Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Oh, dear, my poor neglected system threads have gone without my attention for 'way too long...sorry I didn't see your question!

The aqualifter is like an aquarium pump with two outlets -- or rather, an inlet and an outlet. One sucks and one blows. (Yeah, I know, just leave it alone, guys!) The problem with siphon-based overflows is that over time, air accumulates in them, and you can lose your siphon, which can then result in your tank overflowing all over the floor instead of into the sump like it's supposed to. One solution is to stick a tube in the highest part of the overflow and hook it to the sucking side of the aqualifter, and have a tube hooked on the blowing side that dumps into the sump or aquarium, whichever is convenient. That moves the "single point of failure" from the overflow siphon to the aqualifter, so I'm still not totally satisfied with it, but it's the most reliable solution I've found. You can also use a power head; they have an air inlet that can be hooked to the tube from the overflow, but I've had more trouble with those in my aquariums; they tend to just stop sucking sometimes, and have to be encouraged to start again. The best solution would be to have a hole drilled in the tank so there's no overflow at all, but I don't have the tools or expertise required for drilling a glass aquarium.

The pump in the sump is just a fountain pump I got at the local feed and garden store. The way it works is water drains from the aquarium through the overflow into the sump below, where the pump sends it back up into the grow beds, where it drains down into the aquarium to go out through the overflow again. So everything works by gravity except the part where the water from the sump gets pushed up to the grow beds.

Again, sorry for the long delay in responding. You probably have long since found the answers to your questions, but maybe this will help someone else who comes along.

Thanks! He really does.

System update: The indoor aquaponic system has been disassembled, and I am setting it up as a traditional planted aquarium for growing out my angelfish fry. Not because it wasn't a success -- it was a ROARING success. It just wasn't very practical, mostly because the grow beds weren't big enough to accommodate useful plants like vegetables. I thought about growing herbs in it, but in reality, I don't see how ANY of those indoor herb gardens are very practical, since all the herbs I know of have gigantic root systems and get huge. The houseplants I had in it did really well, to the point I really couldn't keep up with trimming them, and I couldn't give them away fast enough, which meant then I was faced with throwing away perfectly good plant cuttings, which bothers me at some deep fundamental level.

now that your pilot system and proof of concept is done you can build a huge outdoor system

Do you mean this one?

touche,

i guess i should read signatures more.

I love reading your "entries". You're so analytic and it reminds me of how I think. You are definitely still an engineer at heart.

I like the idea of the overflow, but I would question the zip ties and the material they are fastening through holding the weight of water over time. They will fail eventually, and you'll have a wet mess to clean up.

The problem with being an engineer in a nurse(practitioner)'s body is that I'm always forgetting how little logic actually has to do with the real (as in, outside of engineering/tech environments) world, and getting myself all frustrated by expecting other people to think and behave logically. Fortunately, I have about 300 baby angelfish growing out right now, and staring at them sucks all my angst right out, which is good, because there's been a lot of reorganization going on and none of it makes any sense to me, because they keep eliminating the things that make everything else work, in order to save money, and making things not work just seems like a really ineffective cost-cutting strategy to me.

As for the zip ties, and the water weight...the containers were engineered such that their horizontal rims rested on the tank edge, so that's what held the bulk of their weight. The edges of the holes didn't take any stress, as a result. The zip ties were slightly stretched horizontally, but really not that much, given that the weight of the inside container was considerably lessened by its buoyancy, and the outer one never had THAT much water in it at once, plus was also supported by its bottom portion pressing against the tank. I kept an eye on the zip ties, but they held up quite well. I suppose a couple of stainless bolts or something would have been more durable, but you have to admit the zip ties were prettier, right?

The biggest fail of the system was the little center tank I tried to incorporate into the sump. There was just no good way to get water to flow through it, the way things were configured, and I ended up disconnecting it from the system and just having the two buckets.

Stainless wire is good to replace cable ties.

Or, just stainless zip ties.

I was thinking about (in roughly this order and without any mental punctuation) planted aquariums and worms that live on O2 in constant flood grow beds and moss that grows almost totally under water under my favourite local little water fall probably in CO2 and the fact that I grow kale on a string completely underwater in my fish tank for my silver perch to eat and the possibility of growing terrestrial plants like moss completely under water.

Soooooo....

Can you please stick a little bit of moss under water if you have a planted aquarium, because I'd love to know if it can grow. It would make for some interesting new planted aquarium designs. I put some in my fish tank, but it disappeared.

My silver perch loves ner (my non-gendered impersonal pronoun (see nee)) underwater kale garden.

It depends on the moss, but a lot of them are semi-aquatic, meaning they'll grow underwater if submerged. They usually take on a new form. I read somewhere one time that there are actually either not any or very few (I can't remember which) true aquatic mosses. Which means most if not all of the ones you see in aquariums are probably semi-aquatic.