Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I just completed an installation of a courtyard system today for Damien and Sonya who came along to the open day recently at Fayes house. It's a nice simple little system with a 500L fish tank and one growbed. The system was just perfect for their small courtyard as you'll see from the photos.

Hmmm add 1 * 500Ltr tank and thats the system we are building. Very neat and clean. Goldfish perhaps for fish?

LOvely!

Yep, goldies to begin with, and from there, who knows....

How many goldies would you put in a 500Ltr System?

Very Neat and simple EB.
Every small home should have one

That looks beautiful Joel, wish I was there. The water is so clear. You did such a neat job.!wohoo

F&D EB? What is the depth of the water in the 500 litre tank on the flood cycle? How much water does it take to fill a hydroton bed - a bit more than a gravel one I guess?

Siphons or timer? (I bet timer)

Couldn't be simpler, very nice!

Joel,
Another manifestation of your creative BYAP talents.
Well Done!

Tony

Looks great. I'm confused by one thing though: Shouldn't the top of the bell siphon be under the maximum water line?

edit: nevermind, that's the standpipe I'm seeing. I get it.

yeah, timer with standpipe system.

The growbed took surprisingly little to fill it, the level you see in that tank would be with an almost full growbed, but it's extremely full in the fish tank when the growbed has drained.

That is a beautiful and simple system.

You could expand the growbed area with vertical pipes on the fence behind it to increase stocking density of the fish tank.

On a timer system, how much aeration and water exchange would there be? If the water level is that high with a full growbed, how many cycles before it actually cycles the whole fish tank?

Not to play 20 questions, but I would think that you would have to keep the stocking density awfully low for that to be sustainable. With a set of vertical pipes on a constant low flow rate and the main growbed on an autosiphon, I would think you would get more aeration and better water filtration. Just my newbie 2 cents worth.

There's plenty of water exchange, the pump is 1500L/h and on for 15 minutes an hour, so should be pumping at least 350L through every hour.. Vertical pipes could be possible, but this is a stand alone simple commercially available system, vertical pipes would require some support system. Also the increase in pumping head makes quite a difference to these small pond pumps, going up another 50cm will halve the output.

Autosiphon? At the risk of raising a few heckles, auto siphons are not as reliable and bullet proof as a timer/standpipe, in a commercial product like this I'm after maximum reliability and simplicity for clients that possibly don't have much know how..

I'm getting some more room to play around with systems soon and I'll trial an auto siphon in a small system like this, but I can't sell a product that I personally haven't trialled, or I wouldn't sleep right...

Very honourable EB!