.

Currently I'm using a bypass valve to let water go back into the tank since the flow is more than my pipes can handle (the return pipe from the filter is definitely too small) and even if it was bigger, the grow bed would fill way too fast. My thought is that if I add some strawberry towers, I can direct the extra flow to the towers, so I won't need the bypass valve anymore since that is the reason the filter doesn't perform as it should, most of the crap goes right back in the tank.

apologies for being so lengthy, I just have a lot of questions and I really want to get a solid system ready soon.

why would you ever need a RFF on a system that small?

No problems with lengthy questions. We've all been there.

But first, welcome to the forum.

Usually (not always), the RFF is placed in between the fish tank and the sump tank. So it gravity feeds into the sump, passing through the RFF. Sump's are quite useful in keeping the water level of the fish tank level, so it's the sump that fluctuates between the beds, not the fish tank. So if something goes wrong, it's only the sump that's drained, and your fish are kept happy, instead of flapping about.

I'd be cautious putting that much weight/size of the RFF if you're planning on putting it really high, it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. Plus the pump will need to work harder to raise the water that high.

If your water is coming out in a jet, I'd think you'd need bigger pipes, a thicker pipe will move the same amount of water, but it doesn't turn it into a jet, just pushes more. As long as your bell syphon (I think that's what you've got there) is working, it doesn't matter if the bed fills up quickly, there's no right or wrong speed for it to fill.

because I want to be able to do a good job removing solids so I can get my water quality good enough to where I can stock it with trout next winter

because I want to expand it (more grow beds, more fish)

because I hate vacuuming the bottom. I think that if I agitate the water really good fairly often, I can get enough solids suspended in the water that eventually they'll end up in the filter not in the tank... I might be dreaming here, but I don't see why having an RFF would hurt my system, it can only do good.

ok, I can see the thing about the sump tank. not sure I'm ready to add another tank to the system, but it does look like something worth researching. I can see how that would simplify the system since the water for the strawberry towers would not need to be gravity fed and that would solve issues with distributing water to several places since there would be plenty of pressure from the pump.

I will have to google some setups that use a sump tank. I haven't thought of doing that.

It depends.

Do you know that the job of a RFF is?

If you are going to add GBs then the RFF could be doing a bad job unless you are also going to add a mineralisation tank so that instead of throwing the solids away you reintroduce them to the system to get their nutrients.

I'm not a fan of backyard systems using RFFs but using one in a system design where the pump is in the FT is an extra bad idea.

Some people do need/want an RFF (space restrictions and a desire for more fish).
For some people it does make sense to put the pump in the FT (space restrictions and a desire for simplicity).

I can't think of any good reason why you would do both. I'm not saying your system won't work but there are ways of doing it better.

For the size of your system, you won't need a massive sump tank. Do you have any more of the blue/green drums that you're using as your RFF?

You could just put them next to each other, so Fish tank flows into the RFF, RFF flows into the Sump, and pump from your sump to your grow bed/strawberry tower.

However, the bigger your sump, the less often you'll need to top up the water, and the bigger the system, the more stable it'll be.

I'll agree with Stuart though, it depends on how many fish you're planning on having. If you stock heavily, you'll need some sort of filter, but you don't have massive amounts of bio filtration (your media) in your system, so I'd be wary about putting too many in. If you stock the trout to a careful amount, then the grow bed will be all you'll need to filter, and your water will be crystal clear. Keeping things simple has it's advantages.

If you have the space and you want extra GBs anyway then I don't think you would need an RFF since the GBs will capture more of the solids.
Also an RFF really only catches some of the particles and usually the larger heavier ones at that. Now if you are pumping from your FT then the pump will be chopping the fish poop up more so than a sump pump system (CHIFT PIST) and a lot of the finer parts will get through the RFF. Also if you do put an RFF on I would not recommend 'agitating' the sediment in your FT to try and get it to your RFF where you hope it will be captured... it is more likely to cause health problems for your fish and just pass through your RFF anyhow.. an easy way to catch the finer particles would be a bucket with sponge material under a water return and rinsing the sponge occasionally (or a proper particle filter but that is overkill and as pointed out unnecessary)
Also remember an RFF needs emptying every few days and if you forget you could get ammonia spikes or other nutrient problems..
I hope I don't sound to negative, I myself have a RFF and mineralisation tank but if I had the room I would have just added extra GBs instead and since you want to add GBs anyway I think it would be better to hold of on the RFF.

+1 Tom