Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

There is a guy on ebay local to me who sells plastic drums that are water tight 60 litres i have purchased two of these before from this guy the containers are very thick and of industrial grade, i used my previous ones for live bait tanks on my boats they worked great for holding bait fish they also have a thick rubber o-ring inside of the screw on lids so they will be good for a little pressure for sure

I searched youtube for some idea's on a filter and filter media i found this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yMOosECTRo the guy in the video says that lava rock (i assume this is the bunnings sold volcanic rock) is good for submerged filters, the filter i am thinking of will be submerged next to the FT linked by a hose at the bottom of the FT and filter, now if i fill the filter with lava rock i can easily just disconnect the hoses and wheel the whole container around on a trolley in the case i move house where as moving a 250-300 litre bed of media will be a mission on its own


plus my NFT system is only 65-70cm off the ground i love working at this height,the bed will beclose to 1.4 meters off the ground on my down sloping yard that is just too high to work with i'm only 1.6m tall lol

An update on the cleaning of my FT, very happy to say i filled it with 200 litres of water last night with around 180mls if dish washing liquid and 2 litres of aldi's bleach and the bottom section that is submerged all it took was two swipes with the foam mop and the tank came up like brand new

I'm going to fill the remainder of the tank with water and another 2 litres of bleach but my youngest puppy just bit my hose in half haha this is a minder of the power cord for my pumps!

I have just drawn a sketchy sketch haha i'm not good at drawings but it shows how i plan on running my system and connecting it up

the "Powerful Aerator Head" will be this a pictured and in the following video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1af9SSLcTz0

here is the drawing of my set up please let me know if something is wrong

With something like scoria in your filter, you'll only be able to grow out about 3 fish. It just wont have enough surface area for bacteria to handle any more.
What flow rate does the aerator require? You need to be sure there is enough flow on the excess overflow line.

What will be my alternative to media? i need something relatively cheap because i need so much of it 60-80 litres

I haven't used that particular aerator but i used the one below in my boats with a 1350 LPH 12v pump, at 1350 LPH they were a tad under rated i would say 2000 LPH would be sufficient for the one in the picture based on the flow rate i have seen it operate at than i need to take into consideration the restriction thru the media and the volume of the filter

Would u say a 3000-4000 LPH pump would work? the more water i pump thru the return hose/aerator it will just work even better

The aerator in the video i linked u to is powered probably by a 3000 LPH with around 3 foot of head height as looking at their flow rate in the video that fitting is absolutely powering the water thru it mine look no where near powered as much with the 1350 LPH pump

I have a video of another "aerator" this one is using the same 1350 LPH pump and a 12 volt power supply, i could probably find this same aerator but i just thought the first one i mentioned would be more efficient with the venturi hole

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frlG8P4a9xQ