Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Here is a basic layout of the area i have to work with, sketchup was tricky to get exact measurements with as i've only just downloaded it, round any measurements to nearest 5cm

I've found a few pumps available in the 30000-55000 lph range, they are high flow pumps and the 55000 lph model (Jebao JKP55000) should be able to handle the head height comfortably, i'll have to include an overflow return pipe where it enters the grow bed system in case the flow is too high for the system to deal with. From what i can tell the pump has a 110mm fitting does that seem right? It's looking like my plumbing will be quite interesting.

The existing garden bed along the masonry bench has an old rotted out tree stump in it, i can demolish the brick surround easily enough and my measurements suggest i could fit an IBC into the space quite neatly.

the bench isnt as wide as i had guessed, would i be able to fit half blue barrels on there and run a pipe along the brickwork above to feed them, with a drain pipe on the edge of the bench to return the water to the pool?

make sure you can control the water flow to EVERYWHERE with gate valves or similar... water goes up and down so you are not restricted with where you place the GB's. might be time to include the project designer (wife) to approve your setup with the half barrels and IBC.

here's an easy design pool setup...

30 - 55 KL/hr is a hell of a lot of water to move.

once you have a pool, you can basically ignore the turn water over every hour rule.

as mentioned earlier, stocking high density in a pool is always going to be hard, you will hit other limits before you run out of DO in your pool.

my friend who has his pool as FT uses a laguna 4280 - 16kl/hr pump..... it is enough.

+1 Yavi...

one problem I had with my system was high nutrient levels in the water + sunlight = Algae

the solution was covering the water in the FT (pool)

I use a 12000Lph pump for mine but its pumping 2 to 2.5m head so its probably doing 7 or 8 kl per hour.

Plus one... uncovered there will be a disaster..
The nutrients will be all consumed IN the pool, by algae..

I can't see how it is practical to heavily stock a whole pool, and have sufficient grow bed capacity to simply use all nutrients .. and provide the nitrification bacteria ..

Use the pool as a covered space and you maintain "control"
..
.

My friend also had this problem.
I told him... dude, dont worry about the colour of the water..... it will clear up once your rocks start working properly.

he proceeded to spend almost a grand building a roof over most of the pool..... didnt help.
he then bought a 1500w UVC, which did the job..... until it was turned off.

after a while the rocks started working and it all cleared up perfectly.....

rule #1.... be patient.

algae will come and go, once your system (filtration) is healthy and stabilised well, you wont get algal blooms, even if you feed heavier. Stringy algae, that is another issue all together.

I'm not concerned about algae as considering the water volume I won't even come close to having a heavy bio load, while I will be growing both veges and landscaping plants in the water, if it looks like nutrient will be an issue I'll add a bio filter but would rather hold off until I know I need it

dude with the pool didnt run a filter for a couple of months i think, got away with 180 SP fingerlings in there no problem.

however the quicker the filter goes in the better, especially if you dont like green water.

This is a 3 year old thread, it looks like he followed up in 2 other threads though:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=26796
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29381