Ebb & Flow cycling? 24/7?

[Mike Roe]

I am setting up an 800 gallon system with ebb and flow. Running the pump 15 minutes and off 45 mintues, and using an autosiphon in each tray. I have two questions. Running it this way, with the water dropping back into the tank, will this provide enough air to the water for the fish? or should I plan of on running a second pumps with spray to aerate the water? Secondly, those of you who do ebb and flow, do you run your systems 24/7? Or do you shut them down at night?

[TCLynx]

Most people running with siphons, don't bother with a timer, they just let the pump run continuously.

 

Will it provide enough aeration, well that would totally depend on many things like

1-amount of fish in that that

2-amount of feed and biological oxygen demand in the system (basically anything living in the system needs oxygen and anything being broken down by bacteria is going to demand oxygen.)

3-temperature. During winter when the fish are not eating much and water is cooler, it might not be necessary to run supplemental aeration and you might even get away with not running the system at night.

 

But during initial cycle up and when biological oxygen demand is high and when temperatures are up, I would recommend running the pump as much as possible.

 

My systems generally run 24/7.

[mike houlihan]

I'm a 24/7... I go by the rule that you can never have too much air and always error on the too much than not enough. 

TCLynx said:

Most people running with siphons, don't bother with a timer, they just let the pump run continuously.

 

Will it provide enough aeration, well that would totally depend on many things like

1-amount of fish in that that

2-amount of feed and biological oxygen demand in the system (basically anything living in the system needs oxygen and anything being broken down by bacteria is going to demand oxygen.)

3-temperature. During winter when the fish are not eating much and water is cooler, it might not be necessary to run supplemental aeration and you might even get away with not running the system at night.

 

But during initial cycle up and when biological oxygen demand is high and when temperatures are up, I would recommend running the pump as much as possible.

 

My systems generally run 24/7.

[FormulaX]

Im an aquarist originally, and i have a small setup, and i think an overall advantage for the aquaponics system is the rapid and continuous supply of water/air and nutrients.  

I've had my setup for over a month now and was originally worried about my plants being saturated with too much water, and considered having an 'off' period where the pump didnt pump.  My system is very fast, it fills up in about 25 seconds, and drains over the next 35-40 seconds.  

Relative to your fish, the more water circulation, the better, the water flowing through your grow bed will help aerate the water, and the continuous speed will help the beneficial bacteria be exposed to the nitrites.  So, a continuously flowing system is good, if not better.

...In my opinion