Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Well even though there a bit of a stall on the gbs, I've already decided as soon as it's built the fish will be moved into the water below the gbs and the pond is coming out! ! I'll put 2 ibc in the same spot. One will remain whole as main tank and second cut as a sump /small gb.

And once again new thought process which,  as many said,  would change design. Certainly glad it's now not in 5 months time! 


As much as i like the idea of pond, the practicalities not really there for the system. I got my hands on some ibc units so need to rethink my plumbing! !


So help please....


Intend to use 1 compete ibc as main tank and cut a second for the sump tank and small gb. The problem is ....


The main growbeds are 1400mm above fish tank ground level.  I still want these to siphon into water tanks below. Will have these slo at 500mm above ft ground level. 


I'm thinking maybe best to lower the ft 550mm so effectively the small ft below the grow beds will gravity feed into main ft via slo, then the main ft will slo gravity feed into the sump. Single pump will feed the gbs.


Does this seem fine or any issues? ? 


Thanks

Hiya datpsi, what I'm hearing is that you will have pump in fish tank (pist), pumping into gbs, then draining into sump, draining back to ft?
Personally I think you are over complicating but I do see the merit in your design.
I think you are planning on putting fish into the sumps? I don't think this is wise in that you will then have fish water going into your main ft without going thru a biofilter to remove solids and ammonia. So, if you can't put fish into the sump then what is the merit? Only water volume assisting system stability.
If you do choose to go your design I would only use a normal overflow to join the sump/s to the ft.
Hope this makes sense.

hi mate thanks again for your feedback..

thinking pump in sump to gb, gb auto siphon into below fish tanks (small fingerlings, and marron/redclaw baby), this will slo feed into main ft, then slo again into sump tank(marron/redclaw)

I have catfish in my sump tank and haven't had problems.

But I agree that the system has at least one superfluous sump/fish tank. I'd do without the sump on the right of your diagram. As a beginner, I've found that bigger water volume brings temptation to overstock. If you have extra tanks, suggest use then as growbeds.

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Cheers dave fir the input! Yes i can see how easy it would be to fill all water medium with as much as possible, i intend on using sump for either marron, yabbies or ideally redclaw only. I can use the 2 smaller 250L areas for seperating the juveniles etc.. There is roughly 1000L worth of wet grow bed to filter so intend stay well within the stocking capacity!

Well as yabbies has told me, redclaw won't work with my water temps so that decision was made. Got my 2 ibcs cut and cleaned etc.. ran some water in them for few days with pump and air. Threw 2 Goldie in each and all happy days.

Started transferring the pond water into the 2/3 ibc tank ams moved all the fish over to begin pond removal. All the fish so i thought. ...

I knew that sp were great at hiding and bloody quick but they almost beat me haha. Lowered the water level dramatically and they still kept getting away. Eventually got what u thought was all of them moved and settled. Get home from work last night and went out back to do some work and something caught my eye in the little water that remained in the pond, with no pump or air running for over 24 hrs. 2 of the little buggers had gone unnoticed ams survived. It took me basically emptying every drop to get my net in them.

Today to put the ibc in their new place besides the deck!

Slowly getting there. ...

Progress finally

datpsi,

Excellent! I love it when a plan comes together... Congratulations on the progress!
I hope I'll be able to report the same real soon now.

--
Sam

Cheers sam. . Yours is the one we're waiting to see!!

Well the bro in law is flat out so may be some time off getting the long beds built so I've been working at this point of the system. Nowhere near an ideal setup but will air the extension when it happens. 

Will still run an slo from ft to st. pump will move water from st to both the ft and gb... only temporary! !

Well some more progress made this week. Got first lot of plants in the gb sat night. Tomato, capsicum, corn and lettuce. Dunno what will thrive and what won't so just rolling with it.

Got the holesaw out and joined the ft to st via 50mm slo. It's keeping up fine with current flow but will add a second one in near future just in case.

Made a couple bell siphons as well. First one went off without a hitch but the second one, (which happens to be in the current gb) won't break siphon. Not sure if the bell is too short in relation with bottom of the gb or too much flow into gb?

In my toying with my siphons, I've found that a few things can cause a siphon to not break: 1) too much flow into the system. 2) sometimes if the siphon is angled while sitting on the bottom of the bed, it won't break. 3) the stand pipe and outflow pipes could be just small enough to make the system drain "too slow".

Remedies to these problems: 1) add some way to control inflow (I use ball valve joints in my system, works great for me!). 2) either rebuild the siphon, or see about adjusting the bottom of it so it sits level on the floor of the gb in your media guard. 3) I'd recommend looking at Web4Deb's build, Rob did a fantastic job of mediating his flood and drain system siphon break problem (I've used his method before, and it worked great for me, and I'm planning on trying it out again with one of my next grow beds I'll be building soon).

That's the 2 cents from the peanut gallery!


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Cheers mate. . So after plenty fiddling with flow i finally got the balance. Also turned the 90deg elbows up slightly. Water is really clear in both tanks also.

I'll be adding some eco-rose today as from what I've read my pants are suffering potassium deficiency

pipes have to run bit over 2.5m so had all sorts issues trying to get the siphon to break. .literally hours went by. What i later learnt was i needed to drop into larger pipe but thought I'd try my luck at adding a tee piece as a vent. This worked a treat so was stoked to finally have it sorted! !

I've come out this morning to hear the pump sucking dry and 15mm water left in sump with poor goldfish struggling. Certain someone didn't think necessary to use the 90deg which prevented the previous setup from falling out. Another benefit to the CHIFT system

So earlier in the week few leaves looked like they were lacking a bit, so gave them their first serve of seasol. Still can't believe how much growth occurs in such a small time frame.

Chilli is growing very fast as are the zucchini seeds, snow peas popped their heads up sooner than expected also.