Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I need to map a plan on paper, to express my idea correctly.

I'm planning exactly as you describe only the indexing pump would be inside (about 3 inches off the bottom) an otherwise independently and constantly flowing SLO - RFF - FILTER CLOTH - DWC - SUMP w/ pump#1 - FT

This means when the timer based indexing pump kicks on that water will exit the RFF bypassing the shade filter and the DWC directly and only to the indexing valve and media beds. Meanwhile the level in the RFF would drop below the normal exit point for the DWC and it would stop flowing or slow down depending on pump sizing difference (2 pumps here).

My backup plan if you guys talk me out of my crazy idea would be to either place the indexing pump in the FT or ST. It has to go somewhere, I'm just thinking placing it inside a tall RFF would be a cool location to sort the heavy solids from the clean filtered DWC water.

The real problem here is one part of the system requires constant always on pump and the other part requires power cycling the pump. The intended concept here is placing the indexing pump inside the RFF to attempt to route that unfiltered water towards media bed bio filtration. But I could just as easily put that indexing pump anywhere else in the system.

You could do the whole thing with one pump in the sump tank. Just put a "T" off of the pump exit, branch one to the DWC and one to the FT where the overflow will feed the filters and then the GB's. You can put a valve on each branch after the "T" for flow adjustment. But, if you want two pumps for the sake of redundancy as a safety precaution, that's okay too.

If I get rid of the indexing valve and use siphons on all 6 GBs then I could probably do what you are saying. Early on I choose to use a very strange part, the "indexing valve" and since then it has complicated a lot of things. I am still excited to use it because it holds a lot of potential for zone type bed expansion in the future. It also is interesting to me personally for extending dry periods between flooding the media beds.

I'm about 95% sure I need all of the pumps pressure to activate that indexing valve to turn over to the next of 6 ports. A power cycle is the standard method or an actuator valve is the other "standard" method that I have seen for these index valves.

No the pumps are not redundant. Failure of the sump pump would kill everything, failure of the indexing pump would kill the media beds but the DWC would still flow. I could be wrong but in my mind, eliminating the second pump wont be an option for me. I believe the focus now is where to put that second odd pump. I need to PM some of the few members who have used those index valves to ask them if I missed something along the way.

BYAP members really love single pump simplicity and projects like mine could easily become the bad example because of my goal to try out the indexing valve. If I were to describe my system to a group of AP people I would probably discuss it as a standard CF PIST DWC....... And then after everything is very clear I would drop the bomb that Oh by the way there is a 2nd pump over here and some media beds that all use the same FT and sump water.

issues here;
2 pumps is a no no if they aren't redundant.
power cycling pumps is unusual and can eat up the impeller quicker then normal wear.
indexing valves aren't common so it complicates research and communication a bit.

A great way to fix it would be to add 6 more media beds another indexing valve and an actuator, this would allow for a T as you mentioned and water pressure would still cycle between the 2 indexing valves but that is HUGE way to fix a newb system.

Perhaps if you have enough pressure from one pump you could still get away with using only one. If you have a strong enough pump you could have ample supply to both sides of the "T" and maybe even enough to drop a relief back into the sump to help with aeration. Also, nothing says you can't put both pumps in the ST.

I sent that diagram to TCLynx and this was her response.

The system could still be done with a single pump if you wanted, there are several ways to do it. But going with two pumps, one to index and the other to feed the fish tank means you don't have to worry as much about the pump that is being turned on/off all the time dieing and killing your fish before you can get it swapped out.

That said, I would always recommend that all pumps go in the same tank. When you start putting pumps in different thanks you run the risk that if they are not perfectly balanced that you are going to wind up with one running a tank dry and burning up or another being off when the other pump is running and overflowing a tank. Also putting a pump in your radial flow filter will mess up it's functioning because the water level is going to fluctuate too much and probably be too turbulent.

I would probably recommend putting both pumps in the sump tank. Having the fish tank flow into the filters and the filters flow into the raft bed which drains to the sump tank. Then the water for the media beds/indexing valve could simply be pumped to the media beds and drain back to the sump OR if you position your fish tank lower (because it doesn't have to gravity flow to the media beds) you could let your media beds drain into the fish tank or the raft beds or back to the sump whatever seems to be the most logical.

Cool. I didn't realize you were indexing by turning the pump off/on. I thought the indexing valve was just switching outlets to a new port. Guess I should read better.

I have struggled with my layout since the start yet I blindly marched ahead building stuff while quickly researching. I also needed at least one person to back me up on the need for 2 pumps. TCLynx doesn't go into detail about how it could be done with one pump though I can assume it is more complex then a second pump. She does cite impeller wear from power cycling as her motive. Also TCLynx has managed good use of actuators that use a single pump always on while switching between 2 indexing valves to cycle them. This was her method of over coming impeller issues related to impeller wear. This works especially well when you do have a lot of "zones". So I want to credit the ideas behind her research though they can't help me much on my specific project today they will hopefully allow me to have "zones" one day down the road, like her builds.

I'm thinking I'm going to proceed with 2 pumps both in the sump tank. If I want to attempt my crazy pump in RFF idea some day I can easily use the drain valve since it uses the same size 1.25" pvc fitting as my pump output.

So what is next for me?

SLO - currently looking at IBC adapters to run my SLO as a external through the bottom.

RFF - ordering 3" uniseals because that plumbing needs to be larger then I had originally understood. I am planning to attach some extra liner material on my inner bucket to extend the height of the inside wall.

Shade Cloth Filter - still determining material choice, also more 3" uniseals here.

Media Beds - finishing down stems, leveling and water testing 2 of 6 beds are ready for media.

DWC - need sort out a lid or holder material. Because my width is so thin, only 18.5"/47cm I may have more choices then most people because I wont be supporting tons of weight. That also means only a 2-3 rows of plants but its pretty long.

New pump soon - Going to be ordering the main pump soon so I will need to do a bit of math to get my volume correct to determine my required output.

Air pump - this will be the final aspect that I focus on before I start really cycling water and calling myself an APer... but I still wont have fish... so I guess I'll have to hold off on the self label till I have at least 1 gold fish in there. Poor little canary in a coal mine he will be.

Also I have plastic debris everywhere... going to be looking for a solution to strain that off. I'm skimming it as I see it while water testing and leveling media beds. I'm pretty sure fish would try to eat that stuff.

TCL knows her stuff.

so you will end up with a CHIFT PIST system, but with 2 pumps so maybe a CHIFT 2PIST?

pumps are not that expensive, if you run with 2 matching get a spare as well so if something happens you can quickly swap it out.

how big is the system going to be?

Wow Slowboat, I just realized that is you with the pool modification. I saw the photos but now I can read the build thread... now I'm not going to get anything done.

I was thinking bidirectional uplifting linear linked solids heavy industrial teleportation or BULLSHIT for short. It's going places, youtube by tomorrow! It would have been more fitting if I actually do place the 2nd pump inside the RFF maybe?

The system has 6 half-ibc gbs cut longways so they're a little bigger then normal. We could guess about 350LT maybe?

The FT is a 1000LT IBC, the sump is 1000LT IBC, the DWC holds about 800LT wood with liner. My 2 barrel filters hold about 200LT each.

Matching is not a bad idea. The pump I have now for the indexing valve is a "LifeGuard Quiet1One 4000" rated at 1022GPH.

I like it because I can fit it inside my IBC sump without any modification to the lid. Good because my sump is in ground and I don't want ground water seeping in.

The last thing we worked on was the DWC liner, still holding up with good results. Then we took a few days to educate ourselves on filters, and to plan the location of the second pump. Thanks to a little help from you guys... sorry if I made you guys all repeat the same thing a few times to me.

While we were asking questions we did some soil work in the front yard and brought in a truck load of quality potting soil for what will soon be our front yard vegetable garden. This will be the first time we have not used some type of raised planters, so we expect next year we may be adding a raised bed in this area and work around the tree.

You can also see my terrible job of matching the paint from where we closed in the wall, I have the correct paint now, really need to go cover that up before I get called out for poor workmanship!



We are also seeing our citrus trees starting to ripen, Oranges are almost ready and dropping early, but our grapefruit tree is not doing so well.



We see them ship truck loads that are still green on the highway, I need to read up on how they gas and shock freeze stuff. That is good motivation to grow your own food!

So next was media guards for the grow beds... we made our own, still cleaning up the edges a bit.

We went big with our media guards, I expect to do a lot of testing with my down stems because they wont use a typical siphon setup so I expect to make a lot of adjustments to get the timing to my liking.



I got a little bit of soil into my sump which is where the dirt came from, that is cleaned up now.

Fitting the media guards was a little bit tricky. Our IBCs are cut longways to give us a bit more size the negative aspect is dealing with the ribbed surface after forces you to get tricky with angles and sanding edges. I may place a larger size media (bigger rocks) nearest the bottom of the media guards so that I don't get anything inside there, even so I can still remove single pieces because the guards are so wide.

I played around with some basic hole patterns already and made some notes with my timer and pump. Without media my water testing is resulting in 14 minutes to fill and 24 minutes to drain for each bed. Because my cycle timer works on 40 minute cycles this will be very important later to determine how many beds can flood per hour (probably only 2-3) and how long the max flood level will be held before the drain is allowed to occur. I expect my early numbers to change by -40% once media is added.

So more testing with just water once I get the indexing valve into the equation. And eventually timer testing with media one of these days.

But getting back to that DWC bed. We left off with liner testing...


I did some homework and found out that 2" DOW blueboard holds up better then most types of foam board, and I managed to find it locally. So we went and picked up a sheet up that in the girlfriend's van since my truck had a load of potting soil in the bed. It hardly fit... I thought we were going to break it on the way home. I almost "spit the dummy" as you Assuy-ponic masters might say. But we got it home without breaking it.

We wanted to cut it with a "hot knife" as this was the best method per my research because it melts as it cuts... I want one of those for toasting bread. However, not owning a "hot knife" and after testing a few tools at hand a steak knife seemed to do the job.

Then we went got our baskets from the local hydro store where they know almost nothing about AP but they wrote down the BYAP link, so we might see them post here one day.


We spaced out the pots for cutting. The original holes would be drilled with a circle bit then widened out with again.... a steak knife. Kids get your parents permission before using their cutlery in the backyard. Also please don't tell my girlfriend that I used her knifes because my drill bits weren't the right size.



Anyway... evidence disposed of and moving on.

On the left....
We finished the exit plumbing from DWC to the sump tank and tested it.

On the right...
We added plumbing from the sump to what will eventually be the indexing valve input. Sorry for the lack of photos on this part. You missed another big hole by the sump tank, 2" bulkhead installation and a bit of 2" pipe tucked around the GBs.

There will be another one just like it soon from the sump to the FT so I will get proper photos then.



Here we have our filters getting the painted with primer here. We found a method to paint them to look like wooden barrels that we might try.



Here is the link to how its done, more art then building... it sure beats NEON BLUE.

http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2011/11/trompe-loeil-rain-barrel-tutorial.html

Still waiting on some of our fittings to come in the mail so we can start working on SLO and filters. Things are coming along well though.