Flood & drain beds starving, but float tank doing well ... why? - Aquaponic Gardening2024-03-28T21:12:40Zhttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/forum/topics/flood-drain-beds-starving-but-float-tank-doing-well-why?commentId=4778851%3AComment%3A588599&feed=yes&xn_auth=noI am runnig a humonia system…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-12-03:4778851:Comment:5885992014-12-03T19:49:33.282ZSafwat Zakihttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/SafwatZaki
<p>I am runnig a humonia system or fishless system, I would like to share my experience, I designed my growing bed also is the biofilter in such a way to have two inches of nutriens at the bottom of the bed is circulating continously, the medium I am using is a mixture of small gravels and clay balls, depth of medium is 6 inches, I add iron and potassium besides the urine to my tank and it seems doing good job in growing healthy plants. The top of the medium is constant moist, the roots have…</p>
<p>I am runnig a humonia system or fishless system, I would like to share my experience, I designed my growing bed also is the biofilter in such a way to have two inches of nutriens at the bottom of the bed is circulating continously, the medium I am using is a mixture of small gravels and clay balls, depth of medium is 6 inches, I add iron and potassium besides the urine to my tank and it seems doing good job in growing healthy plants. The top of the medium is constant moist, the roots have enough oxygen to breath and water plus nutrients to absorb. Nitrifying bacteria and red worms are surviving and converting urea, ammonia to nitrate.</p>
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<p></p> Instead of solenoids, you cou…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-08:4778851:Comment:5775852014-09-08T17:44:24.770ZAlex Veidelhttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/AlexVeidel
<p>Instead of solenoids, you could just use bell siphons.</p>
<p>Instead of solenoids, you could just use bell siphons.</p> Yeah, your pipes are simply t…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-07:4778851:Comment:5774582014-09-07T12:48:53.405ZJeremiah Robinsonhttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/JeremiahRobinson
<p>Yeah, your pipes are simply too small. There's no way around it. Even if you put in 4 drains you'd still get clogged eventually. For my old half-barrel setup I had 1" drains flowing into a 1-1/2" main drain. </p>
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<p>You can flood every hour with one of those old non-digital timers. Many of them have triggers every 15 minutes. Or you could take two 20-cycle-day digital timers and put them in parallel.</p>
<p>Yeah, your pipes are simply too small. There's no way around it. Even if you put in 4 drains you'd still get clogged eventually. For my old half-barrel setup I had 1" drains flowing into a 1-1/2" main drain. </p>
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<p>You can flood every hour with one of those old non-digital timers. Many of them have triggers every 15 minutes. Or you could take two 20-cycle-day digital timers and put them in parallel.</p> ah.. a lot of what not to do.…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-07:4778851:Comment:5777312014-09-07T11:41:39.931ZRob Nashhttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/RobNash
<p>ah.. a lot of what not to do. sounds like a rebuild is in your future.</p>
<p>ah.. a lot of what not to do. sounds like a rebuild is in your future.</p> Ok I've timed it.
With the sy…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-07:4778851:Comment:5774552014-09-07T06:27:06.722ZStacey Kinghttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/StaceyKing
<p>Ok I've timed it.</p>
<p>With the system on full drain it takes 30 minutes to pump the beds full.</p>
<p>It takes 90 minutes to drain completely.</p>
<p>If I shut off the drain during the pump cycle, I could get the fill down to about 13 minutes.</p>
<p>If I drained the 4 tanks through 2 pipes instead of one I could halve the drain time to 45 minutes ... but the problem is if I was to do that I'd need to use 2 solenoid setups to shut off the 2 drains ... and I only have 1.</p>
<p>Shutoffs…</p>
<p>Ok I've timed it.</p>
<p>With the system on full drain it takes 30 minutes to pump the beds full.</p>
<p>It takes 90 minutes to drain completely.</p>
<p>If I shut off the drain during the pump cycle, I could get the fill down to about 13 minutes.</p>
<p>If I drained the 4 tanks through 2 pipes instead of one I could halve the drain time to 45 minutes ... but the problem is if I was to do that I'd need to use 2 solenoid setups to shut off the 2 drains ... and I only have 1.</p>
<p>Shutoffs for the drains would be an absolute must, no way would the pump ever be able to fill it otherwise with 2 drains running full.</p>
<p>Theoretically, without massive changes I could lower the drainage time to 22 minutes, but that then needs 4 solenoids ...</p>
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<p>Right now I have it reset to cycle as short as possible without changes, that is every 2 hours, during the day, but my timer can only handle 10 on/off programs per 24 hour period so I had to spread that out to 3 hours during the night.</p>
<p>To speed that up any more I'll need to get a new timer capable of a lot more cycles, I've no idea where from, but I'm not in town for a couple of weeks so by then I should be able to see how the plants are doing with more cycles.</p>
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<p>The drains are standard garden hose size, out of each of 4 half drums. However currently those all join into one hose to drop into the holding tank.</p>
<p>The pump is 15w, labelled capable of 900lph ... and I don't want to go any bigger than this if I can help it, being on alternative power, I would convert to entirely DWC and forget the carrots rather than have to use a noticeably bigger pump.</p> I flood each of my grow beds…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-07:4778851:Comment:5776382014-09-07T02:32:49.415ZJeremiah Robinsonhttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/JeremiahRobinson
<p>I flood each of my grow beds every hour, and have had very good growth in my system.</p>
<p>Rob's point about draining from the flood/drain bed into the DWC bed is an important one. You don't want your solids settling in your DWC beds.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">If you have a good solids filter this is less of an issue, though you'll certainly want a lot of aeration in your DWC bed in this case. UVI found that their plants above the aerators grew much better than the plants…</span></p>
<p>I flood each of my grow beds every hour, and have had very good growth in my system.</p>
<p>Rob's point about draining from the flood/drain bed into the DWC bed is an important one. You don't want your solids settling in your DWC beds.</p>
<p><span style="font-size: 13px;">If you have a good solids filter this is less of an issue, though you'll certainly want a lot of aeration in your DWC bed in this case. UVI found that their plants above the aerators grew much better than the plants between aerators.</span></p> Air is the biggest issue your…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-06:4778851:Comment:5775292014-09-06T12:47:14.382ZRob Nashhttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/RobNash
<p>Air is the biggest issue your having.. notice the plants next to the incoming water are doing the best,, its the only part of the media bed that has enough air..</p>
<p>the water should go through the media beds, then drain into the raft and back to the tank.</p>
<p>50 ppm should be plenty nutes to grow anything you plant..</p>
<p>with the right size plumbing you should be able to drain your beds as fast as you desire.. what size pipes are you using?</p>
<p>a ten minute fill and 15-20 min…</p>
<p>Air is the biggest issue your having.. notice the plants next to the incoming water are doing the best,, its the only part of the media bed that has enough air..</p>
<p>the water should go through the media beds, then drain into the raft and back to the tank.</p>
<p>50 ppm should be plenty nutes to grow anything you plant..</p>
<p>with the right size plumbing you should be able to drain your beds as fast as you desire.. what size pipes are you using?</p>
<p>a ten minute fill and 15-20 min drain are pretty standard... regardless of system size, your pump and plumbing should be sized to allow this. my guess is the plumbing is too small.</p>
<p>maybe post a picture of the system?</p> Hmm ... every 20 minutes coul…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-06:4778851:Comment:5774402014-09-06T02:54:28.990ZStacey Kinghttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/StaceyKing
<p>Hmm ... every 20 minutes could be a problem, there's simply no way they can drain that fast I think.</p>
<p>But I will step it up as fast as possible.</p>
<p>I'm not sure how fast they can drain, I will have an experiment and see. I'm guessing it may be about 40 minutes.</p>
<p>If all else fails, I'm thinking of running them as constant flooded beds, but with the media in there still, and introduce a lead from the bubbler for oxygen? Never heard if that being used but I don't see why not ...…</p>
<p>Hmm ... every 20 minutes could be a problem, there's simply no way they can drain that fast I think.</p>
<p>But I will step it up as fast as possible.</p>
<p>I'm not sure how fast they can drain, I will have an experiment and see. I'm guessing it may be about 40 minutes.</p>
<p>If all else fails, I'm thinking of running them as constant flooded beds, but with the media in there still, and introduce a lead from the bubbler for oxygen? Never heard if that being used but I don't see why not ... would it work do you think?</p>
<p>I'm adding plenty of other nutrients as well as ammonia, p/k are in there, and we also add seaweed, iron, lime ... no deficiency signs in the raft end of the system.</p> More than likely it is the ba…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-05:4778851:Comment:5777012014-09-05T14:58:36.249ZJonathan Kadish NYC AA Chairhttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/JonathanKadish
<p>More than likely it is the bacteria that are not flourishing in a Flood and Drain that is stagnant most of the day. 3 1/2 hours that the plant roots have limited access to oxygen will stunt growth too. Bacteria and plants want the water constantly flooding and draining providing food and oxygen for them to create nutrients for the plants. Think of the flood and drain beds as lungs and you are asking them to hold their breath for 3 1/2 hours. You also said this is a fishless system, are you…</p>
<p>More than likely it is the bacteria that are not flourishing in a Flood and Drain that is stagnant most of the day. 3 1/2 hours that the plant roots have limited access to oxygen will stunt growth too. Bacteria and plants want the water constantly flooding and draining providing food and oxygen for them to create nutrients for the plants. Think of the flood and drain beds as lungs and you are asking them to hold their breath for 3 1/2 hours. You also said this is a fishless system, are you only supplying ammonia to your system? Plants need 16 different nutrients to thrive and usually fish food has these nutrients.</p> A good time to shoot for as f…tag:aquaponicgardening.ning.com,2014-09-05:4778851:Comment:5771942014-09-05T13:14:29.932ZAlex Veidelhttps://aquaponicgardening.ning.com/profile/AlexVeidel
<p>A good time to shoot for as far as flood and drains cycle is one cycle every 20 minutes or so.</p>
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<p>The long time between your cycles, as well as not running your system at night might be stressing out your media bed plants. This is a soiless environment, so your plants will need water more often because your media doesn't hold water the way soil does.</p>
<p>A good time to shoot for as far as flood and drains cycle is one cycle every 20 minutes or so.</p>
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<p>The long time between your cycles, as well as not running your system at night might be stressing out your media bed plants. This is a soiless environment, so your plants will need water more often because your media doesn't hold water the way soil does.</p>