Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

is it possible to have one pump pumping water evenly through all of the 6 sections or would i have to get 6 pumps?

if you have a strong enough pump and set up a six outlet manifold then there is no reason it couldn't be done.

might pay to incorporate ball valves in each leg so you can fine tune water flow, but that might not be needed. maybe locate the pump in the center and put valves on the closest two..............


looks nice btw.

good to hear thanks for the advise now to see if cregslist/ebay has a pump for me

Flow regulators in my experience WILL be needed, one of my headers still overflows when the other is only a little over 1/2 full... so sad and all because I thought my manifold would be even...
I just hate it when I design things poorly...

BTW AceFace.... Nice landscaping design for your AP... looks cool. What are you going to have in the gaps? raised platform to walk on or bare earth? a plant near the back to make it look pretty?

So 1 pump and 6 regulators. thats a shame about your system. ill probably just leave the spaces bare earth but iv got plenty time to decide(too much time) I might have my fruit trees and such behind the system and some pond plants since ill only have about a 1:1 plantbed to pond ratio

Hi ace, that looks way cool. With 24 growbeds there could be a lot of water out of ur fishtank at any one time. If u have a sump, it will mean u can have constant water volume/height in ur fishtank and still get out of it with one pump. (Pump from sump to growbeds, drain to fish tank, overflow to sump.)I must have a look in the forum for ur system thread. Have u mentioned tank sizes, fish, grow bed sizes etc anywhere?

Hi
this is the first time iv mentioned the system in the forums. it will be quite a wile until i can make it but here are the stats
pond~2200gallons (8300L)
grow beds~2700g (10200L)
the fish will be a mix of koi and fish for eating(not sure what kind yet)
the whole system will stretch over 40ft (12meters)
no sump in the plans yet but ill look into that

Some pumps (used in large marine reef saltwater tanks) are
here: http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_AquariumP ... shark.html


www.marinedepot.com is a good place!

thanks (: for months iv been periodically browsing and reading about the fish on their livestock website and never knew they sold aquarium equipment as well.

Unless ur growbeds are filling on some alternate cycling, you could potentially have 40% of ur fishtank water in the gb system at any one time. (Typically gbs flood to about 40% volume capacity, around 4000lts in ur case.) If u can flood each set of beds for 10minutes, u can run one pump continuous into alternate beds, which would obviously reduce the water in gbs during ur flood cycle. I am prolly just stating the bleeding obvious, but it helps me get it sorted in my own head! This makes a sump redundant then i guess.

By using reticulation solenoids on the manifold, you could control the water delivery to the beds in a sequence, so that the tank is being refilled by some GB draining, while water is being pumped to other GBs.
A smaller capacity pump could be used and either cycled on/off or run continuously with the GBs sequentially filled.

You would need to do the cost benefit analysis of this to determine what is best for you.

Regards,
Tony

automated valves are not cheap. Low pressure solenoids seem to restrict flow a lot, so you'll want to have high pressure from that pump.
Actuated ball valves'd be best, but they'll cost you the earth

How good are you with your hands? :-)

Actually here is another marine product that may help!
It is called the ocean motion 4 (or way:
http://www.marinesgardens.com/Dynamic/w ... ?cat_id=86
essentially it is a rotating drum that isolates different combos of the outlets.

the smile should be an 8 , or eight

write the 8 ) with a space between them so the smilie maker doesn't get them