Hello all. If there is anyone that can help me please I would greatly appreciate it. My bell siphon will initiate a steady, good flow within 30 seconds, but stops leaving about 5 inches of water in the grow bed each time. I am stumped as to why that is. My stand pipe is 3/4", my bell siphon is 2" wide lined with 1/2" holes along the bottom. The downspout has a right angle about 6" vertical, 7" inches horizontal and an elbow at the end to control the back pressure. I've tried playing around with that, but it doesn't change anything. I would be more than grateful if anybody has suggestions. Thank you!!
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One other variable is how many times you turn over the fish tank water. If too slow, ammonia will start to build up. Test to verify for a couple of weeks. If that starts happening, increase the water turn over rate by pumping more water into the beds. My 150 gallon system gets turned over four times an hour to keep the water quality good - .25 to 1 ppm ammonia.
If pumping faster makes the problem of the siphon not stopping again, add a snorkel to suddenly break the vacuum under the bell cap. I have one siphon that has worked perfectly since the first day. A second was nothing but trouble requiring weeks of fiddling with it. A snorkel fixed it's problem of not stopping.
Good luck.
@ JJ There is a wide concensus on turn over. Portable farms has tremendous success at flooding only twice in 24hrs. on a timer. You heard that right. Twice a day.
Snorkels are a crutch. There was something you were missing on that siphon. I went thru exactly the same thing and finally found the problem and threw out that noisey snorkeled bell when I did. I mean think about it. If the bottom of your bell is cut right and all your pipes are right with no traps etc. then you should get far more air coming under the bell and back up the standpipe at "break time" than any snorkel tube could ever handle. Never made sense to me and I was determined and very happy when I figured out what was actually causing the problem on 2 out of 5 siphons. Water was being trapped below the siphon preventing the air from coming back up the standpipe. Just a plumbing 101 issue as it turned out.
Jim Joy said:
One other variable is how many times you turn over the fish tank water. If too slow, ammonia will start to build up. Test to verify for a couple of weeks. If that starts happening, increase the water turn over rate by pumping more water into the beds. My 150 gallon system gets turned over four times an hour to keep the water quality good - .25 to 1 ppm ammonia.
If pumping faster makes the problem of the siphon not stopping again, add a snorkel to suddenly break the vacuum under the bell cap. I have one siphon that has worked perfectly since the first day. A second was nothing but trouble requiring weeks of fiddling with it. A snorkel fixed it's problem of not stopping.
Good luck.
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