A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Smoky Mountain Aquaponics GH Design

2 members like this

View Full Size

Comment

Comment by Jim Fisk on August 4, 2014 at 8:32am: The pump size is generally related to the fish tank size and the type of fish. Trout need far more pump volume than say Tilapia. In general: If you are setting up 10 FTs at 1000L each (330g) you will need a pump around 10,000L (3300g) per hour. The FT volume should turn over once every hour.

Comment by Lim Hong Kuan on August 4, 2014 at 8:06am: Today I'm so happy to learn and comment some of your system .With questions being answer then we can learn a bit faster.

Actually I got a land of 2000 sq m and I intended to use 1000 sq m to set up 10 fish tank & 20 Grow beds. The design that I learn from you is useful concept but I'm learning how to Size my pump.

What I learn from some video ,say you got 2 DWC or Floating grow bed at 100 gallon each ( 100x100 g ) then you need to size your pump at 250GPH .Please advise?

Comment by Jim Fisk on August 4, 2014 at 6:23am: The valve you are pointing to is a drain for the solids. We drain it into a 5gal pail and feed the fruit trees with it. The actual flow goes into the media bed to the left.

I do not understand 10 FT & 20GB. Is that one 10FT x 20FT GB? If so how do you tend to it?

Comment by Lim Hong Kuan on August 3, 2014 at 8:05pm: Where is the Swirl Filter flow to where ? ( As indicated in red arrow )

If I having 10 FT & 20GB ,What size of pump you recommend. So glad to know. thank you.

Comment by Jim Fisk on August 3, 2014 at 2:10pm: Here is a more up to date flow chart of our system and GH:

Comment by Jim Fisk on August 3, 2014 at 11:22am: DWC is a GB also so Media defines what type. I used IBCs as you can see from my many pictures. It all depends on how big a system you are making and if you have a permanent place for it. I used 5 full sized for FTs. 3x 275 gal and 2 x 300 gal. I then cut two 14" deep GBs from 3 more. Go thru my many pictures for a basic idea of how I set them up. HERE

Comment by Lim Hong Kuan on August 3, 2014 at 9:02am: Jim,first thanks for your good advise. One thing for sure is to do with a media beds as a newbie.

What kind of size DESIGN you recommend for each media bed or we calling a grow bed.

Comment by Jim Fisk on August 3, 2014 at 8:45am: Hi Lim,

First of all you need to define what type of GBs you are talking about. DWC (deep water culture or floating beds, etc) requires far more solids filtering, bio filtering and finally polishing than media GBs. Media GBs can get by with no other filtering as they are a solids filter and a bio filter BUT down the road a bit the media will get ugly and over saturated by all the solids, both floaters and sinkers so in the end and for the sake of appearance and GB health it is wise to at least prevent the solids from entering the media beds and that requires a filter.

These are the reasons why we do not recommend starting with DWC beds but to instead go with media beds while you are getting up to speed with your AP skill set. The next progression should be to prefilter your media beds and finally when you have a clue it is natural to want to grow greens in a DWC bed and by then you should have a grasp on all the basics (we waited 2 yrs and we have been doing this type of thing for 30 yrs or more) and it is time to learn the DWC method which requires extensive filtering for healthy plants. If you start with DWC and run into all the pitfalls there is a good chance you will fail and that would be a shame and you might just give up as so many folks do unfortunately.

Comment by Lim Hong Kuan on August 3, 2014 at 7:59am: One question from me ,do we need to filter the fish flow water back to the grow beds. Hope to learn from the expertise.thanks

Comment by Jim Fisk on May 10, 2014 at 9:42am: Since posting my fairly old now but "as built" plan Jeremiah Robinson posted a great pic of Penn and Cord's very nice GH design that is very similar and with some small mods like a walled off fish room would make a perfect AP GH. Here is their fabulous night shot of theirs:

While they have used an amazing number of barrels for passive solar collection we in AP have the added advantage of a great deal of water heat storage in our AP systems. In my case about 2000g of passive storage between FTs and Gbs and sump. Nonetheless that wall of barrels can still go a long way toward total passive design. In our climate I feel I would still be more comfortable with our wood stove for unexpected cold snaps like we had this Winter when we hit 20F BELOW zero more than once.

Nonetheless this is more like what our GH will look like when the cosmetics are finished. Check out their website for smaller designs that could be modified for AP like our Smoky Mountain AP layout.