Home Aquaponics Site Sketch

[B. Pearcy]

Tomorrow I plan to begin accumulating the needed supplies to finally construct my home aquaponics system.  At this point, I am leaning toward a continuous flow system. Here's a rough sketch of my vision:

 

I don't have any fancy software for making the sketch, so please forgive the crude drawing I made in Excel.  I hope I'm not too far off base, but I plan to have the 100 gallon Rubbermaid tanks raised high enough on concrete blocks that the water will flow back into the fish tank using gravity.  I'm not a plumber and have little plumbing experience, so I hope I can pump into both tanks at once and fine tune the flow better with spigots.  Will a 550 gph pump work for this purpose? Any suggestion on specific brands?

I am guessing in rough numbers that with washed river gravel as growing media the grow beds will not hold more than 25-35 gallons of water. I may be off with those figures, but I vaguely remember reading those figures in some online articles.

I will be going to pre-measure the tanks tomorrow at the local Tractor Supply. There is also a tank specialty store nearby if they don't have the 300 gallon in stock where I can order just about any kind of tank I could ever imagine. Since I have a 10% coupon I'm hoping Tractor Supply has one.

I understand something called a Uniseal works well in the tanks, although I'm not quite sure where to buy those. Will I be able to avoid PVC in this system, or will some PVC be unavoidable for the pipes?

Landscape weed control fabric runs about $20 for a 125' x 7' roll at Sam's Club, but I don't need nearly that much.

Any other stuff I should be considering that I've left off the list?

Some have suggested a sump be used, but I want to limit the footprint as best I can so that's why I'm thinking continuous flow will work best for my situation.

I plan to use a few Zip Grow towers run on a separate pump for aeration hanging from shephard's hooks or something.

I'm open to additional suggestions/opinions.

[TCLynx]

I'll have to post some pictures tomorrow for you about how to put the 100 gallons up on blocks.  I think you will need about 8 regular concrete blocks per grow bed.  This will actually only put the bottom of the stock tank up about 18 inches but that will allow the top half of the bed to flood and drain.  You can flood and drain two 100 gallon beds with a 300 gallon fish tank no problem, especially if you are only flooding and draining the top half.

Now you are going to be under filtered for the size of fish tank so you will really need to stock the fish tank very lightly.

 

PVC isn't terrible to work with.  You might be able to avoid it but you will spend more on fittings and other things I expect.

 

Now what's with the weed control fabric?  No need for it within the aquaponics system as far as I know.

 

Keep in mind that a 550 gph pump will probably not move that much water if you are lifting it above the surface of the water  and if you try to use small pipe or tubing it will restrict it even more.  It might be worth your while to look at somewhat larger flow pumps that are still energy efficient.  I've found that really small pumps will often have clogging issues even after you remove the sponge.

[B. Pearcy]

Thanks.  I'm going to put the weed control fabric on the ground as cover so I don't have to be weed eating around the system all the time.  Maybe it's not weed control fabric I should be using (??). The commercial hydroponics farm where my wife works uses it under all of their systems.

Thanks for mentioning that about the pumps. I've been looking around a little and see that I need to be thinking more about 1,000 gph +.

What size pipe would you suggest?

[TCLynx]

I find weed control fabric doesn't always stop the weeds, just makes it that much harder to pull them out when they do poke through.  (can't hoe, fork or rake where there is weed mat.)

 

Pipe size.  I always oversize the pipe.  1" would be the minimum from the pump but depending on pump I might even up that (on my system I use 1 1/2" from the pump to where I split off for stuff.)  Then for the drains, I would probably do 1 1/2".  I 1/4" might be ok too but I usually only use the 1 1/4" when I'm dealing with that size indexing valve.

 

oh, and you mention constant flow, in that case look into getting the 3/4" river rock since the 1/2" stuff will tend to slime up more under constant flow.

[B. Pearcy]

I'm going to take a tape measure along to Tractor Supply tomorrow. I'll be back to lay out the dimensions in my backyard to plan for placement.  Maybe I can squeeze in a third tank, but it'll be pretty tight. My backyard is not very big.

TCLynx said:

Now you are going to be under filtered for the size of fish tank so you will really need to stock the fish tank very lightly.

[Chi Ma]

Cool thing about the tanks that TSC sells is that they have drains that you can plumb into negating the need for bulkhead fittings if you are creative with your plumbing

[B. Pearcy]

Thanks for the tip.

Chi Ma said:

Cool thing about the tanks that TSC sells is that they have drains that you can plumb into negating the need for bulkhead fittings if you are creative with your plumbing

[TCLynx]

The fittings in the stock tanks are kinda 1 1/4" but I've only ever successfully threaded plumbing in from the outside, I haven't figured out how to get a fitting to thread in on the inside so it's hard to hook up a stand pipe on the inside with the drain fitting.

 

with a uniseal you just push a piece of pipe through and there is no need to use two extra threaded fittings.

 

The stock tank dimensions 53"L x 31"W x 25"H for the 100 gallon.  give yourself about 6' diameter for the 300 gallon

[Chi Ma]

You can mount the stand pipe outside. Here is a crude illustration.

B. Pearcy said:

Thanks for the tip.

Chi Ma said:

Cool thing about the tanks that TSC sells is that they have drains that you can plumb into negating the need for bulkhead fittings if you are creative with your plumbing

[B. Pearcy]

I have been thinking more square than rectangle layout, but more rectangular gives me the option to add two more grow beds later. Hmmm...

 

Foot print goes from about roughly 6' x 10' in my sketch to roughly 6' x 15'.

[TCLynx]

I like long and narrow set ups.  Long lines of beds that can act as a garden boarder and such.

[B. Pearcy]

Just back from Tractor Supply. They say the 300 gallon RM tank is not stocked in stores and must be ordered online. That will raise the price of the tank a bunch.

[Chi Ma]

My next big system I am thinking of using a water tank. I dunno if it fits into your budget.

 

http://www.tractorsupply.com/water-storage-tank-550-gal--2126933

B. Pearcy said:

Just back from Tractor Supply. They say the 300 gallon RM tank is not stocked in stores and must be ordered online. That will raise the price of the tank a bunch.