Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Max,

You may want to bury your ST a little farther. I know I wish I had. with the tank partly out of the ground your GBs have to be set higher to fully utilize the ST via gravity flow. Especially if it is or will ever be in a greenhouse. Height could become an issue. As for your pump sizing. What type of F&D are you trying to achieve. Timed of Siphoned? Depending on your answer there is a big difference in the pump needed.

Thanks BuiDui. I was trying to keep the top of my GB's below 3 feet. With the sump buried they will be about 26". On the filtering note, I would prefer to keep the grow beds filtered just because I don't want my carrots and root plants sitting in decaying fish waste. Letting them decay in a filter sounds good to me.

FloridaFishin I have about a cubic yard of dirt I can spread around to change the height of the sump tank. I set it to that height because I am using 8" cinder blocks plus the pallet base from the IBC so I should have just enough room but I am cutting it close. My grow beds will be draining through a bell siphon. Thanks

here is another picture.


I started putting together the siphon on the grow bed but found that the 2" bell pipe hit the bulkhead fitting and didn't sit flat on the bottom. I think I can just add a coupling to flare out the base and fit over the fitting but that's all I got so far.

Slow progress but it is coming together.

Max,

I was just thinking about your pump sizing question you asked earlier. The pump is usually sized according to the FT volume. The amount of pump you need to turn over the FT water 1 time an hr. Since you are going to use bell siphons that means that you pump would be constantly running. Therefore you would be safe with a 300gph pump. If it was a timed flood and drain. The pump would have to be 4 times as large.

Thanks! I am just about ready for the pump. I am building this in sections so I will use the sump as my fish tank for awhile. Operating the sump with one grow bed then I will expand with 2 more IBC's (fish tank and 2 more grow beds. I have everything ready I just need to paint the outside of the grow bed, purchase a pump, fill with water and start testing the bell siphon.

Question:
Does anyone know a cheap water softener that can hook up to a garden hose? I need a cheap and effective way to soften my water when I fill my tank?

For any newbie who reads this, just a heads up. Washing lava rock is not fun. It is labor intensive and a pain in the butt. Not that I am complaining but I did not know how much work it was going to be.

I am making progress: I got my first grow bed in and my bell siphon working. Using 1" drain line it drains in about 4 or 5 minutes. It takes about 25 minutes to fill because I had to turn down the water supply to make the siphon break. It is working good so far.

Max,

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PORTABLE-REPLAC ... 2a3a1a2098

I have been meaning to update this post but keep forgetting. The system is up and running using my sump as the fish tank, for now. I lucked out and finished right before a large rain storm added some fresh clean rain water to my tank. For a boost to the cycling I added some aquarium water into my grow bed. System has been running about 3 weeks with 7 catfish fingerlings and 10 bluegill fingerlings. I just added 15 more catfish fingerlings a few days ago. Currently I have strawberries and tomatoes planted. About a week ago I tossed in some peas and lettuce seeds and now I have little leaves starting to poke through the media. So far the system is running well, I will be adding 2 more grow beds and a 250gallon fish tank soon, hopefully in about two weeks when I get some more IBC's.

One thing to note is the catfish all huddle up in one corner. I added rocks and 4" pipes for them to hide in but they still just huddle in the corner. This only occurs during the day, at night they are swimming around. I placed plywood over the tank to block out some of the sun light but it made no change in their behavior. Is this normal?


This picture is from when the media was being added.


Can you believe Tomatoes already?


Plenty of room for a few more growbeds!

Looking good!

I created a build topic to post my progress.

You can see it in the Members Systems area of the forum
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=24435&p=498450#p498450

Hey Max, what happened to all your pics?

For any newbie that reads this and decides he can shortcut the gravel washing step by using inexpensive, lightweight Perlite...DON'T.
I tried that at first and 6 months or so later took everything apart, discarded the perlite, and started over.
At least you only have to rinse media once, and you can water your trees or whatever while you do it.

Washing the media is one of the most important steps. Having clear water drain from the grow beds is well worth the labor. A tip for anyone using red lava rock:use a cheap tarp to line the bed of your truck or you will be washing out red mud for hours. If your having it delivered put the tarp on the ground and dump the rock on it or your entire driveway will be red for weeks!

I made a mistake and resized my pictures on photobucket and messed up all my links. The pictures are on my build thread.

Ah! That explains why some of them worked and some didn't.