Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Here's a rough schematic of my system:


The only water accounted for at this time is the four 'A' grow beds. No fish tanks and no 'B' grow beds.

Outside of g'house. End panels not finished yet.


Sump with cover removed.


Grow beds 'A' & unfinished fish tank.


Grow beds 'A'.


Plumbing temporarily capped off for 'B' side.


'B' side.



I am trying to get just one half of the system running to keep things simple. Right now I have water running to grow beds 'A'. I can flood and drain the beds but I'm having trouble synchronizing the flow into the beds so that they all fill at approximately the same time. The 'B' side of the system is not functional at this time.

When fully operational, water will pump continuously to the 2 fish tanks and on a timer control to the two grow beds.
A solenoid valve will open for grow beds 'A' for 15 minutes and then close allowing grow bed 'A' to drain.
When the 'A' solenoid closes, the 'B' solenoid will open and water will then flow to the 'B' grow beds for 15 min. The 'B' solenoid valve will then close and the cycle repeats itself according to how I set the timer.

I have a single pump in the sump: EcoPlus 728330 1584 Submersible Pump, 1638 GPH (6242 LPH)
My system when fully operational will hold about 864 G (3272 L)

The sump is an IBC tote dug into the ground. That gives me a head height of about 8.5 ft. to my grow beds. The flow is then divided between 4 grow beds.

I don't think the pump is capable of handling the volume of water I need as the flow to the beds is erratic causing them to fill at different rates. I'm guessing I'll need one pump to service the 2 fish tanks and another to service the grow beds.

Any comments are very much appreciated.

Hi Mtnwinds,

If what I read from your diagram is correct, you are pumping both to the fish tanks and the grow beds from the sump.

(I've been wrong before)

You would be better off pumping to the fish tanks only and let the water run from the SLO's (in the fish tanks) through the Bio Filters into the grow beds, that way the Bio filters remove the larger solids rather than pumping them directly into the grow beds.

Your diagrams looks like you have the SLO in the sump?, you'll need one in each fish tank where the fish solids accumulate, not in the sump, the water should be all filtered and clean when it's returned from the filters and grow beds and a SLO in the sump does nothing.



Joe

Joblow you are correct,the only way this will work is if you add a RFS and solids filtration,remove the bio as that will be taken care of by the media beds.

PM sent on your pump

-------Hi dasboot. Please bear with me as I'm new to the aquaponics world. As I understand it, the system design I'm copying uses a solids lift overflow to achieve essentially the same result as a radial flow separator would. Is that correct? As for the biofilter, it is a supplement to the grow beds.

The system design I've copied did not use a split system and the pump recommended for it worked just fine because the grow beds are gravity fed. By splitting my system I have unknowingly added significant demands on the pump which are beyond its ability to handle.

I found some information about how to calculate what size pump I need and it looks like it well be on the order of 3000 GPH.

I'm hoping that someone reading this may have a similar split system as mine and might be able to confirm what I'm finding.

A Solids Lifting Overflow (SLO) will remove solids from the FT, but not from the water. The Radial Flow Filter (RFF) then removes the solids from the water.

The water flow in the diagram is fine. The ST is the central pumping point, with a number of individual flow loops, ie: to GB's and FT's, all returning back to the ST. So, if set-up correctly, the solids will be removed from the FT water prior to it re-entering the ST and being pumped to the GB’s.

It appears you have a few components in the diagram mislabelled, which may be causing some confusion. The blue arrows coming out of the FT's would be where the SLO's are, and what you have labelled as SLO's are actually RFF's or Swirl Filters (SWF's).

What are the components you have labelled as bio-filters?... If they are simply bio-filters, ie: drums filled with K1, or bio-balls etc, then I would suggest, as dasboot has, remove them, they aren't required. If you want to run them for peace-of-mind, ie: back up bio-filtration in addition to the gravel bio-filtration used in your fish stocking calc's, then you could plumb them up with their own water flow loop, keeping the primary flow loop (ST>FT>SLO>RFF/SWF>ST) as simple and free flowing as possible. Ideally you would plumb them so they could be run with the FT, in isolation from the rest of the system if need be.

If they are for extra mechanical filtration, ie: drums filled with shadecloth to remove finer particles and “polish” the water, then they would only be required if you were running a DWC or NFT component to your system, in which case they would be best placed in the flow loop from the ST to the DWC/NFT beds.

If they are bio-digesters for processing the solids from the RFF/SWF and you want to incorporate them into the system, the same way Murray Hallam does in the Indy 23 systems etc, then they should be plumbed entirely separately, off the side of the primary flow loop. You would have a drain tap in the bottom of your RFF/SWF, which when opened would direct the solids and mucky water from the bottom of the RFF/SWF into the bio-digester, where it would be treated for a few days to liberate some nutrients from the solids. There would be a tap about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way down the bio-digester tank to enable the nutrient rich, clean water to be directed back into the ST. There would also be a tap at the bottom of the bio-digester drum to enable the draining off of the waste solids after the digestion process.

You could simplify the entire system and process by adding a header tank, doing away with the solenoids and using auto siphons instead. This would also allow the use of a smaller pump.

Basically the ST with the pump sits directly under a header tank. The only pumping in the system is from the ST directly up to the header tank. All water flow throughout the system is then done from the header tank, by gravity.

SLO = Solids Lifting Overflow - As Mr Damage said it's not going to remove the solids that's what the RFS is for. In this case if you're not putting a lot of fish in the tanks, the grow beds can do the same job and they can also do the biofiltration. If you are going to have a high fish load in the tanks, then adding an RFS (aka RFF) will help - you don't want too many solids entering the grow beds, smothering the bacteria in the grow beds and reducing their ability to do biofiltration.

I would think the water filling the grow beds would take the easiest route once it's up and into the pipe - the distance to the grow bed outflow and the position of the ball valves on the grow beds should determine which bed fills the fastest (in other words I don't think it's a pump issue but I might be wrong). Use a 5 gallon bucket and time the outflow from the pump to the grow beds, also test the pump to the Fish tanks so you get the whole story. You want the fish tanks to turnover once per hour. For the grow beds it's usually quite a bit more often but let us know what you get.

One simple solution might be to extend the line from the fish tank biofilter around to the grow beds with a T and two ball valves so that you can either connect the grow beds or disconnect them and just run the fish tanks when it's cold and you aren't using the grow beds. Each side would go something like this during the growing season -

Sump - Fish tank - RFS - Biofilter - PVC T - Grow beds - Sump

and with the grow beds shut down and disconnected, it would go like this -

Sump - Fish tank - RFS - Biofilter - PVC T - Sump

The biofiltration would need to be large enough to handle the entire fish load during the winter when the grow beds are offline. Since most fish don't eat as much in winter that might not be too hard to do and running it this way allows you to heat a smaller volume of water.

Paint is not the best tool for editing your system image but basically the new green lines indicate where the branch goes back to the grow beds and there should be a ball valve on that branch which I didn't add in the drawing. I also indicated where the SLO and RFS actually will need to be. Sorry for the butchery



Hmm, doesn't appear to have worked . Well I'll check it and fix it in the morning if it still is messed up .

Looks like you can just click on the link and you'll get the image but let me know if that doesn't work

Thanks to everyone who responded. I replaced the pump with a larger one and the beds are cycling just fine now. All four beds fill to max within 1 minute of each other and they do it in 9 minutes. I have set the timer to the typical 15/45 on/off.

I filled my sump with about 250 gallons of rain water and also added ammonia to the sump to get bacterial growth started. I let the system cycle about 5 times and then tested the water. The test showed a ph of 7.6, and ammonia of .5 ppm. Tomorrow I'll test again and include nitrites. Don't expect to see any so soon??

I had to leave my sump uncovered for about 5 days and the water took on a very light green tint. I suppose that's an algae bloom? Not sure how to treat it but I'm sure I'll find some answers as I research the forum.

I'm hoping to begin planting in 2 weeks. Is that too optimistic?

Nitrites will probably take 2-3 weeks to show up.

If you added Maxicrop Seaweed extract at 2-3 capfuls every day, testing the Ammonia level 24hrs later, and repeating the process until the Ammonia reached somewhere between 1.0ppm-2.0ppm, then you can plant seedlings from day one. That way the plants are established and growing when you add your fish and the nutrient levels start to rise.

Thanks, Mr. Damage. Will seeds work instead of seedlings?

Yep!... In fact, if seeding it's probably best that you start sooner rather than later. You can get caught out by waiting until the system is cycled before adding seed or seedlings, because by that stage, depending on the Ammonia level reached during cycling, the Nitrate levels in the system can be excessively high and seedlings struggle to get established, or even die. You can find many posts with people commenting they have high Nitrate levels and are struggling to establish seedlings.