Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hi all!

Last year we had severe rain- and hailstorms at the end of spring, with very high groundwater after that, which basically ruined half of our veggie patch plants (rotten onions, sick potatoes, destroyed leafy greens etc).
So this year we've decided to give an aquaponics system a go!

I'm currently building my first aquaponics system to go in our small (3x4m) DIY greenhouse.
Planning on:
Growbeds: 3-4x IBC sides cut at 30cm + 4 custom beds of approx. 70*200cm (wood with EPDM liner)
Fishtank: 2x IBC 1000L
Sumptank: 1x IBC 1000L + a couple of 220L barrels lying on their side under growbeds
Filter: Radial flow filter in 220L barrel (+ later I'll add a moving bed biofilter in 220L barrel
Pump: Superfish Pond ecoplus E 10000 (just under 9000L/h at 0m head, approx 5500L/h at 2m head, 68W)

The plan is to have the pump in sump tank with split flows to the 2 fish tanks on one side and the grow beds on the other side. FTs overflow into radial flow filter, which either feeds back into sump tank or on to a bio filter.

The growbeds are F&D for most of them, I might make one floating raft bed and add a couple of wicking buckets and vertical towers for strawberries later on.

Planning to grow trout all year round since we don't have very warm summers nor strong freezing in winter.

I've added some pictures of what it should look like and will add some progress pictures in the following posts.

Crickey mate !



Outstanding presentation !

Progress so far:

I've acquired the following list of items:

• IBC's that had been used for drinking water for animals and a few that I've cleaned out (they were single-use IBCs for water based food-grade glue)
• 220L barrels for additional sump tanks and for filter barrels
• wood for beds (found some B-grade plywood that someone was selling for next to nothing)
• EPDM liner (cut-offs from someone's pond project)
• PVC piping, fittings, bulkheads etc
• pump
• water test kit

I've so far cleared the space in front of the greenhouse (on the shady side), dug a pit for the IBC sump tank, paved with concrete tiles around it for the FT's and filters to go on, built the 4 custom grow beds and started cleaning out the greenhouse.

Some more progress

Did some more construction work last week, slowly getting there!
Next steps are building the radial flow filter and getting the lava rock or river pebbles in the beds.
2 additional beds (made from IBC sides) need to be put on supports outside of the greenhouse and filled up as well.

The pump seems to supply plenty of flow at the current head, the venturis are bubbling away nicely.
I'm travelling this week so more than enough time for the water to gas out while I'm away, I'll be doing some water tests when I get back home.

And then it's time for cycling the system!

Neat work Rudolph!

The climate sounds great for trout and the system fits well into your garden.
You'll need to consider some sort of shelter to prevent rain water, debris and predators getting into the sump and FT's.

Looking good! Very neat construction there, well done!

Hiya FR, I'm a bit confused with your piping layout. I'm assuming you have not installed your drain back from the gbs. I see your slo returning to the sump and your sump feeding to your ft. I would highly recommend the slo to go to the gbs with a filter in between if you are concerned about solids in your media. Reason being is that your fish waste will be masticated in your sump then returned to your ft. Yucky mucky water!
Your ft water looks too high also and looks to be overflowing into the slo.
I'm looking forward to seeing how you clad the ibcs to keep algae at bay.
Nice and tidy setup, well done.

Thanks for the feedback!

To answer the questions:

Both the FTs and the ST will be covered.
I've cut up 2 IBC tanks that I got without cage to give 4 IBC tank sides of 300mm high.
3 of those will become GBs but the 4th will go on top of the ST.

I'm planning on putting wood cladding on the FTs, with a lid to feed / check on fish / ...
This will sit on 3 sides of the FTs, with black plastic on the backside (the piping is in the way there).

As for the piping layout, it's a split flow CHIFT PIST system, see schematic.
The flow from the FT SLOs can either go straight to the ST (e.g. for maintenance on filters) or through the filters. I'll start with a radial flow filter but might add a SUF or moving bed bio filter, I'm reading that trout prefer very clean water so I might need that as they grow and produce more waste.
I haven't built the filters yet, which is why it looks a bit weird now

The flow from the pump splits to the FTs on one side and the GBs on the other side. The GBs are mostly F&D with autosiphons and drain into the brown 220L barrels under the GBs. These are connected to the main FT.

Yeah, you're right about the FT water overflowing into the SLO. I only had 2 rows of holes in the SLO intake pipe at the bottom of the FT, which was definitely not enough, causing it to overflow into the top of the SLO.
I then made a bunch of slits in the intake pipe, which lowered the FT water to just not overflowing.
This, however, only occurs when no water is flowing to the GBs. Once I have water flowing to the GBs, I'm sure the flow to the FTs will be reduced sufficiently to stop the FT water from rising that high.

I'll be tinkering with the system and adjusting it where needed. I've already learnt a lot and am learning more every day I work on it! Fun project

Nice one mate!

Which software do you use for drawing?

What are the barrels under the GB's for?

I'll have 7 growbeds in the end:
2 GBs of 0.7m*2m, filled for 0.25m
2 GBs of 0.7m*1.8m, filled for 0.25m
3 GBs of 1m*1.2m, filled for 0.25m

Gives a volume of 0.7 + 0.63 + 0.9 = 2.23 cubic meter
With lava rock as media (very porous), I expect a maximum fill rate of 50%, giving 1115 L of water.

Take some extra water volume so my pump doesn't run dry, gives me at least 1300L, which is more than what my IBC ST can take.
So I've added a couple of 220L barrels as additional STs. (They were 5$ each so no big loss there)

Since their overflow is positioned higher up on the barrels, I hope they will also work a bit as settling tanks.
Maybe I'll add some removable baffles in them to aid the settling of solids returning from the GBs.

That's my thinking at least, if it doesn't work then at least I'll have sufficient sump capacity with potential for expansion.
I think the 1 IBC is just not enough in the worst case scenario.



SolidWorks 2016 for the CAD drawings and rendering, Powerpoint for the schematic.
We use both Autodesk Inventor and SolidWorks for designing machines but I prefer Solidworks for its workflow and rendering capabilities.

I washed (thoroughly) and used lava rock (scoria) in both sys 1&2 and got about 1/4 of a cup of very fine fines settling in the ST's. It's a good idea to have extra cleaned water storage providing your plumbing allows you to use it.
Are you having a 50 mm sump in the bottom of the GB's? If so once filled it can reduce the cycled water volume by 20%.

As this is my first system, I don't have an idea whether I should use a sump in the bottom of the GBs.
Not all GBs will be F&D, I'm thinking of having 1 or 2 as raft beds.
For the F&D beds, I'm not sure whether I should have an anaerobic zone at the bottom or not. And if yes, how much is ideal? What do composting worms need / prefer?

What's your experience with that?

If I look at the fitting I use as a feedthrough for the autosiphons, this is already 10 - 15mm in height.
Add to this the actual inlet gap height for the siphon outer tube and I'll probably end up with at least 35-40mm of dead zone for the autosiphon.

A bit of a walkthrough of the build process last week. Images tell more than words