Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Hello everybody,
Well I've spent the last few weeks going through the site and going through everything I could find online. And now I'm ready to actually set up my first system. And in typical fashion, it's a medium to large system to start with.
I came at this with the intention of starting a redclaw crayfish farm. And now I've decided that it should be an AquaPonic system. I'm still not one hundred percent sure what plants will be in the system yet. But here is the initial rough design...



I need to spend more time playing with google sketch to make it look better.

To give you a better idea of the dimensions, because I didn't make it to scale...


This is the main cray tank. It's a fiberglass tomato gondola. It's 8 feet wide 24 feet long and about 3 feet deep. In this pic it's set into the ground about 2 feet with a slope and pitch towards the drain end.

The biofilter I'm hoping to make using an old chest freezer. (I just need to find one) The 'Tree Bed' at the other end is actually a wood framed dirt garden that I'll use to dump the solids from the system when I back wash the vortex. Speaking of the vortex, it's a coned bottom tank on a metal stand. The 'Distribution Barrel' I'm hoping to make from a blue drum and just increase the scale on Joel's distribution bucket design. The grow beds will be also made from plastic drums. The sketch shows 5 grow beds, I'm not sure how many there will be in the setup. They will probably end up being stacked in a wood rack with taller plants in the top tier. For a grow media I'm currently planning on using either pea gravel or 1/2 crushed gravel. The reason I'm not going with the Hydroton or SilicaStone is simply cost and that's also the reason I'm currently debating between the pea and 1/2 crushed.

So those are the major components. My biggest debate of late has been how to move the water through the system. And to be honest, I still haven't made my mind up 100%. The debate is between using a water pump and air pump for aeration or using a larger air pump and air lifts to move the water through the system or lastly to use an air pump and air lifts for the aquaculutre side of it and to use a seperate water pump on a time to run the aquaponic side of it.

So, what do you think?

I look forward to your input!

will the water go through the solids seperater before it goes through the biofilter?

rassd, why not ditch the vortex seperator and the bio filter and fill the tree bed with gravel? create another bed where the biofilter was, used for vegetation. keep the gravel growbeds (maybe on the left of the cray tank if you can move it)

The beauty of a flood and drain gravel bed system is that the bio-filter/solids trap/solids break down are all taken care of BY the gravel bed.

Pump water from the pitched end of the tank up to all gravel / tree beds and let them autosiphon back to the cray tank.

My 20cent

I'm inclined to agree with Steve, rassd71. If your having gravel beds, theres no real need for the solids removal..

And nice hat mate...

S&S aquafarm have shown conclusivly that you can run a large operation using f&D gravel beds, minus the 100K worth of biofilters and swirl seperators.

Not to mention the hundreds of backyard systems.

I don't have anything against the the biofilters and swirl seperators except that they are unnecessary!

Make us proud Rassd

My reasoning for having both the vortex and the biofilter, simple redundancy!
My thinking is that if I have a submersible pump in the fisrt chamber of the biofilter pumping the water to the vortex and then to the grow beds by gravity, returning to the cray tank by gravity. The vortex, I thought, would help to keep the gravel beds from getting blocked with solids. And then the tree bed at the end is so I can grow a couple of trees that I can't grow outdoors here, specifically a dwarf lime and dwarf avocado tree. This entire system will be enclosed in a 'shed' with windows.

Oh, and the original plan was to have the grow beds and breeding tanks along the wall on the left on racks, but the guy with the backhoe was not able to dig the hole properly and then when I said fine, now just backfill the backside, he freaked! So the plan was adjusted.

As for the tree bed being filled with gravel, I need to verify that the two trees I want to grow will be work with gravel as a medium. Anyone have any experience with citrus in aquaponics? What about avocados?

Right now I need to do some experimenting with airlifts to figure out how I'm going to move the water through the system. On the one hand I think a submersible pump on a timer would be the simplest, at least for the aquaponic side of things.

oh, and I like the hat too!

I am inclined to say that having the vortex separator is a beneficial thing. If you are aiming at farming for market here, you will probably be looking at ramping up feeding rates to an optimal level to obtain maximum growth. This will put out more solids than a regular backyard operation. There will always be some suspended particulates in the water. Vortex or not. The advantage is that you can now remove the solids, process them (worms perhaps), then reintroduce it into the system to reduce the oxygen requirements overall while still providing nutrients. In my eyes (and the eyes of others...take Doug Basberg for example) redundancy controls are what will allow aquaponics of the future to be profitable for those wishing to sell.
Solids separation is a very important need for DWC/NFT systems...not so much in gravel bed based designs though.

I hadn't thought about the solids going into the worms... that's a pretty good idea. hmmm, more to think about.

Check out the S&S aquafarms system, they were prodcing commercial quantites of fish and veg with only gravel beds.

Don't forget the more solids you remove / the more often you remove them then the more nutrients you are removing from the system. I'm certain the reason gravel beds have such success with fruiting plants is because of the solids. All the research i did about 2 years back said AP is only good for leafy greens, these were the same systems that removed solids.

Depends what you want to grow i guess.

A big enough bio fillter will not need cleaning.
solid removeal may be some times nessary because the fish/yabbies make lots of waste you may not have enough room to grow the amount of plants needed to handel the waste.

I would LOVE to have a gravel bed system scaled to handle all of the waste, but I also want to have the backup systems in place to handle things in case of problems. Or should I say WHEN things happen.