Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Gday all, recently decided to redo the backyard and have decided to have a crack at aquaponics. I liked the idea of introducing fish to the yard so I'm using a 800L pond to house some silver perch.

I'll be finishing a raised deck next week hopefully, and then border this along the fence lines with 3x two tier grow beds. There will be 1x 4500x350x350mm ams 2x 1800x350x350mm beds. I intend on using the top as individually siphoned grow beds, and the lower as sump/yabby tank.

To keep aesthetics and utilise limited space the gb's will be the highest point of the system. They will drop water into the below water beds/yabby areas, which intend on interconnecting to keep a common water level. I'll run an overflow from here into the pond as well as ideally a pond float level switch to a sump pump.

As you can see i have an idea of how o want it to work but not to sure on the technicalities of various things ie: one pump per bed or retic solanoids from one pump etc.

Hopefully beds should be done within a couple weeks and will update with pics then.

Any advice appreciated. Cheers

Welcome to the forum datpsi .

Cheers scotty, honestly not usually my cuppa this whole gardening thing but in very excited to get it happening and learning a heap already.. pond is 4 weeks in and fish seem healthy and water test looks good. .

Where setup will be in few weeks

datpsi,

Looks like that will be a nice area for your gardens. Do you have any drawings you can share
(maybe a photo of a napkin?) that would show the growbeds and your layout? So you're talking
about media filled growbeds 350mm x 350mm x L (either 4.5m or 1.8m.) Those are shaped
a little different than the common 1m x 2m x 300mm wider beds. Of course unless starting
with fresh slab, one must build to the environment. There are a lot of engineering marvels
on display in these hallowed pages!

It might be worth searching for water flow through a narrow media bed to see if any previously
making beds like yours had any issues with flow being snappy enough to make a bell siphon
behave like a Swiss watch. As I recall Colum's got at least one pretty long (maybe as long as
your 4.5m?) media growbeds. Perhaps he'll chime in or you'll find talk about flow through his
longish bed in his posts?

What kind and how many fish do you have to power this farm?

--
Sam

Awesome sam cheers. . I've got couple of koi and 6 fingerling silver perch running in the pond currently and would like to increase stock once gb's in place. Was thinking more koi initially for their waste and either more silver perch fingerling or marron in the sump beds but still waiting for feedback from others regarding this.

Not to handy with a pencil so will try get my 3 year old to put something together! Haha.

Essentially it will be a two tier system but instead of being the main fish tanks they will serve purpose of sumps.

Hiya datpsi and welcome to the forum.
Has your system cycled?
Quick calculation of your gb media roughly 750 litres? Perhaps 600 max wet media. Sound right?
At 1 fish per 20 litres, 30 fish max.
Retic solenoids don't work too well in AP I have read, solids and pressure issues I think.
Marron and the like are hard work for little reward plenty threads about this subject.
Look forward to the rest of your build.

Gday skeggley cheers for the welcome and info. Yes those numbers seem roughly correct. I'm big on the welfare side of things and being a pond it's volume doesn't seem as efficient as ibc fir instance ie the shallows not good for larger fish. Idea has been raised to use the larger "sump" tank as a trout run so that's where I'm at. . Yes the crustaceans seem bit hard work. .

Here's what I've got to work with. I'm thinking it be worth dividing the large grow bed into 2 to reduce amount of water in in the beds at any given time. 

Would ideally like beds f+d at different times but only way i know of so far is 4 pumps on timers or sequencing valve. 

Because the fish pond is lowest point in the system the sumps will overflow into pond. I will need sort something for when the pond overflow but really will just be onto lawn so not too bad.Because of the young kids and dogs etc i run mesh over pond so fish won'tescape.

Yes those numbers basically it, but might expand slightly which should equate to bit over 1200L capacity in both the grow beds and sump tanks

One pump constant flood/flow,why make it more expensive and complicated than it needs to be...

I was intending on running constant flow, but lots of arguments for flood and drain. Also my biggest concern is ensuring a full FT, but yes it does seem to be getting more complicated and costly every time I look. I do like the look of the aquaponics valve but another cost im probably not ready for.

Really just waiting to get as much feed back/opinions in this thread to prioritise bits and pieces. Will be paying a visit to someone in the know tomorrow to hopefully pick his brain a bit more...

Please keep replies coming

cheers

Looking at your dwg I would go 4 gbs pift constant flood. Each bed with its own feed and each set of beds emptying into a common drain to the ft.
No sumps required.
Easy peasy.

+1

datpsi,


Bigger effective FT to accept all that water can be done with a secondary ST/FT below the deck connected to the FT, like this:




So you could still drain everything back into the FT as per your original plan, but then have the FT overflow into the secondary (hidden) ST under the deck, and pump back to your growbeds from that hidden ST under the deck.

How about that?

--
Sam

PS - Sorry about co-opting your drawing, but I figured this would be much easier to show in a SketchUp model than explain with plain words. Plus I've been having so much fun in SketchUp! The SketchUp model is not perfect, but it came out okay for a quickie. I compressed it so it could be uploaded and you should find it as an attachment to this post.

You could also run a combination of Flood and Drain with Siphons along with Constant Flood. It's easy to switch back and forth between these if you setup the standpipe and siphon correctly. The main thing is the water fluctuations on any beds doing flood and drain - your tank has to be big enough not to overflow and not so small that the fish get stressed with the water level changes.

Personally I'd just do Constant Flood and have been for years but mine is setup so I can switch two beds at a time to Flood and Drain with siphons (although I never do). If someone hasn't mentioned it, take a look at the BYAP trials thread for a comparison of results between different types of systems over a one year period - http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8621. This should put your mind at ease.