How to flood keramzit into the water

[Munkh-Ochir Jamsran]

Dear all

 

Thank you for viewing my post!

 

I have a greenhouse which holds about 150 ton water and I placed a lot of keramzit right around the water pump, so the keramzit will clean the water before the water goes up the pump. But the problem is that my keramzits are still afloat. It's not going down. Are there any special ways to flood those keramzit into the water. I stopped putting water into the the pool because any more water and those keramzits will float above the small fence I built inside the pool. I need immediate help. Please anyone...

 

If you don't know what keramzit is please google it and see the images.

 

Awaiting any reply

 

Thank you all again!

[TCLynx]

Do you have any pictures of your set up and can you explain what you are trying to do by putting the clay balls in the tank with the water pump?

 

Normally people put the clay balls in the grow beds and only flood to a couple inches below the surface of the media and this works well even with light media that would float in deep water.

 

I have one set up that I used a whole bunch of netting in my sump tank around the pump to keep leaves and larger debris from getting to my pump and clogging it.  We actually want the fish poo to go to the media filled grow beds though.

 

A bit of clay balls just around the pump is not going to be enough filtration for a large system.  You will need something additional to that.

[Munkh-Ochir Jamsran]

I hope you get somewhat idea about my setting. My grow bed isn't like the others, I'm thinking about growing lettuce on water only. Wonder if it will work? I'm adding more pictures right now

[TCLynx]

Well, you need filtration of some sort and even if you had gravel that would stay put and mound up over your pump, I don't think that is going to be enough.  A bucket full of constantly submerged media doesn't make for a filter to handle a large fish tank or large amount of fish.

 

The only system I know of where they do Rafts without any additional filtration is the Friendlies low density system and that one is only meant to have 15-20 fish in a 300 gallon fish tank supporting 2, 4 foot x 8 foot rafts pumping 5 gallons a minute and having air stones under the rafts and in the fish tank.  Such a system will likely require periodic sucking out of solids that build up or settle in the raft beds.

[Munkh-Ochir Jamsran]

I hope you get somewhat idea about my setting. My grow bed isn't like the others, I'm thinking about growing lettuce on water only. Wonder if it will work? I'm adding more pictures right now

[TCLynx]

I worry about the wire you have in the water there.  If it is anything but stainless steel it is going to rust or corrode pretty quickly and you will need to replace it.  Also anything that can rust or corrode is going to leach into the water and most metals are not good for fish in uncontrolled quantities.  Galvanized metal is especially bad since the zinc in the galvanized coating can reach toxic levels for many kinds of fish pretty quickly if the pH is not really high which is generally not desired in aquaponics since the plants do better with a lower pH.

 

I recommend you swap your screen for some sort of plastic mesh of an appropriate size to stop your media from escaping.  You might also be able to find some netting you could make a pvc frame for to help hold the media back.

 

However, to provide a good amount of filtration.  You might simply just fill that pump tank with netting which would be easier to remove and wash than the loose media.  Many Raft systems use "net tanks" after their solids settling tanks to catch more of the fine solids and provide extra surface area for bio-filtration.  You might even put your loose media in mesh bags to help contain it and add netting in around everything.

[Munkh-Ochir Jamsran]

More pictures

[Munkh-Ochir Jamsran]

Very good ideas, thank you TCLynx. My internet speed is very slow, so I'll just keep uploading for others to see.

[Munkh-Ochir Jamsran]

Very good ideas, thank you TCLynx. My internet speed is very slow, so I'll just keep uploading for others to see.

[Munkh-Ochir Jamsran]

More pictures

[Johann]

Keramzit having a bulk density of about 100 to 300 kg./m.³

Water has 1,000kg/m3

Keramzit is 3.33 to 10 times lighter than water per same volume and that makes it float.

The only thing I can think off, is to pull a vacuum while the keramzit sitting in water.

Vacuum would pull the air from the airpocket within the keramzit and when atmospheric pressure is applied while the keramzit is submerged in water, the water will be drawn into the airpockets. You may have to repeat it several times and replenish the water.

The only thing that worries me though is that the water inside the airpockets would / could become anaerobic and could cause many problems.

And, it is a possibility that the airpockets get filled with air / gas again (that is present in the water) after a while and the keramzit could float again.