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Comment by Gary Rosenlieb on June 1, 2012 at 6:10am

I changed the way I thought I was going to do this. I connected the smaller pump to 3 grow beds and actually shut one of those off, so 2 in reality. That left the FT and 5 beds on the larger pump and it sees to have cured my problem, so I ordered a second 1000 gph pump.

I tossed in a very small amount of fish food, my cats came up to see me! First time I have fed them.

Thanks for all the help!

Comment by Gary Rosenlieb on May 31, 2012 at 9:35am

I have another smaller pump, I think 390 gph. Let me connect it just to the FT and see what happens, again thanks for the input.

Comment by Gary Rosenlieb on May 31, 2012 at 9:31am

I am using 3/4 pipe for the water from the pump, I suppose I could go up to 1"., the siphons are 1" already, maybe go smaller? I have seen bell reducers put on the top of the stand pipe to the next bigger size, would that help me? As for the prefilter, all there is is the screen, no mesh of any kind.

I can sit and watch one trickle and go shut another bed off, and it pretty much instantly starts to siphon.

Sorry, I am trying to answer/comment all at once here, thanks for all of the input!

Comment by Phil Slaton on May 31, 2012 at 8:13am

Smaller pipe can also cause a back pressure problem for the pump.  If the standard outflow for the pump is 1" for example, do not go below 1'' in your piping.  Also pull your submersible pump(s) out of the tank(s) and remove the intake covers.  If the pump has some sort of filter material over the intake fitting, remove it.  That filter material is wrong for aquaponics for 2 reasons - 1) It can get plugged up with crap and slow down the volume of intake; and 2) It traps larger waste that we want in the grow beds.

Comment by TCLynx on May 31, 2012 at 7:40am

To get the most out of a pump, use larger pipe and minimum fittings and pipe lengths.

Siphons in barrel grow beds cut the long way can be really tricky to get balanced.  Now if they do kick into siphon mode, then being a little slow about starting up into siphon mode isn't a problem.  If they are just trickling over an never kicking in that is a problem.  Getting them balanced may involved hours and hours of tinkering.  Look up affnan siphons.

Running two pumps or just getting a new bigger pump are both viable options.  Either way, I will definitely say keep the old pump on hand in case of emergencies.

What happens when you shut off flow to several of the grow beds?  Do the other beds start siphoning properly with the increased flow?  What if you shut off the flow to the fish tank and just leave that pump on the grow beds, do the siphons all work then?  I would check that before you buy another pump.  If shutting off the flow to the fish tank suddenly causes the siphons to all work properly, you might simply get another pump to service the fish tank and boom you are done, if not then you have more figuring to do.  What size pipe are you using for everything?  If it's 1/2" or 3/4" the pipe size may be restricting flow enough to be giving you problems.  I've often run 1 1/2" pipe out and Tee down to 1" at the individual branches.  If you have 1/2" ball valves already, maybe you do bigger pipe for the feed and T down to the 1/2" right at each bed.

Comment by Chris Cates on May 31, 2012 at 7:13am

I had the same problem setting up my system.  I started with a 500gph pump running to 5 ibc grow beds and a 250 gal ft.  Just not enough.  I switched to a 1000 gph pump, still couldn't get the growbeds to reliably siphon.  Put both pumps in, the 500 gph one just going to the ft and the 1000 gph on feeding the grow beds, still didn't siphon reliably.  Finally removed all the 90 degree elbows in the system and replaced with much shorter runs and sweep 90s, now I have excess capacity.

Comment by Gary Rosenlieb on May 31, 2012 at 5:55am

Here is my problem. I set up a system like the CHOP MkII system. I have a 275 gallon FT, a 100 gallon sump, and 8 half barrels for grow beds. With this I am using a 960 gph pump. I am having a hard time getting the bell siphons to work correctly, there are 8 of them. They keep trickling and are slow to go into the siphon "mode". I think what my problem is, is I do not have enough pump for what I have set up. Valves are wide open and the valve going to the FT is about half. So my question is, would I be better off doubling up on pumps or going to a single larger one, maybe 2000 gph? If I am in the ballpark with my thinking, is there a suggestion for a larger pump? Any suggestions? 

Comment by TCLynx on May 25, 2012 at 4:32pm

Roger, yes you want the water to enter the fish tank above the water line and you want the outflow from the fish tank to be up high enough that the water level in the fish tank will remain fairly stable.  The grow beds are what will fluctuate in water level as will the sump.  If you are running a single pump system, you shouldn't need a float switch.  Either the siphons in the grow beds will take care of flooding and draining or a timer will be turning the pump on/off.

Comment by Jim Rusk on May 25, 2012 at 6:33am

Your very welcome.

Comment by Roger on May 24, 2012 at 10:59pm

Thanks for sharing....I think you may have just answered one of my bigger questions.  Thanks!

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