Comment

Comment by TCLynx on January 24, 2011 at 7:27am

here is a link to an updated picture

http://aquaponicscommunity.com/photo/sorta-sumpless-constant-flood?...

Comment by TCLynx on January 24, 2011 at 6:52am

Well as I noted, a barrel hooked up to the end of the drain line and one could simply place a submersible pump in that.

 

I've found a few really tiny externally mountable pumps but I also found that two out of three of them leaked around the seal so for a small application the barrel or other container as tall as the beds would make a fine place to put the pump.

Comment by Kobus Jooste on January 23, 2011 at 10:19pm

Very nice lay-out close to what I built for my first system with one exception.  In South Africa, or should I say in my part of it, I struggle to find small externally mounted pumps.  The smallest one I could source thus far was a 45 Watt, 3000 liters per hour one, which will be a bit big for a smaller operation.  I would then likely add on a sump for the return pump.  Do you get small capacity externally mounted pumps over in the US? - smaller than the one I mentioned.

Comment by TCLynx on January 23, 2011 at 8:38pm

Well remember that in a system like this (non flood and drain), there will be minimal drain down during a pump outage (mainly just what is in the pump plumbing and the plumbing between the fish tank and the grow beds) unless you add a lot of flow into NFT or towers above.  Remember you have a couple inches of gravel above the normal water level in the grow beds and if you add a barrel on the end, you will be really quite safe with extra capacity.

Just make sure the top up valve isn't placed too high if you know what I mean.

Comment by TCLynx on January 23, 2011 at 6:47pm

well a couple additional options.

one could have a barrel next to the last grow beds hooked to that same drain line and it would be fed by the drain line (as big a plumbing connection as possible) and then the pump could even be a submersible model and there would also be space to add a top up float valve where one wants the low water line to be (float switches can be trouble sometimes.)

Comment by TCLynx on January 23, 2011 at 5:35pm

it is important to note the end bed has a shortened stand pipe so the pump is less likely to run dry.  If all beds had stand pipes removed the water level would fluctuate in all of them and give more time before the pump would be in danger.