Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Here's a video of my aquaponics system plan please leave your comments with me and thoughts

My main problem is the pumping from the sump to the tank

Hiya Harley, first of all welcome to the forum.
Constructive criticism; your stands will need supports on the sides as the bb's will bow out and your sump is too small. The larger the sump the better. (Allows for the inevitable expansion among many other things.)
You don't need a pump in the ft to pump to the gb's as you can gravity feed to them using a slo.
My advice is to spend time on this forum and read, read, read. Then ask questions. Then finalise your build.
1 bb gb would be about 65 litres of bio filtration (wet media) so in total roughly 260 litre which at 20 litres per fish = 13 fish.
Look forward to the build and good luck.

Yep, Skeggley has covered pretty much everything... +1

Will they bow out even if i use hydroton if so i will weld 25 x 25 in the middle

I never understood this - can you explain why its not more if you use 220litre drum? so even at 1/2 a barrel 110ltrs and a bit less for top space it would be more like 90ltrs?

Blue barrels are 205L not 220. 65 is a safe estimate I guess


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Why is the sump to small? i will have all the beds filling a draining at different times ?

Yes they will bow out.. You'll see when you cut them up, they are very flexy..

You might think they are filling and draining at different times, but sooner or later they will all line up and all fill at the same time, then all dump at the same time. Better to have a sump around the same volume as your beds if possible.. The other reason you want a big sump is because of evaporation and transpiration, in summer time you don't want to be topping the tank up every day..

hmm,,, i was thinking that the beds would be 50/50 so 50% water and 50% hydroton??

Can someone please answer me

I'm not 100% sure on the question, but a quick google tells me the hydroton has about a 33% water volume. So if a 100L tub of hyrdoton is full, it'll take 33L of water.

Water is heavy and will put outwards pressure on the sides of the growbeds. The blue barrel growbeds won't be as strong now as they have been cut.

If you are running flood and drain your sump will need to have enough volume to cope with the times all growbeds drain at the same time plus some. It also needs to cope with the times all he growbeds are full and still have some water left so your pump is still under water.

so a 200L Sump will be bigger enough???

Harley, once cut the barrels lose their integrity. Try cutting a barrel, put it on your frame, fill it with water and see where reinforcement will be required.
As for the sump, IMO system water volume is important for system stability. Rule of thumb says change ft volume hourly, and also have enough volume in the sump to handle all water volume of gb's.
Now these are just rule of thumb and can be worked around however from one newbie to another I'd strongly suggest following these for AP success.
As fish quantities are based on bio filtration abilities, (gb's) I'm thinking you will want more than 13 fish in that big 1000 litre ft. therefore you will need to expand your bio filtration, hence the inevitable expansion.
More gb's=larger sump.
I'm not trying to be negative to your system design just point you in the right direction, we're all here to help, except Bullwinkle he's here to confuse, and we are all continually learning through others mistakes.