Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all finally got some blue barrels painted my ibc will be ordering uniseals soon and thinking of welding barrels together to save on pipe work no real plan yet just seeing how things will fit into place or not

cut some barrels and cleaned today

lol pictures are all back to front as usual

Can anyone tell me if putting a sump in the green house on the step down shown on the first picture on thread would work cheers

Hey Rocket Rod !!

Yeah that will work -

things to think about.
1. do you want to dig and have more sump volume down
2. do you want to have a long flat sump without digging.
3. what level do you want your growbeds at
4. what head height can you pump work at (measure the top of where you want your sump water to start and up to the fish tank height.
5. You could make some barrel sumps like Icemans 'shoestring gardens' thread
6. you could make 1/2 or 1/3 IBC sumps connected together with 90mm uniseals - like my 'community gardens' thread
7. Probably the most obvious thing - What height do you want your growbeds>? I prefer mine high to access but low enough to grow a decent height tomato plant.
8. access to the sump (dimension) - what depth will the barrel/ibc sump be in relation to the backwall?

Thanks heaps Jay also if I have a slo and have a 1000 liters in ft constantly how many liters of sump do I need?

so your running CHIFT PIST as opposed to your other system which has the pump in the fish tank, this new system will have the pump in the sump tank correct?
Allow as much as your growbeds will drain - To be safe 1/2 the volume of your growbeds, i.e. 4x 1/2 blue barrel growbeds would be approx 300 litres.
but....
thats empty so you want more than that to cover the pump and evaporation.
Go for 2x 300mm high IBC sumps or 2-3 barrels in a line.
You can always have the sumps open and poking out a bit and grow duckweed in them.
Or you can grow fingerlings

Thanks Jay that helps a lot

My thinking is that the more water you have the more stable the swings and less topping up of water in summer.
The space under growbeds isn't used anyway so why not make interconnected sumps
Here are some from our school system


And here is one from my house where I've offset an IBC ontop of its other half then interconnected with 40mm and a small SLO. Tip - make the connection bigger when you have a pump in the sump tank (90mm).

If you're going to use it for fingerlings make sure you put a proper cover or they will jump out.


And here is Iceman's Shoestring build

Awesome Jay thanks for the pictures making things clearer especially when I'm not really good on planing side of things I have tryed to contact uniseals in Brisbane but there site is off line at the moment cheers

Send a private message to RobBob as he sells them now. May have to go to his blog, Bits out the Back. Rather give business to Rob.

I like the area you have Rocketrod. Can't wait to see the progress.

Thanks guys for your help will get on to Rob bob cheers

Here is the link to Robs http://www.bitsouttheback.net/p/bits-ou ... Ak9aPmSyYB

Robs the man, his prices are good too!


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