Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I know right? Don't quote yerself, silly
I believe I have a way to solve the issue of the large FT (i'm guessing it'll be ~1000 Gallons ~ 3785 liters) by employing an anti-siphon drain at the FT water line. This line comes from a 2" (58.8 mm) perforated pipe lying at the bottom of the sloped side of my FT which goes directly to a stainless steel screen sieve filter to separate solids prior to the pump. I'm thinking of a separate larger volume pump for general water circulation to exercise the trout.

Hello All-This is my 1st post & day. I hv acquired 7 poly house bathtubs & hv a 75gal[no sure how much in liters] Rubbermaid pond tub. No exactly sure how to start to hook them up. Is there possibly a diagram for configuring this type of system. I am nearly finished gathering up the basic stuff, pump, pvc pipes, etc. New & Green! I only want to start with 4 bathtubs and use the Rubbrmd to hold the Tilapia. An addl't tube will be for the sump. Guidance/directions pleeze!
Respectfully,
Poochnaa

If you are going to flood and drain your tubs, your sump will need to be at least 50-60% of the total volume of your grow beds. So if all the tubs are the same size, and you are going to use 4 of them as grow beds, then you would need two of them tied together from the bottom as the sump tank.

In order to create a diagram for you people would need to know how you want to lay the system out. I suggest you could go back to the beginning of this thread and look through the pictures to help you get some ideas. Also reading through the basic info and useful info sections of the forum will help you to learn some of the basics. Then it might help for you to start a system thread of your own in the Member Systems section of the forum and perhaps post pictures and descriptions of what you have and where you want to put your system and people are more likely to be able to help you out.

[img=http://s22.postimg.org/no8b86si5/Aquaponic_prototype.jpg]

I am planing on trying this type of setup on a hill a have

I will be using an undergravel system inside the Fish tank and have a screened of vegetative grow area
as the plants grow past the screen the fish can have a free feed
thet water will be drained from under the gravel where the Fish poop should be already broken down as it passes through the gravel , if the tank over flows the top of the water will be skimmed and possibly passed through an swirl filter before being redirected to another part of the grow system


the idea is the NFT grow area will be 1.25m wide by 30 cm deep created with builders plastic sheeting
with wood frame work supporting it
on the bottom of the root zone a thin layer of volcanic rock will be used for bacteria to thrive

the NFT will have water supplied by misters ( or drippers depending on Tank pressure )

on the top of this root zone the plants will be growing in media that is kept at the top most area via a screen
(possibly rice husks for silicate )this will be kept moist but not drenched

any Fish tank over flow can also flow into this system

once the water has passed through the NFT which should be getting aerated at the same time will then recollect into a raft system this will also have another under gravel system and the water will be fed from the bottom so any particles are contained under the gravel
fresh clean water then passes through the gravel into the grow zone

then will over flow into a flood drain gravel bed

then it will be pumped into an duckweed grow through if their are any nutrients remaining here they will grow and once it becomes overpopulated any duck weed near the drain will be automatically skimmed and fall into the tank for the Fish to feed from I will also be having guppies growing in this tank to control mosquitoes etc


Feel free to

MasterCATZ,
Looks a little overly complex with some difficult to inspect/tend/clean/maintain items.
Drippers/misters are going to be a bear to keep functioning once the system matures at all (bio slime clogs things like you wouldn't believe.) Even quarter inch holes or quarter inch tubing tends to clog without any sort of dripper attached.

I wouldn't recommend undergravel filters for non ornamental fish tanks. If you are going to be feeding enough to have nutrients left over to grow plants, you are probably feeding too much for an undergravel filter to be effective without causing oxygen demand issues (the reason solids going into flood and drain gravel beds is usually OK is because they are flood and drain and therefore get plenty of oxygen for the solids to breakdown.) Undergravel filters don't drain so you need way more aeration to feed all the microbes and avoid things going anaerobic.

I would recommend having the water go through the gravel bed first then drain to a raft bed and then use the clean pumped water to feed your NFT if you really think NFT is worth adding, but even with pumped pressure the clogging will still be an issue.

Duckweed can only be a supplement to your fish feed since if you are not adding fish feed to the system, there won't be any nutrients for feeding your plants or the duckweed or the fish.

cheers for the comments ,
problem being if the GB was first
then the NFT will turn into a Flood Drain as well when the gravel bed Flood and Drains

reason for NFT is its the cheapest and quickest way to cover the 800 sqm of ground ( like 10% the price )

I would also have rathered the tanks at the bottom myself but not enough room for them only 3m wide flat area and the tanks are 4.6m wide , but then I would also have had to double up on my pumps any how one to pump up the top of the hill to start the gravity fed water flow and one to pump back into the 3m high tank once its done its cycle
the current system will only use an 10m head pump per 5000L flow

I just need to think of a way to get the siphon to auto start once its been broken
so I guess I might have to switch to an bell house siphon with a slight modification to still suck from the very bottom of the under gravel system possibly a screw in system

my prototype failed today ( how ever that's with an aquarium tank not drilling through the bottom .. )


I have a heap of self sustained ponds around here that have not been touched for over a decade I was quite surprised to see everything was still thriving , tho I must admit they are going to have to be redone all 3 layers of liner are tearing
but considering they were done when I was in high school I'm quite impressed. I just moved back home to start getting ready for my retirement plan in 3 yrs time growing Fruit n Veg on 2.5 area property

aquaponics additions going to cost me my double story shed tho but I feel the extra $20k for tanks will be worth it
originally I was going to use my own liquid fertilizers and aeroponics ( which I am still going to do inside the NTF ) and one reason why I still want another cycle ( duckweed) before the fish tank to make sure all nutrients are used

whats the target end EC / PPM ? 100 ? I know I will be injecting at least 1500 EC into the NFT root zone
does anyone know what their Aquaponic EC /PPM is fresh out of the fish tank ?

You can still do one pump,
Just have it pump from sump up to NFT drain to FT, Drain to F&D Media, Drain to RAFT, Drain to Sump.

Skip the gravel in the bottoms of the FT, NFT, RAFT since those just create more work and cost at little benefit.

EC is a measure of electrical conductivity and doesn't really apply to Aquaponics in the same way it works with Hydroponics.
If you really want to be able to add some form of supplemental nutrient solution, I suggest you look up
Decoupled aquaponic systems where you essentially operate more as a Aquaculture system that sends it's change out water to a hydroponics system instead of totally recirculating.
The other alternative is to set up a dual root some system where you can water the compost mix in the pots with small quantities of your fertilizer solution so they don't wash into the Aquaponics extensively.

I have no idea where you are located (or what the climate is like) but I haven't had much good to say about NFT since in my climate they just act as water heaters or chillers depending on time of day and season where the plant roots are really only happy during certain seasons or times of day.

A question for intelligent waterflow members.
Chop system with slo fishtank outlet height say 1M growbed to height say 850mm. Normally no problem when FT are filled with pump from Sump to flow through slo filling GB.
Now if the GB is on other side of a path. Will I have sufficient flow if I go down 90 deg from 1M to ground over path and up to 850mm GB.

One of my grow beds is supplied that way. So, from personal experience rather than intelligence, yes.

be careful about size of pipes.

Your SLO flow rate must be the same as your pumping rate - or fish tank overflows. If pipes undersized, you would need enough fish tank height to allow water level in FT to rise above the SLO outlet level. This helps push water out.

Better to have big enough pipes that there's little resistance to water flow. On the other hand, oversized pipes mean slow flows in the pipe and possibility of solid build up in the the pipe crossing your path.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

In short yes it will work I would go 90 mm pipe that way every now and then you can poke the garden hose in it for a flush out
In all my slo I run 90 mm cheapest and fittings also

Thx maybe try to get 90 degrees with inspection hole on bend for easy cleaning access.

exactly this, the less head you have to play with, the larger the pipe you will want to use to compensate to stop overflows, but try to keep it small enough to not allow all your solids to settle.

you may want to experiment with the setup before you backfill the trench.

Best thread everrrrrr!

K98

Hey guys, I'm new to aquaponics
But I've got a decent grasp of the nitrogen cycle, and understand the importance of balancing the right amount of fish (producing ammonia) and the right amount of plants (consuming nitrates)

My question is: is there a way to calculate the fish to plant ratio before even purchasing anything? Or is it more a kind of tweak as you go? (e.g. if the plant looks weak, it probably needs more nitrates, so feed the fish more often so that more ammonia is produced)

I just want to make sure everything is okay before I get it going and have a fish die from something, because I don't have the correct fish/plant balance. I understand that's probably inevitable getting started, but I'd still like to take all precautions.

Someone else may give a better answer, but typically there are suggested ratios for fish to media growbeds to water. So for example if you have a fishtank to growbed ratio of 1:1, then you can expect to support up to 1lb of fish per 5 gallons of water at maturity.

So, 250 gallon FT with 250 gallons of wet media GBs; grow fish to 1 lb each, then stock with max. 50 fish to start. As they grow and feedrates increase, biofiltration and nutrients will increase and you can support more and more plants over time. After a year you will have a mature system with lots of different plants growing.

If you have less GB then you can support fewer fish. you can have more GBs but I do not recommend more than 1lb per 5 gal of water. You can also add other features like towers or floating raft beds for different types of plants.