Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Yup. Dashboot used plastic bottle caps instead with great success.

So I've been reading.
Trying to get an idea of how the pipes were run.

Water needs to flow from bottom of filter to top thru the static filter media.

If you need a better idea. I can try to post a video late tonight.

My inflow pipe physically enter the barrel midway. Then has a 45 elbow pointed down. At the top, it has a pipe with media gaurd exiting. So the water has to flow thru the media.

Think I have the general idea.

Hi All,

Quick question. What is the norm in terms of what is done with the solids collected by the RFF? I have read that some people throw it in the worm farm or garden, but can it also be placed back into the grow beds? I.e. in doing so does this waste get trapped and used by the plants, or does experience suggest it ends up back with the fish?

A second question, to save space has anyone tried installing the RFF inside the sump to save space? If it was plumbed in correctly this could work. I'm just thinking of saving some space in the design of my own set up.

Cheers

Welcome to the forum doc, and to adress your questions;

about the solids - a worm bin, soil garden, or even potted plants are common uses. I would advise against adding it back to the gb as the main reason to have the rff in the first place is to remove excess N (and solids if using dwc) you'll notice after time that the rff alone will still allow accumulation of waste in gb. If you're wanting to get max benefit from waste research and consider a "mineralization tank".

And on the sump/rff - I would think the constant ebb and flow in the sump if using chift/pist wouldn't work well for the settling of solids (depending on sump size/shape.) also you would have to suspend your pump high enough to prevent the intake of settling solids, yet low enough to prevent intake of air when the water level drops. You could, however build one directly above your sump allowing it to work as designed and still save floor space. Or maybe a ST big enough to add baffle Chambers. Interesting idea though

Thanks for the reply superdave. The idea for the RFF inside the sump is as per the pic, sorry pretty crude.

My RFF has a sloped bottom and a small outlet at the bottom that feeds slowly into a mineralisation tank, which itself feeds clean (hopefully nutrient-rich) water back into my sump. It does a fairly good job but I do still occasionally need to 'vacuum' solids off the upper levels of the sloped bottom and dump them into the MT manually.

I siphon residue out of the MT every so often and dump it on plants in the garden, they seem to love it.

(Edited to add: if you're considering adding solids from the RFF back into the growbeds, presumably your fish aren't producing enough solids to overload your growbeds... so you could just pump from the sump to the FT, overflow into the growbeds, then drain into the sump. )

thats not a bad idea with the RFF in the sump, but i dont know how you are planning your plumbing, usually the RFF gravity feeds to growbeds.

if you do put it in the sump, raise it compared to how you have drawn it, dont allow sump water to flow back through the outlet and it will be all good.

Yes, it requires some additional holes in the sump tank that I am reluctant to do. I think I have room to split them out anyway. Thanks for the feedback.

You probably figured this out but Yavi's talking about the outfeed not the solids when he says it gravity feeds to the grow beds. The outlet for the RFF regular flow needs to come from the top of the barrel.

You might have problems if either tank empties while the other remains full. This might strain the connections to the point that they come lose because of the weight or amount of lift.

Visualize how you are going to put that bottom connection pipe through with the RFF already in the Sump (especially if using uniseals) - it might be difficult

Hi Scotty,

Agreed. In this case the outflow is going into the sump (at the waterline, sorry drawing is pretty rough). I hadn't thought of what would happen if the sump emptied, good point. The housing of the RFF was going to be a 200L blue drum. Yes, the extra pipework and connections is something Im worried about. For now I am shelving this idea and spliting the two out.

Thanks for the feedback.

Does the water entering the RFF have to do so as an overflow, or can it be pumped into the RFF?
Thinking that using a pump may cause the solids to be constantly stirred up and defeat the purpose of the RFF

So what is the smallest size solid pc would you want to pass thru your RFF?

Say the size of a human hair, that's approx. 100 microns.

Or smaller or larger?

Ideally just want to reduce the amount of solids in my growbeds.
Just spent a couple hours cleaning out my hydroton growbed, after running non stop for 3yrs.
Figure if I could reduce the solids in the bed more, as well as have an easily accessible source of fertiliser for the garden, then win win.