Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Lenard wilson I think his name was, the only person in australia to do a phd on aquaponics.

Oh-Oh.... now you've done it Filip..... Shouldn't have said that...

ROFL...

yep.....the only person

or was it consulting?

Hi all,

I've just read this post and am wondering:
With the flood and drain method, is it ok for the system to continually flood and drain (ie with continuous flow and autosiphons)
Obviously, lettuce would be fine, but would the roots of plants like cucumbers remain too wet due to the short intervals between "wet" and "dry" cycle.
I've read that in hydroponics, the maximum is usually 15 minutes flood, 45 minutes drain. I plan to have a complete flood/drain cycle every 15 minutes.

I've played around with hydroponics, and flood and drain has generally been the best for a number of reasons. I'm keen to fully switch over to aquaponics, just need the time to set up.

Hi Adam, just threw a couple of pics on my system here
http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... 3496#83496

This is flood and drain (with a slight difference)...I run a pump continuous and flood & drain the GBs sequentially...this means each GB takes ~10minutes to flood (then moves to the next (drain time 4-5 minutes)...the complete cycle takes ~1 hour, so each plant gets water every hour.

The 6 GBs contain:
lettuce, carrots, garlic, beetroot, tomatoes, rhubarb, silver beet, oregano, basil wong bok, peas, beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, water melon, celery (think that covers them all)

I have had problems with spinach (too warm), the root vegies (they grow but do better in the dirt here), wong bok.

If you work out how long the roots are actually underwater it is quite small - 10 minutes to flood but the roots probably only wet for 1-2 minutes when the water reaches that level...next flood in 60 minutes.

To answer your question - 15 minutes flood time does not mean that the roots of the plants are flooded for 15 minutes - hope this clears it up a bit

My system runs continually, and each bed floods and drains in 15-20 minutes. Because of my system having lower light available than a lot of food crops would like, I have mostly tropical houseplants now. They are quite happy.