water level

[ofer cohen]

Hello everybody !

my pump is pumping 15 minutes every one hour and than it fills the growing bed to the top and the past that the siphon drains and the past the pump is pumping are the same and for 15 minutes the water level stays at the top and the roots are all sinked it water , that they have a breake for one hour , is it good ? should mybe the water level get up and than  imidietly go down ?

this is the second day of this system and the plants look bad .... hope it will get better .....

 

[Alfio Contarino]

Hi ofer,

You say it fills it to the top of the grow bed, do you mean to the top above the grow media? 

 

As to the 15 min of water and 1 hour none, this depends on where you are..  If the weather is warm to hot you could find the media in your system heating up and killing the roots of the plants. 

 

Also the water should come to about 1 inch from the top of the grow bed, if its reaching the top you will find that algae will start to grow on the top of the media and this will affect the plants and it will use the nutrients and reduce what is available for the plants.

 

The plants should be ok with 15 min of water and 1 hour without. 

 

As this is the second day of the system, I am concerned that the system might not have enough nutrients.  What size is the system and how many fish do you have in it? and how many plants?

 

You have to always remember the nitrogen cycle.  My basic explanation of it for aquaponics attached.

 

If there is not enough fish waste/food and or not enough bacteria to convert it from Ammonia to Nitrite to Nitrate the plants will not have enough Nitrate to feed off and grow.

 

Hope this helps.

[David Waite]

Ofer most flood and drain systems cycle 15 on and 45 off. Second not sure why you have a siphon if you have a flood and drain on a timer. You shouldnt need the siphon only a overflow with small holes in the bottom to slowly drain the grow bed once the pump shuts off. If I am understanding your system. Siphons are normally for continuously run pump systems. My system is the latter and the siphons kick on and off but the pump continuously runs.

[TCLynx]

Plants will look bad after transplant.  And through the initial cycle up of a system, plants will likely suffer a bit too.  You need to get the nitrogen cycle established.  The initial period of a system should be all about the bacteria and filtration, once that is established, your system should be able to safely support fish and feed plants.

[ofer cohen]

Ok now it is the 4th day of the system , and what happens now is that the water are coming up to the top which means a a bit higher than the growing media - which can be sorved if I'll add a bit more growing media and than gets sucked down by the siphon to the middel of the growing bed and tan stops there while the pump is still pumping water , when it stops pumping the water level drops nearly to the bottom .

 

the plants look much better now , they have lost some leaves but they stand ok and look good , we had 2 days of really hot eastern winds here , now I pump water only 15 minutes every 2 hours I saw that the growing media stays moist so I did it , hope it is good

I have a 40 litters of fish tank and 15 litters of growing be , I have 11 golden fish now after 2 died and 3 plants - 2 kinds of beans and one spiece which we call in hebrew Luiza (really good) , I hope it will give the system a good nitrogen sicle ...

 

thanks alot Alfio !

 
Alfio Contarino said:

Hi ofer,

You say it fills it to the top of the grow bed, do you mean to the top above the grow media? 

 

As to the 15 min of water and 1 hour none, this depends on where you are..  If the weather is warm to hot you could find the media in your system heating up and killing the roots of the plants. 

 

Also the water should come to about 1 inch from the top of the grow bed, if its reaching the top you will find that algae will start to grow on the top of the media and this will affect the plants and it will use the nutrients and reduce what is available for the plants.

 

The plants should be ok with 15 min of water and 1 hour without. 

 

As this is the second day of the system, I am concerned that the system might not have enough nutrients.  What size is the system and how many fish do you have in it? and how many plants?

 

You have to always remember the nitrogen cycle.  My basic explanation of it for aquaponics attached.

 

If there is not enough fish waste/food and or not enough bacteria to convert it from Ammonia to Nitrite to Nitrate the plants will not have enough Nitrate to feed off and grow.

 

Hope this helps.

[ofer cohen]

Hi david , actually now I flood and drain for 15 minutes every 2 hours becouse I saw that the media stais moist , Hope its for the best , its the 4th day of the system and the plants look much better but I lost 2 fishes.

 

I dont understand how to plan a system without a siphon - if the pump is pumping water and the water drains from the holes it will be hard to get to the point where the water is filling the tank at a highr speed than they drain and than when it reaches the top it is at the same rate as the drain becouse we dont want it to over flow , or maybe drill some holes at the top so when it reaces the top it will drain faster ... mmm is this is what you're doing? but it is ok that for 15 minutes the plants will be fully soaked with water?

 

thanks alot it really opens my mind....

David Waite said:

Ofer most flood and drain systems cycle 15 on and 45 off. Second not sure why you have a siphon if you have a flood and drain on a timer. You shouldnt need the siphon only a overflow with small holes in the bottom to slowly drain the grow bed once the pump shuts off. If I am understanding your system. Siphons are normally for continuously run pump systems. My system is the latter and the siphons kick on and off but the pump continuously runs.

[ofer cohen]

Hope that this is what happens now , the plants look muchbetter now at their 4th day than the second day

TCLynx said:

Plants will look bad after transplant.  And through the initial cycle up of a system, plants will likely suffer a bit too.  You need to get the nitrogen cycle established.  The initial period of a system should be all about the bacteria and filtration, once that is established, your system should be able to safely support fish and feed plants.

[TCLynx]

Is the system fully cycled up?  What are the ammonia, nitrite levels?

See doing the flood and drain more often will help keep the water quality high, especially when the system is new and you are still trying to establish the bio-filter.  Also, if it is really hot cycling more often will provide more aeration for the fish.  Your plants might be happy to deal with less flooding and draining but your water quality and bio-filter could really suffer if you are not already running a well cycled up system.  The first season is all about getting a solid strong bio-filter, don't try to save electricity during initial cycle up or you may never get the system stabilized.

 

You definitely want to get more media in the beds so you are not flooding over the top of the media as flooding over the media will start causing problems to your plants and only some water plants like the top of the media to be wet all the time.

[David Waite]

Ofer I will try to grasp what you are doing. Your pump turns on and fills the grow bed. Your siphon kicks on and the water drops to about half way down and then it just runs until the pump kicks off and then it drains all the way down. This really defeats the cycle. Your plant roots only get a little shot of water before the level drops off of the root zone. This is way out of normal for flood and drain. My opinion is to take off the siphon and pull the stand pipe that the water goes down. Not the guard. Cut the stand pipe to 1 inch below top of gravel when it is in the grow bed. Drill a couple of 1/4 holes at the bottom of the stand pipe about 1 to 2 inches off the bottom of grow bed. This is how is should run. The pump kicks on and fills the bed. The water is coming in faster than the 1/4 in holes  so it rises up to the top of the stand pipe and overflows into the stand pipe. You can adjust the pump so it doesnt over flow raising it above the gravel line. ( a definite nono due to algae growth.)  You want the pump to run for 15 mins at the top end of your bed or 1 inch below gravel line. This is a must for plant health and bacteria health. The pump shuts off for 45 min. The bed slowly drains out of the smaller hole or holes until it gets to the bottom 1 or 2 inches then stops. You need to cycle the entire volumn of fish tank through your grow beds 1 time every hour. Please keep in mind if your fish are stuggling due to not enough air then you should have a air pump as well. This is not the only way to due flood and drain just the standard and has the highest success rate for all three elements fish plant and bacteria.

[TCLynx]

The benefit of the method David describes above is that if you are having trouble with water quality or only just cycling up, you can simply let the pump run constantly or for a long time several times a day to help get more water filtered and more water contact time for the bacteria to help get cycled up quicker.

 

I must admit though that I have occasionally done a timer/siphon combo but that was for situations rather different (it was to actually get a nice flow into a duck tank when the siphon would kick in to help swirl the water and keep things flowing nicely out of the tank.)

[ofer cohen]

ok David , I think I got it , you say that is is very important that the entire grow bed will be flooded to the top for 15 minutes right? so maybe what I can do in order to fix this existing system is to make the iner pipe nerower so that the siphon will drain slowlyer and make a few holes in the top of the grow bed that will make the water come out directly to the fish tank faster and not letting the water level get higher than 1 inch below top gravel . becose in order to take out the siphon now and do what you suggest I will have to take the plants out and it will be dificult

what do you think guys does it sound like a good idea?  

[TCLynx]

What is the point of using the siphon if you are using a timer anyway?  Why not simply pull the bell off the siphon and put a couple small holes in the lower part of the stand pipe and walla you have timed flood and drain (assuming you are using a bell siphon of some sort.)

 

the method you describe sounds a bit more complex.

 

And no you don't necessarily have to have the bed totally flooded for exactly 15 minutes.  I've got plenty of systems where the bed takes about 8 minutes to fill and it overflows down the top of my stand pipe for about a minute then the pump switches off and that bed will take about half an hour or so to drain while the pump and indexing valve go on to flood the other beds in sequence.  I think David was mainly trying to get your bio-filter more water contact time which will help the bacteria to keep your water quality good.  So I would suggest doing what I said as the first part of this post.